Sierra Mapper: A new planning tool for hikes in the Sierra Nevada

Adam I have been using your app since mid July as I follow a once an hour track point of the JMT my son is doing with an inReach… I wanted to save his .gpx data, the daily map track and elevation profile so it could be referred to in the future… I found it odd just how often he stopped and started at one of your nodes or very close… your app made the whole process go so fast… I would just take the first point and last figure out the nearest node and calculate (ya probably fudging a bit here and there but it washes out over time)… I tried using the other programs I would normally use and it just took to long with them and did not have the visual look your data has… I was also able to share the calculated route link with his grandmother who could see the map, names of places, distance, elevation gain and loss…

Any way we have been having a lot of fun with this…
Thanks…

Update! New Beta released! Try it here. More details in the blog post here.

Quick summary of the updates:

1. Shaded-relief USGS Quads are available (and are now the default). Big thanks to Matt at CalTopo for generously offering to share his seamless tiles!

2. Route segments are now shown on-the-fly when planning a route. These segments are either shown as straight-line distances with a black dashed line (“un-calculated” segments), or segments of the routed trail highlighted in purple (“pre-calculated” segments)

3. Distances for each segment are now shown on-the-fly when planning a route

4. An “Edit this Route” button was added to the route and profile page. This returns you to the planning page, with the existing route entered, and a suitable view chosen, and prevents you from having to start from scratch for tweaks to a route.

5. Signal processing was added to the distance and elevation change calculations. This is largely empirical, and is aimed at reducing systematic errors in elevation change and distance.

6. Both the routes and the profiles from complete routes are learned, so that subsequent calculations of that identical route are vastly sped up

Awesome work, Adam. It looks like you addressed some, or even most, of the suggestions I had.

I can help you with that Javascript code; send me a PM. That’s what I do (write JS code; and, I can read a little Python). Coincidentally, I have also happened across Djikstra’s algorithm in just the past couple of weeks; what’s the odds of that? I’m taking a Coursera course (From GPS and Google Maps to Spatial Computing) where it came up (I was wanting to learn how you make Sierra Mapper work). At the time, I wondered how you did it (shortest route calculation) in SierraMapper. Now I know.

The only remaining hurdle is to get more trails covered. I used it twice (out of my 8 trips this summer/fall); the other 6 were outside the boundaries of what Sierra Mapper covers (some maybe before you made it available).

That Coursera course also covers “volunteer generated” geospatial data. I think that’s the only way to go: let the community at large do the work. I could envision a wiki-like mechanism where people add routes and continuously refine them. “Simple matter of programming,” as they say.

The other missing feature is addressing the off-trail portions of hikes. My last 5 trips all involved some amount of travel off the official trails. There is no reason those couldn’t be addressed using the same technique that extends the coverage of the on-trail routes.

Bill,

Thanks–as always–for the feedback.

That Coursera course looks interesting–I think I need to muster the free-time to enroll next time it is offered.

My post–and yours–are the first and second time that "Djikstra's algorithm" has been typed on this forum, I am sure! My creation of Sierra Mapper really originated from my curiosity about how to solve the "shortest path" problem. Solving it on trails in the Sierra both satisfied that curiosity, and integrated that solution with a hobby of mine. At that time, I realized that it might fill a niche that I saw in the community…and n hours of programming later (where n is larger that I'm willing to admit) Sierra Mapper was born. You seem to have the same drive that I do to solve these types of problems in our free time.

I'll send you a PM–if you're interested in helping, I'm interested in collaborating. I am an engineer, but am most certainly not a programmer or computer scientist, by either trade or education, and I'm sure you could bring a lot to the table in that regard.

It's been on my list to write a blog post with instructions for how to "crowd source" additional trail segments, but I haven't gotten around to it. It's something I'd certainly be interested in discussing further.

The tool looks great! This update finally reminded me to test it out. It even looks good and works on my iPad.

I do have a feature request: Calculate loops
One would choose one's start point and a mileage goal. The tool would identify routes that start and end at the same place, minimizing the amount of trail that is repeated, while trying to get close to the desired mileage.

