Google Map of Washington Ski Tours

Going through my back country ski books, I always wished there was a better way to visualize where each tour was located in relation to one another. So I began marking tours in a Google map with the line feature.

I had so much fun I plotted all the tours from the books by Burgdorfer, Volken and Blair (are there any other books that I don't know about)?

The map can be found at: maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe...0044a0d630607854b54a

I hope you enjoy the map as much as I did making it and please share it with your friends.

Erik Henne

Very cool Erik. I have been using google maps and live maps to check out trips and now having the route overlay is very helpful. I would love to see people take this and drop their photos on the routes. I don't know if there is a way to get through all the photo clutter in google earth, but it would be very cool. There is so much opportunity in the technology.

Nice work and thanks for the link. This is really cool.

This is FANTASTIC!! Thanks Erik!

Erikhenne,

Nice work! Your project makes me wonder about the future of guidebook publishing, and conventional paper publishing in general.

An editor at Mountaineer Books told me that their policy for low-volume specialty books was to run an edition, sell it out, and wait for demand to rise again before printing another run. Consequently, my last book is now officially out of print. With your excellent website, Charles' CD, and the TAY community, there may not even be a need for guidebooks. Personally, I think the only guidebook any alpine traveler (snow rider) needs is Fred Beckey's ALPINE GUIDE TO THE CASCADES.

Finally, Mike Gauthier has written a great guide to climbing (I'm sure you can figure out the descents) Mt. Rainier.

Best Regards, Rainer Burgdorfer

That's a great map! Does anyone know if it is possible to take that info from Google maps (browser based) to Google Earth?

If you look in the top right corner of the map, there is a "view in google earth" button next to the "print" link.

Rainier:

I am thrilled that you enjoyed the map and thank you for the tips on the other books, I will certainly pick them up.

Happy skiing!

Erik

Thanks Eric, very cool. Great example of web 2.0 (user generated info freely shared). This is what the web was made for.

WOW!

Thanks for plotting all of those. What a great way to look at the big picture when looking for a fun ski tour.

Cheers Erik

Fantastic companion to all those guidebooks! Thank you so much!

While the majority of these routes are beyond my current abilities, this is an outstanding tool! Thank you for your efforts!

Thanks.

Since my original post, I have mapped out a few more ski guide books and a number of hiking books. A list of them are here:  www.erikhenne.com/L_maps.htm    

If you notice on the Washington Ski Tour map, Google changed the way they display it. Now the routes are separated onto two pages, so not all of the routes are displayed at once. Does anyone have any ideas how to change it so all of the routes can be displayed at once?

Just wondering, but what is the copyright status on those books that you posted on your site?  Does crediting the books author (as you did at the beginning of each map set) release you from any cp violations or did you change the work enough to make it your own?

Good job BTW and something like this is needed (as Rainer pointed out)

I'm no legal expert on the matter, but to me what I did is similar to writing an article and quoting a book, which is totally legal.

There is a substantial amount of information in the books that is not on my Google Map. What I tried to make was a sort of interactive index for the books. This would seem to be a legal derivative work under fair use.

Very, very cool! Nice work, Erik!

Cool stuff. This is what it looks like on GMap4: www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=mym...0044a0d630607854b54a

For those who don't know, GMap4 is a map website created by a local guy using topographic data from various websites (gathered from USGS or similar data) displayed using the Google API. There are several similar websites out there (e. g. ACME) but I think it is the best one. My favorite layer is "t4 Topo High", with a hill shading value of zero. This is what that looks like for these routes close to Paradise:

www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php?q=mym...=15&t=t4&hillshade=0

This is really cool. Thanks for the work. Now if only Google Satellite/ Earth had a winter mode to make it easier to get a feel for tree thickness. It seems like most of their imagery is from late summer making it often difficult to distinguish between open and treed areas.

With the recent publication of the excellent and comprehensive Washington Backcountry book by Martin Volken, I have gone and updated my Google "Index Map." I have also re-sorted the tours to be approximately North to South so there isn't a need any more to flip between pages to make sure you are seeing all the tours in a certain region. (Olympics are at the very end of the list).

I've found this tool very useful when trying to find a new place to go. It gives a quick sense of where a tour is located, what the access difficulties may be, elevation range, and aspect without having to dig through all of your books. Of course, especially in the new Volken book, there is much more information located in the book itself, especially when it comes to tour variations and other nearby slopes. This map is intended to only be a visual index.

If you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will take care of it.

For reference, the map can be found here: maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&ms...432,5.586548&t=p&z=8

Nice work. It looks like Arrowhead needs to be moved one peak to the NE.

Thanks Erik! Fantastic index to all three books. Happy exploring

Yea… Awsome! You did what I have been slowly doing over the past 3 years… Now it's all done for me. Thanks

Dan

Nice! I am so thankful for the people like Amar and Erik who are smarter than me ;D

Just wondering, but what is the copyright status on those books that you posted on your site?  Does crediting the books author (as you did at the beginning of each map set) release you from any cp violations or did you change the work enough to make it your own?

Good job BTW and something like this is needed (as Rainer pointed out)

I can't imagine there would be any legal issue here. Everything covered in those guidebooks is composed of information in the public domain. It's organized in a very nice way, but there isn't anything that you couldn't figure out with some internet searches and research of your own. Even the route lines included are overlayed on publicly available maps.

I can't imagine there would be any legal issue here. Everything covered in those guidebooks is composed of information in the public domain. It's organized in a very nice way, but there isn't anything that you couldn't figure out with some internet searches and research of your own. Even the route lines included are overlayed on publicly available maps.

And the way I see it… you are only making it more likely that more people will buy those books. Especially Martin Volken et. al. The route descriptions are what are most helpful.

Your map is an awesome way to see it all at once and to think about possible trips in a flash. Super awesome tools.

Also, the authors of those books only want to share the goods of skiing anyway…

While I dreamed of snow this fall I worked on incorporating Eric's Google Map into a 3D mapping tool that works in your browser without any plugins like Google Earth.

You need a modern browser like Chrome to use it. Firefox works but is kind of slow and for some reason Safari is giving me troubles.

It's a little slow to load at first, but once you get in you can use the control key on your keyboard and click to rotate the map in 3D. Be sure to wait until you see the yellow lines for the tours to load before doing anything (I'll improve on it once I'm done skiing ). Your scroll wheel or right-click and drag allows you to zoom in/out. You can also filter tours by name or distance. In the future I want to add filtering for difficulty/elevation gain/guidebook/etc...

Also remember the tour lines are really rough guides and you need the guidebooks in order to get enough information. This just helps you get a feel for the general topography.

Enough with the disclaimers! Here's the link: powderlin.es/map.html

Let me know if you have any suggestions!