Paul:

Ken and Dave are right.

If you are traveling in the BWCA you will need USGS topographic maps. Sometimes it's more convenient to buy them from a re-seller, they usually cost only a little more. In many cities the blueprint shops sell them at a modest markup. Usually the least expensive place to purchase them is from the agency that created them. In the United States that would be the United States Geological Survey. If you were travelling with a laptop computer there are vendors of digital map data available at a higher cost that can be used with software that can allow you to .

A link to a USGS web page that gives you several ways to look for the maps you want is here...
http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/Webglis/glisbin/finder_main.pl?dataset_name=MAPS_LARGE

Topographic maps are quite useful for any journey, but they might look a little strange to a newcomer. They use various colors, shading, lines, and symbols to convey local information. If you study them and learn to read them, they can be quite useful to the explorer.

They are created from arial photographs and scaled to a larger number of inches per mile than the commercial maps. This boils down to maps that give you more detail.

Topographic maps have their name because their prime purpose is to provide a visual image of the three dimensional lay of the land; the topography. They use equally spaced lines of elevation to outline the shapes of the hills and valleys. Once you are familiar with them you know where the hills, cliffs, valleys, swamps, etc. are; and much more.

Sometimes I purchase arial photographs of the area. These usually show you features not on any maps. There is a place on the web where you can view digital reproductions of arial photos of many areas. Check out www.terraserver.com, but remember that the hardcopy arial photos you can buy have quite a bit more detail than available for free on the web. Arial photographs are useful for picking campsites, trails, good fishing spots like mid lake reefs, what have you.

A direct link to the terraserver view of Angleworm Lake is here: http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.asp?S=15&T=1&X=91&Y=832&Z=15&W=1

If you click on a point of the image it will zoom in closer. You can keep zooming in on an area until the resolution equals 1 meter per pixel. You can also use the controls on the page to pan, zoom in, zoom out, and view a roadmap of an area.

This may be more than you wanted to know about maps, but here it is. If you get into exploration, the next thing to learn is how to use a compass.

...Enjoy your trip. I will mine.

...Tom

Posted by Tom on October 02, 1999 at 03:50