I've spent too much time looking at trail maps trying to figure out good loops. This would be so useful.

Thanks!

Gene

I'm recently back from a couple months on the Mississippi river, and catching up on the good stuff on BPL. I'm limited to an iPhone, so reading and typing is tough. And I haven't tried your tool yet.

Regarding crowd sourcing the process of documenting trails, OpenStreetMap has already solved this. It's a wiki-style map of the world, freely licensed, with millions of users. They have a phenomenal database of trails worldwide, including, IIRC, a pretty thorough inventory of the Sierras.

I use the BikeRouteToaster.com to create routes using OpenStreetMap trail data. It does the "find shortest route" method, so you don't have to click all the points along the way.

Since I can't easily explore your new tool on my little iPhone, I'm not trying to compare the tools. I'm just wanting to make sure you're already fully aware of everything the OpenStreetMap project has to offer before you reinvent wheels. I was surprised that nobody mentioned it yet when discussing crowed sourced trail documentation.

In a couple weeks I'll be back home with access to a desktop computer where I can explore your tool and see what you've done that OpenStreetMap (and the tools that rely on its database, such as BikeRouteToaster, OpenCycleMap and OpenHikingMap) don't already do.

I'm looking forward to it! Amy

Amy,

Thanks for the suggestions.

If you (or anyone reading this!) knows how to obtain trail data from OSM in any usable format (shapefiles, .kml, .gpx, etc.) I'd be very interested! That would save me from reinventing some wheels.

Yes, what I sought to do is similar to BRT–but give Sierra Mapper a try, see how you like it! There are certainly differences. And it is simple enough that you should be able to try it from your iPhone.

adam – OSM has a very active helpful community and I'm sure their support forums can help you. Amy

I looked at OSM trail data for much of the northern California coast (SF-Oregon boarder) for work and the quality was all over the map (pun intended). Some of it was spot on, while other trails were no where near their actual location. I know that in the ideal crowd sourced world other people would correct the alignments with better data, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I assume that the Sierra has more people paying attention to it and therefore is more accurate.

The other difficulty I encountered, and this might just relate to who I am employed by, is that the OSM data is agnostic as to whether or not the trail is on public property. This is a pretty touchy subject along the coast and has made it impossible for me to promote any of the OSM trail data. This, despite the fact that it is in my job description to try and get more people out hiking!

Sierra Mapper is really cool, I just wish the agencies would step up and fully steward their trails which in today's age includes providing accurate line data.

Unfortunately, the climber’s trail between Iceberg and Cecile Lakes does not appear on any USGS or other topos I have have seen.

The trail between Iceberg and Cecile? Do you mean a trail between Minaret Lake and Cecile?

The trail between Iceberg and Cecile is shown on the USGS topo and the USFS topo for that area. It’s a little hard to follow based on my experience from this past summer, but it is there. It’s generally class one — if you can find the trail. Right before you get to Cecile Lake, there’s one part that was maybe class 3, but I went that way mainly to avoid a snow tongue.

The route around Cecile and the route between Cecile and Minaret Lakes is definitely XC. I didn’t take the standard route, but the route I took was definitely class 3.

HJ
Adventures in Stoving
Hikin Jim’s Blog

Just a brief update: I released an alpha version of Sierra Mapper…back in February. There’s a link to the alpha from the blog: http://SierraMapper.blogspot.com, and a description of the changes there. To summarize, it adds:

* Off-trail travel
* KML importing (at least, kml files generated at CalTopo)
* On-the-fly route calculation/highlighting
* A route database

To enable generation of labelled profiles from arbitrary (off-trail) data, profile generation has been completely revamped. The complexity of how that is handled is well beyond description here. In the interest of being concise, I’ll just call it “magic”. To the user, it’s completely transparent, other than taking somewhat longer the first time any profile is generated.

There are a few known bugs that I haven’t had the time to fix. Most are related to off-trail travel, editing existing routes, and trying to undo off-trail travel.

As has been par for the course for Sierra Mapper, it lacks the polish that a professional developer might add, but works. Enjoy!