So I use a Garmin Etrex 20, with Canada topo maps installed, or my phone for most of my navigation in the backcountry. I like to have a paper map on hand should the electronics fail. For the most part my camping has been in established parks where having an Unlostify Map or park map is sufficient for backup situations.

I'm planning on going a bit further afield this year (into Temagami), with the FoT map sold out, how do people print their Canada Topo maps to ensure that you can still use them with a compass should you need to?

I see Toporama has a print function, and seems to keep the gridlines if I want - will that be sufficient?

What do you all do?

I print topo sections from Caltopo.com, for Canada at least they have a seamless scan of the original NRC topo's.

The print function (to pdf) for free accounts is only 5 pages but it's easy enough to do multiple sets. Here is the Help Page for printing:

https://training.caltopo.com/all_users/print

The nice thing about Caltopo is that it easy to set the scale to whatever you want, I generally start with 1:50 but if you find the area you need doesn't quite fit the printed page you can just change the scale (up or down) slightly. Sometimes I'll print a specific section at 25:1 if I really need to easily see details. You will get the original grid lines of course and you can toggle lat/long indicators at the edges if you want them.

If you have waypoints or tracks you have created on your gps or created in Mapsource/Basecamp you can import them into Caltopo via a .gpx file.

Last night I finished up creating printed maps (21 x 8.5x11 sheets) for an upcoming trip, includes tracks of my route, distance markers every 5km, rapids, portages and some possible camp locations.

There are no doubt a dozen alternate way to print, when the topo maps first because available online I would just download the full maps and crop sections. Same result but a lot more work.

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"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915

And Caltopo's would work with a compass if necessary?

I should probably bone up on my orienteering skills.

Before I go on a SAR incident callout, if I don't already have the needed map in my rather extensive collection of USGS topo maps, I might print the necessary topo location maps from Caltopo.com. They are perfect copies and scale of USGS maps, and perfectly aligned to use with a compass.

For canoe races in unfamiliar territory, a better choice for me, particularly for the Yukon River races, where the available topo maps are hopelessly and incredibly out of date and inaccurate. As this river that may change course significantly almost annually, islands and gravel shoals and shortcuts come and go regularly, I print my route on available fairly recent Google Earth maps. I make regular computer paper relatively waterproof. In the past I used Thompson's Water Seal to coat the paper which also makes the paper relatively tear resistant as well as waterproof. TWS comes in two forms. Be sure to use the thin liquid form, not the thicker paste form which will darken white paper.

Since then I have found that cheap spray waterproof cans from Walmart work almost as well. After coating on both sides and allowing to dry, I put each page in plastic protective sleeves that can be stored in a 3-ring binder. I printed and carried 738 pages for the Yukon 1000 mile race and they have survived multiple races at my feet in the bottom of a wet canoe.

Caltopo maps that I mark up with researched info using the Paint tool, usually at a scale of around 1:40,000. Caltopo lists the KM marker at the bottom of each page. I colour print them and run them through a plastic laminator twice and then inside a map case. I have gotten them soaked and never had any issues.

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“A day without canoeing probably wouldn’t kill me, but why risk it?”

Awesome -- thanks everyone - this is very helpful.

I have also printed out small sections of sat pix for exploring narrow passageways etc. I have, on occasion, discovered easier alternatives to ports for staring at sat pix in the winter

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Old canoeists never die---they just smell that way.

I download the Canadian topos and take screenshots of the map sections that I need. Save as a pdf. I count the grid lines to get the length and width I want to match the paper size and keep the scale fairly consistent. Easy to print but also easy to save onto my iPhone as a backup.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

Rather than save to you Iphone you could use 1 of the free topo apps and download the relevant maps to you phone before your trip.

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Old canoeists never die---they just smell that way.

Wotrock, I do also use the Canada Topo app, like you said, I download the required maps before going. I guess the pdfs are my back up backup, in case the Topo app fails. The other pdf advantage is that you can pre annotate the pdf maps.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

I just wanted to say thanks for this thread.

I had never heard of caltopo maps before.

I was able to print off a number of maps this season for hikes and paddles, and it worked great.

My printer is just a cheap HP inkjet, but I marked the maps up myself with coloured markers, and then sprayed both sides with a silicone tent waterproofing spray from crappy tire, and that worked perfectly!

Really happy you all posted about this, thanks!

I often do the same as most people above, print off the topos, then laminate them. As mentioned above topo maps are available from many places.

In addition I usually take the topos and convert to images that I can then mark up with portages, campsites etc. Great winter project!

In addition I now also use motion-x gps on my phone. There is a method with it that allows downloading and storing the sateillite/aerial images from bing or google. It is super handy when we are carving our own portage through the woods as you can see your actual location on the aerial photo. This allows us to pick the path of least resistance: ie thinner forest, rock, lichen paths etc. All of this works without cell service if you downloaded the right part ahead of time.

Cheers

I use Natural Resources Canada's "Toporama". Haven't compared it to others so don't know the pros and cons of alternatives. But with using Toporama I've had no problems to solve, so haven't had the need to look further.

I like using Toporama online to zoom around topos and measures distances.

For printing, I zoom on whatever I need/want, take "snip" to create a file, then print that. The only trick is scale - you need to measure some recognizable landmarks on-screen to know a distance (i.e., use the measure tool to find a point A and B that are exactly 1 km apart) and then use that known distance to establish the scale for your print out.

I think this might've been before I using Toporama, but I have caused myself trouble by printing a green-shaded map in black & white. Whatever you're using, I recommend a high quality colour print!

https://atlas.gc.ca/toporama/en/index.html

P.

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Learning to paddle is like learning a language:
It's easy to learn the basics, but will you be understood in a strong wind?