Author

Kate Dougherty

Import Tracks from Dropbox

by Kate Dougherty November 4, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

While there are several methods to import GPX/KML into Gaia GPS, many users find it convenient to bring in files via Dropbox.

Check out these freshly updated help articles for iOS and Android to import using Dropbox. For iOS, we added this video to the Help documentation to step you through the Dropbox import steps.

Note that you’ll need to install the Dropbox app on your device to complete the steps.

Where to Find Files to Import

In addition to the public routes at gaiagps.com, you can find external GPS tracks at SkidMap, Offroading Home, backcountrydiscoveryroutes.com, Modern Hiker and other sites.

As always, you can post your thoughts to the Gaia GPS Community Forum, or email support@gaiagps.com if you have any questions or feedback.

November 4, 2016

A hybrid route from Curecanti Creek to Blue Mesa Reservoir, Gunnison County, CO.

App Updates Gaia GPS How-To New Features

Create a Route Anywhere with Hybrid Routing

by Kate Dougherty November 3, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

A hybrid route from Curecanti Creek to Blue Mesa Reservoir, Gunnison County, CO.

You can now plan a “hybrid” trip that mixes snap-to-trail and straight-line segments on gaiagps.com. While you could create each of these route types separately before, you couldn’t combine them.

With this improvement, if trails don’t exist for a section of your route, the planner generates a straight-line path instead. After completing the route, you’ll see an elevation profile and stats for the trip, just as you would for any other route.

Check out this video to see hybrid routing in action.

The combination of snap-to-trail and straight-line routing makes it easier to plan routes on any terrain.

Let us know what you think by posting your thoughts to the Gaia GPS Community Forum. As always, email us at support@gaiagps.com if you have any questions.

November 3, 2016

Featured Gaia GPS How-To New Features

Post Your Tracks on OpenStreetMap from gaiagps.com

by Kate Dougherty October 18, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

We’ve made it easier than ever to use your Gaia GPS tracks to update OpenStreetMap (OSM). Sending missing trails to OSM previously involved multiple steps. Now, you can push a track from gaiagps.com to OpenStreetMap.org by clicking on a menu option that appears on the details page for tracks and routes.

Go to gaiagps.com, click on your username, and select a track.
Under the Data menu, click the Upload to OpenStreetMap link.The browser will open a new window and direct you to the OSM login page (signing up is easy and free!). Note that you’ll need to allow pop-ups.
Grant OSM access to your Gaia GPS tracks.

Once you’ve pushed the track to OSM, it will appear in the Public GPS traces list. You or another OSM contributor can then use the data to edit new trails, roads and places into the map.

Lost Lake Trail now appears in OSM’s list of pending tracks. Contributors use this list to add data to the map. You can also click the edit link to trace over the track and add it yourself.

Finally, those edits will percolate to many maps that use OpenStreetMap data, such as our very own Gaia Topo. Your edits will improve both the detail of maps, and the data routing engines use to generate trail and driving directions.

If you’ve recently hiked a trail missing from the map, we encourage you to try it out. We’d love to know what you think. Post your thoughts to the Gaia GPS Community Forum, or email support@gaiagps.com if you have any questions.

October 18, 2016

App Updates Company News Gaia GPS How-To

Web Updates – Better Routing, Enhanced Details Page

by Kate Dougherty October 14, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

September brought a number of improvements to gaiagps.com. You can see the full release notes for September on the updates website, and you can also pop over to updates.gaiagps.com anytime to view updates for Gaia GPS on iOS, Android, and the web overall.

Routemaker Improvements

Last month, we redesigned the route-making controls on gaiagps.com to improve the spacing of elements, added a “driving” mode for routing, and added icons for distance and elevation. The route-maker also now remembers the original mode of transportation (hiking, biking, driving, or straight line) when editing your routes later.

You’ll also see a new warning when trying to make snap-to-trail routes with non-OpenStreetMap (OSM) sources. While snap-to-trail may work with non-OSM sources, you’ll have the best experience with OSM-based layers, because the routemaker is based on OpenStreetMap data.

Details Page – Show on Map

On the details page, you can use the new Show on Main Map button to add your tracks, maps, routes, and waypoints to the main map.

Track pages also show which platform and device you recorded them on.

New Thumbnails on List Pages and Elsewhere

We’ve also added thumbnails to make working with gaiagps.com more intuitive:

Lists of your tracks, routes, and folders show thumbnails in the table
A unique thumbnail now appears for each item in the Overlays menu on gaiagps.com/map
The Create Layer menu displays unique icons for waypoints and routes on gaiagps.com/map too

More Updates

Finally, we’ve made some changes to help you manage and protect your data. Before you delete anything, a new warning message displays to let you know that it will disappear from the app too.

You can also update your credit card information online, for users that subscribed to GaiaPro via the website.

Comments/Questions?

