High Sierra Topix

Hello:

I just purchased a new GPS from Garmin, the Oregon 450. Garmin sells their own Topo maps for the USGS series, but I know that in other states (Washington, for example), there are sites that have USGS 7.5" information available as free downloads. You then take the download, unzip it, and use Mapsource, Mapinstall and Mapmanager- to load the map data directly onto an SD memory card in the unit.

Does anyone have information regarding such online resources for CA?

I know where to get the maps, but the format is just a scanned TIFF file. doubt that's compatible with any GPS.

maybe if you dig deep enough, you'll find the right format

http://atlas.ca.gov/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://atlas.ca.gov/casil/imageryBaseMa ... untrimmed/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

^^ AUX and TFW files for each map located in their respective directories.

another good base layer resource:

http://data.geocomm.com/drg/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

These maps -- and any geo-referenced TIFF -- work well with the program I use at home called MacGPS Pro http://www.macgpspro.com/. I understand the people who made it also make a program called "iHike," which runs on the iPhone and allows display of downloaded maps, with current GPS info. I don't think the program lets you put the maps directly on a Garmin that has mapping capability (I use the simplest, lightest possible GPS so it doesn't display maps); I believe Garmin has that sewed up.

There are some Topo Maps you can download for free here. You can search by state, as well.



Here's a USGS raster Topo for the Sierras:



The one caveat is that they are slow to load on my Garmin 60CSX.