Telephone Poles on the Moon

While out on a pass through Calaveras park this weekend I ran across some hikers who had no GPS and were relying on their innate sense of direction to get out.  The problem as I saw it was that they had been hiking for over 5 hours with inadequate water and they were at least 3 miles from where they parked.  It was now 1:30pm, in August.  Not good.

I pulled out a handy trail map picture I had built myself and showed them the path lines they wanted, including a few nice rabbit trails that cut big yardage off the hike back.  They had never seen anything like that for Calaveras, though I naturally thought everyone had one of those in their back pocket.

Since you don’t have one, I’ve decided to create it for you from the available imagery.  My first pass is of the greater Calaveras area, something with which you can get a high resolution view of the general area.  As you may know, Calaveras is BIG for a small piece of land, so it naturally encompasses a few areas that are only peripherally “Calaveras”.  This is what the first image is trying to do: show you the big picture.  For the record, Calaveras is primarily on the right half of the image and yes I am aware I could just get pretty color shots from Google Earth.  The color photos don’t bring out the trail map in as much contrast, though, which is really the point.

Over time I will create some crops of the original the show a single 8.5″*11″ Calaveras only trail map, a little more detail with a double-sided version, and some more explanation of just what’s on the left side of the big image already here.  Print, laminate, go hike.  Sweet.

You can track it down on my Resources Tab (at the top) or you can click this link directly for the big file:

Greater Calaveras Overhead Hi-Res

Happy Caching, Hiking or whatever it is you do on the trail!