We’ve been working hard to add features, functionality, and design enhancements to gaiagps.com.

Let us know what you think by posting to the Gaia GPS Community Forum, the Gaia GPS sub-Reddit, or email support@gaiagps.com with questions.

October 14, 2016

Contours-Meters overlaid on the Mapbox Aerial layer.

Gaia GPS New Maps

Contour Line Overlays in GaiaPro

by Kate Dougherty October 5, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

Contours-Meters overlaid on the Mapbox Aerial layer.

GaiaPro users can overlay base maps with worldwide contour lines in either feet or meters for additional context. You can layer the contours with any source, but will probably find them most useful when paired with satellite imagery.

Add the contour layers to the map by opening the More Layers menu, then the GaiaPro Overlays category. Read these Help Center articles for info about how to use layered maps on iOS and Android.

We also suggest you set the opacity of the contour layer to slightly less than 100% for best performance.

Optimized Contour Intervals

We styled the contours to work well across zoom levels. They first show up at zoom level 10, and render differently as you zoom in.

Contours-Feet

z10-11: 400 feet, no labels
z12-13: 200 feet, labels for every other contour
z14+: 40 feet, labels for every fifth contour

Contours-Meters

z10-11: 100 meters, no labels
z12-13: 50 meters, labels for every other contour
z14+: 10 meters, labels for every fifth contour

Use the Same Great Data in New Ways

We originally created the contours for the Gaia Topo project, then extracted them from that source to create two new, separate overlays with transparent backgrounds.

Both the feet and meters overlays use the same source data—digital elevation models (DEMs) including Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topo data, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Mission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER)’s Global Digital Elevation Model, and the U.S. National Elevation Dataset (NED).

Help Improve the Layers

We plan to continue improving the contours over time. You can help by reporting errors like missing or incorrect data at https://tileslicing.gaiagps.com/preview/contours-meters/ or https://tileslicing.gaiagps.com/preview/contours-feet/.

As always, feel free to email support@gaiagps.com if you have any questions or feedback.

October 5, 2016

Gaia GPS Hunting New Maps

Updated Public Lands in Gaia GPS

by Kate Dougherty September 26, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

In addition to the new collection of hunting data we recently added, GaiaPro users can now access an improved public lands layer. Updated for 2016, the overlay gives you the most current and comprehensive data on government-managed areas. Hunters and anyone exploring areas of mixed land ownership may want to consider using this layer, which emphasizes:

National and state forests
Parks and monuments
Wildlife refuges
Conservation lands and game preserves
Bureau of Land Management areas

To add public lands to the map, open the More Layers menu and look for them under the GaiaPro Overlays category. Read these Help Center articles for info about how to use layered maps on iOS and Android.

A User-Friendly Design

Color-coded federal lands let you easily identify which agency manages an area. We represent data at the state, county, and local levels with a single color for each, so the map doesn’t become overwhelming. Note that we’ve updated the symbology associated with the various categories. Labels will appear at zoom level 14.

The updated public lands layer at zoom level 14. The image shows labels for Bureau of Land Management and State of New Mexico lands, as well as Gila National Forest.

The new public lands layer, superimposed over Gaia Topo. Labels appear at zoom level 14.

The Best Public Lands Data in Gaia GPS

The updated layer draws on the most comprehensive and precise datasets available to offer a high level of detail. It displays the privately-held inholdings in federal and state parks that may not appear elsewhere, and shows smaller public lands missing from many popular maps. Bear in mind that not all of the areas in the layer will be open to the public, and watch for any restricted zones within otherwise accessible lands.

Open Source Data in the OpenBounds Project

Just like the hunt boundary overlays, we based the public lands layer on data gathered for OpenBounds, an open source project we founded to aggregate boundary data and share it from a single location. Gaia GPS sources the most current and detailed public lands data available directly from government agencies, then manages data submission and review for the project through the OpenBounds project on GitHub. Anyone can contribute to the project, check out the code, or even copy the repository by visiting the project site.

You can also post your thoughts about the new layer or the OpenBounds project to the Gaia GPS Community Forum, or email support@gaiagps.com with questions.

September 26, 2016

Colorado bighorn sheep hunt districts, superimposed over US Topo.

Gaia GPS Hunting New Maps

Updated: Hunting Map Boundaries in Gaia GPS

by Kate Dougherty September 21, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

Colorado bighorn sheep hunt districts, layered over US Topo.

Gaia GPS Premium Membership users now have access to detailed hunting map boundaries for hunt districts in many states, just in time for the fall hunting season—a huge improvement on the previous collection in Gaia GPS.

These new maps use the fruits of OpenBounds, an open data project we created as the basis for these maps. This article describes the OpenBounds project, how the project aggregates data, and how you can contribute to this ongoing effort.

