Sierra peaks, routes and passes on a webmap
There are so many great new web maps. If you already have baseline knowledge of the Sierra, they’re better than any guidebook or blog. I’m not linking to alltrails, everytrail and similar websites because I find stewarded data sets are usually better than crowdsourced.
- High Sierra Topix map (landing page here) – the contributors to this know their stuff
- Sierra Passes – uses this data set
- Bob Burd’s webmap – tricky to navigate but uses Bob’s stellar 1st hand data set of peak bagging info.
- Sierra Nevada Geotourism Map – general Sierra tourism, not backcountry information. ho-hum.
Click and zoom. There goes the afternoon. Did you click on the picture? It’s just a picture.
I'm Jack Haskel 
Thanks you for the links. Fantasitc!
Thanks for these links. I’ve been hoping that someone would come up with a platform to share this information — I guess people already have. Now, they just need to expand their data sets to places other than the Sierra…
I agree with ya Andrew. My mind keeps coming back to the idea that we should really have open, accessible and nearly complete backcountry data for the lower 48 at this point. We’re still pretty far off, huh? Even these sources are just a beginning.
I’ve spent a lot of time chewing on this. It’s quite the project.
I’ve been slowly creating my own database in TOPO, but this is not an open platform. Of course, what is, since Google Maps has been threatening heavy fees for using it commercially, and Bing probably isn’t far behind? If someone wanted to pursue this project, there are plenty of models out there, e.g. SummitPost, AllTrails, and how High Sierra Topix.
I like to think of the data as independent from the basemaps. I’ve put a lot of thought into how one would pursue the project but I probably shouldn’t be public about it. If you’d like to discuss it, let’s do it over email or phone.
The new US Topo (http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/) is somewhat of a game changer. USGS tells me that they’re still a few years out from having trails information for most of the West. You’d be interested to hear that Colorado should get it first. But even without trail information, it’s live and ready for our custom trails data sets. It might be an alternative to TOPO!
EDIT: If someone else is reading this. I suspect that Andrew and I could be hired as consultants…