TopoMapsApp for iPhone

[Skip Booth]

I did a quick search and I didn't find any threads on this particular app so I decided to start one.

I was headed out to Shining Rock Wilderness area in NC this past weekend for a quick 12-mile overnighter. The Shining Rock Wilderness is a maze of trails all of which are unmarked. As I was going to be by myself I wanted to have a little more reassurance that I knew where I was.

After researching a few different options I decided to give the TopoMapsApp for the iphone a try. You can read more about this app and look at some screenshots here:

http://topomapsapp.com/

I can tell you that this app rocks. The app is $7.99 and is well worth the money. You can download USGS Topo maps for any region in the US and Canada for free. Once they are installed they are available to use on the trail. I didn't use all it's features, but I found the user interface very easy to use and I particularly liked the feature for measuring distance. Creating waypoints was very intuitive. I don't think it has an option to create tracks, but to be honest I'm not sure how much I'd really want to use that feature as it would suck battery life and since you already have your position directly on the map it's not obvious what the value is (unless you decide to go off trail).

The iPhone GPS isn't great and I think the best accuracy I was able to achieve in the woods was around +- 155 feet. Still it was good enough to help me make sure I was on the right trail and at least in one instance get me back on the trail :) It also nailed the location of a spring on one of trails I was on that I would have easily missed without the phone.

The maps render fantastically on the phone and to be honest I used the phone more for my navigation than the paper map I had with me.

The only issue that I could see is that the GPS would not track if you had the phone in "airplane" mode. I'm not sure whether this is a nuance of the application or the phone.

I carried an extra battery pack for the phone and was able to get plenty of battery life for the weekend.

All in all this is a keeper and if you typically take your iPhone into the woods, definitely a recommended app.

[Bob Gross]

"The only issue that I could see is that the GPS would not track if you had the phone in "airplane" mode. I'm not sure whether this is a nuance of the application or the phone."

Skip, I guess you know that airplane mode on a GPS-enabled cell phone is intended to shut off the power to the GPS receiver, so there is no GPS data coming through. For one thing, a GPS receiver has a very hard time getting enough satellite signal to work when it is within the metal skin of an airliner. If there were an external receiving antenna stuck onto a window, it works better. At the last that I heard, passengers were not allowed to use GPS receivers while in flight. That had to do with a fear that terrorists could know exactly where they were before detonating some bomb.

155 feet of horizontal accuracy is not too bad, but not super-good either. Sometimes GPS-phones are very power-limited, so they take lots of instant sleep breaks, and that does not have a good effect on accuracy. Overhead trees will impair the accuracy, and especially so if they have lots of wet leaves. There isn't much that you can do about that except to dash up to the top of a ridge to get a better GPS fix. One thing that is helpful is to learn exactly where the GPS receiver antenna is inside the phone case, and learn exactly which way it points. You really want that pointing upward toward the "birds" and if you have it shaded by your body, it can really screw up the fix accuracy. Make sure that the map datum is the same as what is set into the receiver. An error there can give you 100-200 meters of error. Vertical error will be x1.5 or more whatever the horizontal error is.
–B.G.–

[obx hiker]

"Still it was good enough to help me make sure I was on the right trail and at least in one instance get me back on the trail :) It also nailed the location of a spring on one of trails I was on that I would have easily missed without the phone."

Just out of curiosity where was the spring

[Skip Booth]

There's a spring before you get to Shining Rock on the Dog Loser Knob side. The spring starts at Beech Spring Gap. It ultimately feeds into the North Prong, but it starts mighty, mighty slow :) I had to wallow out a hole to get enough water to filter from. The water is much better once you get up to the Shining Rock ledge but I was out of daylight.

[Paul Elliott]

I've been using iTopoMaps and have been very happy with it:
http://www.itopomaps.com/
Did you look at it before deciding on TopoMapsApp?
TopoMapsApp looks good so I'm curious if it has anything in it that would make me switch or add it to the iPhone wilderness arsenal.

[John Carter]

I have tried out all of the major topo map programs for iPhone, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. Some of them have a better UI but use poor quality maps. Others use excellent maps (clear, no artifacts) but are clumsy to use. I personally like having 3D shaded relief; it really helps the terrain stand out. Currently the only apps that offer that is TopoMapsApp and GaiaGPS. I personally think GaiaGPS has the best UI, and combined with the 3D shaded maps, is my current favorite. That said, TopoMapsApp just came out with an update that offers a new 'visibility' mode. This feature shades any part of the topo map that you cannot visibly see from your current location. This could be a potentially useful tool for locating yourself, since it makes very clear which mountains on the map are visible to you in the field. Or, it may be a gimmick. Unfortunately both GaiaGPS and TopoMapsApp use low quality maps with noticeable artifacts and grainy elevation lines. There is one app that uses very high quality maps, but the location circle is so massive it takes up most of the screen real estate. I don't remember it's name. iTopoMaps is nice and was my first GPS app, but it uses poor quality maps and has no 3D relief, so I see no compelling reason to use it based on my personal criteria.

There is one app that stands above the rest in terms of quality, but you pay for it: RouteBuddy Atlas. this is the only topo app that lets you purchase maps for an entire state (or portion of a state for the larger ones) for $30. Why would you do that when there are free maps? For the same reason you'd buy TomTom or Navigon; to have all of the maps for the state pre-loaded on your phone, which means you don't have to worry about planning ahead; you just grab and go, and don't have to worry about being in a reception area. You also don't worry about the maps cache being deleted. RouteBuddy also has perhaps the highest quality maps, they are seamless, and the app interfaces with the Mac desktop program, giving you a complete user experience. It also has what I believe to be the nicest user interface.

But… it doesn't have shaded relief, the desktop app is really expensive, and you do have to shell out big bucks to purchase entire regions. But like everything in life, you get what you pay for. Also, with so much change happening in the GPS world, it is difficult to know which companies will survive and which will fail, so I'm not quite ready to invest a bunch of money into a company that may go belly up in a year. Perhaps its best to wait a bit to see which companies emerge as leaders of this new market. (i.e. why hasn't National Geographic come out with an iPhone app yet that lets you transfer your purchased desktop maps and waypoints to the iPhone? They've had 3 years now).

At this point I would purchase RouteBuddy maps IF the iPhone had a high sensitivity receiver. That, to me, is the long-term solution. How cool would it be to have all of the topo maps for you state and neighboring states pre-loaded onto your iPhone? But since I don't trust the iPhone itself to get me out of a sticky situation (i.e. the times when you really need a high quality GPS, such as finding an unmarked junction under heavy tree cover), at this point the iPhone is still more of a backup plan. And that, for me, doesn't warrant the investment in RouteBuddy.

So in short, my opinion is to get RouteBuddy Atlas if you want the best available (but expensive) solution, get TopoMapsApp or GaiaGPS if you like shaded relief maps, otherwise any of the other ones will work for casual use.

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