To add hunt districts to the map, open the More Layers menu and look for them under the US Hunting Boundaries category. Read these Help Center articles for info about how to use layered maps on iOS and Android.

Data and Coverage Overview

The OpenBounds initiative aims to collect data for U.S. hunt district boundaries and public lands in a single repository, and share it with the world. We’ve used the hunting boundaries as the basis of the new hunting layers, which show district name or number. Gaia GPS Premium Membership currently includes hunt district boundaries for the states in red on the map below.

Hunt district boundary coverage map of the US.

Map of Gaia GPS’s current hunt district boundary coverage.

Please note that Premium Membership currently offers partial species coverage for the following states.

North Dakota (fall turkey only)
Tennessee (huntable Tennessee Valley Authority lands only)
Washington (all available species except deer)

We will continue to integrate data for additional species and states in the coming weeks.

How the OpenBounds Project Works

Gaia GPS sources the most current and detailed hunting data available directly from state wildlife agencies—then manages data submission and review for the project through the crowdsourced, collaborative, open source OpenBounds project on GitHub. Anyone can browse the OpenBounds data sources and processing scripts by visiting the project site.

How You Can Use the Data and Code

If you’re a developer, we invite you to explore the code. You may even want to copy the repository to make your own map or app. Mappers can also check out OpenAddresses, an open repository of high-quality, consistently-referenced address data that businesses, organizations, and individuals can use to match more than 100 million addresses to geographic coordinates. The amazing work of the OpenAddresses project inspired the OpenBounds project.

The data in OpenBounds is important to conservationists, wildlife professionals, outdoor adventurers, and many other people. We hope that, by collecting it one place, the OpenBounds project will make it easier for them to work and play. And like many other open source efforts, we hope the data can support other great tech projects.

Continued Work – You Can Help

The hunt unit boundaries will get updated on an ongoing basis. If you’d like to contribute, consider reviewing GitHub issues to see how you can help with data collection, or even work on the code.

You can also post your thoughts about the project to the Gaia GPS Community Forum, or email support@gaiagps.com with questions.

September 21, 2016

Gaia GPS New Maps

Gaia Topo – The Map for Backpackers

by Kate Dougherty September 9, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

We’ve made Gaia Topo a default map source in Gaia GPS. It’s been out there for a while now, but today Gaia Topo is really an amazing map source. We wanted to take a moment now to tell you about the work behind this map, and summarize the big improvements we’ve been publishing through the turn of the seasons.

While Gaia GPS continues to offer a vast catalog of topo and other maps, we encourage you to check out Gaia Topo for your next backpacking trip. In many ways, Gaia Topo is the best global topo map, offering a functional and beautiful worldwide map with extraordinary detail at all scales, and built by a team of backpackers who relentlessly test and improve the map in a huge and ongoing effort.

Click here to view Gaia Topo live on gaiagps.com

Our Unique Take on a Global Topo

You’ll find many stylistic differences between Gaia Topo and other maps, but there are at least two areas that make Gaia Topo a unique and wonderful map source for backpacking.

Feet or Meters, Your Choice, Worldwide – One thing we want to highlight about GaiaTopo is that it’s the only global topo map that will show you measurements in either feet or meters. Every other global hiking map – from OpenHikingMap to Mapbox Outdoors – limits you to seeing contour lines, peak measurements, and other numbers in meters only. American users will appreciate being able to work with imperial units.
USGS Style – In designing Gaia Topo at its 1:24K scale, we hew closely to the familiar USGS style and maximize functionality for a high-contrast, detail-packed map that you can easily read in outside lighting conditions, without being overwhelmed. With USGS maps showing their age, lacking a full road network, and covering the US only, Gaia Topo often shines as the better map. And compared to other outdoor topos like MapBox Outdoors or OpenHikingMap, Gaia Topo has an unflinching focus on actually being outside, on the trail – without allowance for glamor or website-oriented design that might hinder functionality.

Yosemite Village in Gaia Topo - Before and After

Before and after of Yosemite Village in Gaia Topo.

A Community Effort

It turns out that the Gaia GPS team, users, and the global OpenStreetMap community all contributed to this collaborative project. Gaia Topo pulls together several data sources, and OpenStreetMap.org forms its core.

OpenStreetMap is a global movement that many Gaia GPS users and team members already participate in, and you can too. Over a million people worldwide have contributed their edits to OpenStreetMap, including trails, campsites, and other data of keen interest to hikers and other outdoor adventurers.

People can contribute by recording GPS data and notes with programs like Gaia GPS, or even by tracing features in satellite imagery to add them to the map. So if you ever find trails that aren’t marked in your area, you can really go a good deed for the world by recording your travels, and adding data to the open map on OpenStreetMap.org.

