CClaude wrote:myself use TOPO maps (yes, thats so 2010'ish) and print tyhem at home on "Tabloid" sized Tyvek " paper. forgot where I got the stuff, since I only use it for important stuff so I bought it once and haven't replaced it.

TOPO is going to die out thanks to non-support on Windows8 and future versions... I probably have $400 invested in it to. Caltopo it is!

mattyj wrote:I get them from my site. You can print with the icon in the top right using Chrome (borderless) and Firefox (w/ margins); browser printing is a little more of a hassle than desktop topo software, but it meets your free criteria.

If you don't need to worry about lining up multiple maps, you can download quads from the USGS quads for free.

Very impressive work matty. Saw your site quite some time ago when in must have been in your initial form. I have piles of maps going back decade, many mutilated from endless handling, and have made some enhanced maps with varying colored major elevation lines from the USGS maps. Will be using your site from now on quite a bit.

Just this morning was joining together in Photoshop CS6 the 4 Sierra 7.5m topos grabbed off the libremap site that meet about University Peak that was a modest effort. Then printed them out as 11x17s on my Epson R2880. Played around with some of the options on your site. Found the Forest Service layer options for shading. That is awesome idea I've been hoping someone would do since I knew it was possible. My only comment is the shading colors are too strong. Probably light pastels might work better. Ought to make cross country travel easier for the many that have trouble deciphering areas that are too steep to navigate.

The satellite overlay may also be useful for correcting the many trails that are drawn incorrectly on maps like the one BBurd helped me with last year climbing up the initial ridge on the Shepherd Pass trail. I had to play some interesting games in PS manually resizing in order to line up the satellite to the topo.

Update...I mostly use caltopo now...

The best website for generating topographic maps is caltopo.com.

It's intuitive and easy to use
It has a wide variety of different map layers
Printing is fast and easy
Worldwide coverage through open source mapping
Right click to add waypoints, draw lines, and export your drawings as a GPS file for use on a GPS device

There is a nice tutorial video on how to use this on YouTube. It’s called "caltopo tutorial - Free topo maps”.

Search Youtube for < Columbia River Orienteering Club >, or see it right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjUo6PwHmAQ