anyone else have a gps and maybe nat'l geographic topo?

so, obviously there are alot of people coming to this ride. obviously i'm still a bit of a cranky little ***** about waiting around too long for large or mixed-skill groups, at least on an every day basis. i was thinking it might be helpful to someone if i could provide a few gps tracks to someone who has some gps-navigational skill to maybe make it easier for other folks to 'lead' some rides and hopefully not get too lost. alot of this could be done by email before we get there because i plan on mostly riding and drinking and not screwing around with computers while i'm there.

i also can provide some advice (to be taken with several grains of salt) as to what rides might be appropriate for various ability levels. i tend to overdo it a bit i'm told, so take that into account.

there are many rides that are marked and signed well enough to be suitable for people unfamiliar with the area. these rides would not require an actual knowledgeable 'guide', but perhaps just a group leader/coordinator. examples of such rides are:

slickrock trail, from which folks could also do fins and things, and porcupine rim without having to drive anywhere.

kane creek (we rode this last time, but from the upper end.)

gemini bridges/metal masher

white rim (plated bikes and licensed riders only)

and probably some others i'm not thinking of just yet.



i personally volunteer to personally lead 1 (one) long-ish intermediate level ride and at least one fairly advanced, longer faster ride. even if we all go the same route on a particular day, i think we need to split up into groups of no more than 8. i'd rather give advice and look at maps with 3-4 group leaders than with 50 random motorcyclists.

anyone else have decent knowledge of the area?

-mark

Bobzilla said:

You have ridden with me before and know I am a slug and wont mind mere mortals on a ride with me. I'll leave the super heroes and lovers of pain and destruction to you and Taffy

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didn't we do 240 or so miles in 2 days when i rode with you?

i'll see if i can whip up some gps tracks tonight in some kind of garmin format, and also a .tpo file for those with the capability to upload info from those.

while it's generally easy to figure out where you are around moab, having important intersections marked on the gps can save alot of time and make sure you don't miss the cool stuff in some areas, especially navigating between well-known and well-marked trails.

mw

buzzard said:

Many areas I used to ride are off limits. I hate to be leading a group, heading somewhere, to run into a closure sign or fence.

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i haven't really observed anything like this except for possibly a few little washes or some old cross-country off-trail riding near some of the popular spots. all the normal trails go through just like they always did. usually there's about 7 different ways to get somewhere. where did you have issues? i was there over thanksgiving, mostly riding northside stuff and it looked about the same as it did in the spring, and in the fall and spring before that.

buzzard said:

Going out Kane Creek and returning via Pritchett is great fun, but has about eight miles of highway.

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seems to me it's more like 2-3 miles, and easily doable w/o a plate. i'll have to look at my maps when i get home to get a better idea if there is a better way to move some of that stuff off the pavement. i have never seen any kind of enforcement outside of town (except in the national park).[/quote]

gps info

ok, after looking and experimenting and thinking a little bit, here's what i've decided to do. i'd appreciate any feedback as to whether you gps-owners think this will work for you:

1. first i'm going to clean up the .tpo file that has all my moab/green river/san rafael tracks in it. there's a fair amount of tracks where i just went somewhere that dead-ended and turned around, etc.... so i'm going to delete some of the extraneous stuff that's not really useful to anyone else without extensive notes.

2. then i'm going to name the tracks, and connect the shorter sections (i've been using different colors to signify singletrack, atv-width and jeep trail, but i don't think that translates to garmin format anyway)

3. then i'm going to run the tpo file through gps babel and convert to garmin format (gdb i think, but it's at home and i'm at work so i'm not sure). i tried that last night and garmin was able to open the file and find named tracks easily.

4. then i'm going to email either the .tpo file or the garmin format file to whoever wants it. i'm going to assume that whatever you guys are using, you're smart enough to figure out how to put the info you need from the computer into your gps. some folks like a complete route with a zillion waypoints, some may only need a waypoints at a few key intersections.


how does that sound??