On the Gaia GPS team, lead developer Jesse Crocker built the first Gaia Topo that we released last summer, and did a significant amount of work over the last six months to improve the map and roll it out across iOS, Android, and gaiagps.com. Intern Aashima Talwar and Map Specialist Kate Dougherty also spent several months refining the design. Gaia GPS developer Alex Thissen has also spent a great deal of time working on the contour line rendering for the map, as well as debugging various issues.

Jesse Crocker, Lead Developer

Aashima Talwar, Intern

Alex Thissen, Developer

Kate Dougherty, GIS Cartographer

Another Year of Work Unleashed

We decided to blog about Gaia Topo now because we’ve greatly expanded work on the map and improved it in numerous ways since we initially released it about 15 months ago.

The latest release applies unique styles to different categories of trails and paths, and shows the bridges over them. It also renders many new amenities, including:

campsites
restrooms
drinking water fountains
parking lots
viewpoints
lighthouses
information centers

Before and after of Curry Village, Yosemite National Park in Gaia Topo.

The map replaces generic points with intuitive icons wherever possible, and outlines national and state parks, nature reserves, and protected areas in dark green to make them easier to spot and identify. Land cover data on wetlands, meadows, scree, glaciers, beaches, bare rock, and landfills also appears at higher zoom levels.

Before and after of Mt. Rainier National Park in Gaia Topo.

Gaia Topo also includes:

slipways and airstrips
intermittent streams
dams
reservoirs
labels for islands and islets
military installations (red hatches)

You may also notice that rivers, streams, and creeks appear wider at higher zoom levels.

Before and after of the Warrenton, Oregon area in Gaia Topo.

Vector Versions Too

In addition to Gaia Topo, iOS users also have access to Gaia Topo (Vector), which makes downloads smaller and rendering crisper. You can find this additional layer in the app in the More Layers Menu.

Because of the challenges associated with vectors on mobile devices, this map isn’t as beautifully rendered as the “raster” version, but it has its advantages, and it will improve over time too.

Ideas for Map Enhancements?

Do you have ideas about how to improve the map? You can post your thoughts on the new design and enhancements you’d like to see in the Gaia GPS Community Forum. If you have any other questions or feedback, you can also email support@gaiagps.com.

September 9, 2016

New Maps

Mapbox Outdoors in HD

by Kate Dougherty May 27, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

GaiaPro subscribers can now access Mapbox Outdoors.

First released in April 2014, and revamped this May, Mapbox Outdoors combines OpenStreetMap (OSM) data with land cover, contour lines, and 3D terrain. Besides OSM, Mapbox Outdoors integrates 24 different data sources from 13 organizations – the resulting map focuses on the backcountry, but has complete data for even urban areas.

Add Mapbox Outdoors to Gaia GPS

You can find Mapbox Outdoors in Gaia GPS under the GaiaPro Base Maps category. Check out these instructions:

Yosemite National Park, California.

Schladming Ski Resort, Austria.

Joining the GaiaPro Map Lineup

Most maps in Gaia GPS don’t require a GaiaPro subscription, but Mapbox Outdoors joins the GaiaPro lineup because they cost a recurring, metered fee to use. And Gaia GPS tends to spike these metered fees, because the app allows bulk downloads.

Today, the following premium basemaps require GaiaPro:

Mapbox Outdoors (added May 2016)
Mapbox Streets (added May 2016)
IGN France (added May 2016)
Mapbox Streets & Satellite/Aerial (the original two GaiaPro sources)

Later this summer, Swisstopo and Ordnance Survey will also likely come to GaiaPro (licensing in progress), and the base app has also benefitted from a recent flurry of less expensive map acquisitions, such as Luxembourg, HD topo maps, and HD roads maps.

Ideas for Map Sources?

Do you have any ideas for maps to add to Gaia GPS? You can post your thoughts about additional map sources to the Gaia GPS Community Forum. If you have any other questions or feedback, you can also email support@gaiagps.com.

May 27, 2016

Gaia GPS New Maps

New Road Layers in Gaia GPS, Including HD

by Kate Dougherty May 19, 2016

written by Kate Dougherty

All Gaia GPS users can now access Thunderforest’s Transport and Mobile Atlas maps in HD. The transport map shows detailed information on public transport locations around the globe, while Mobile Atlas is a high-contrast roads layer designed for mobile use under difficult lighting conditions. GaiaPro users also have access to Mapbox Streets in HD.

More Maps, Better Resolution

The new maps increase feature clarity and text size on higher-resolution displays, so you can find your way around more easily. The transport and street styles join our recently-added OpenHikingMap, OpenCycleMap, and OpenLandscapeMap HD layers.

How to Add HD Maps

To add Transport and Mobile Atlas, open the “More Layers” menu and look for them under the “OpenStreetMap” heading. GaiaPro users can find Mapbox Streets under “GaiaPro Base Maps.”

Transport Map in HD

Mobile Atlas Map in HD

Mapbox Streets in HD

May 19, 2016

Load More Posts