[pct-l] free SoCal PCT topo maps for the asking ....

[david at emeraldlake.com (David Plotnikoff)]

Season's greetings from a long-time list-lurker and section hiker.

As I follow the conversation on PCT-l, read 40+ journals and compile my
outline for my walk from Campo to Whitney in 05, I am acutely aware that I
have not given as much to the PCT community as it has given to me. A
contribution to the PCTA is an absolute minimum of trail citizenship, IMHO,
but there's much more an individual can do.

For now, my http://www.emeraldlake.com/PCTguide pages feature food and
lodging information for trail towns from Lone Pine through Central Oregon.
I'll continue to build out the site over the next two seasons. For now, as
a weak antidote to cabin fever, I've produced -- with NGS Topo! and Tom
Reynolds' great trail trace file -- a series of 90 topo maps covering my
upcoming section from Campo to Mt. Whitney. These 8.5 x 11 four-color maps
are between 1 and 1.3 megabytes per piece, in the JPEG compression format.
I spent a lot of time making them and it dawned on me that others may find
them useful. Not to brag, but ... compared to the laughable quality of
what's in the guidebook, these are the bomb.

Yesterday I spoke with the ISP that hosts emeraldlake.com and learned,
sadly, that the additional disc space and monthly bandwidth allottment
necessary to post all these maps would mean a prohibitively steep increase
in my monthly Web bill.

So: I may live to regret this, but I'm offering the maps to any class of
2005 hiker on CD gratis. To use these maps you will need a computer with a
CD ROM drive and a printer that can print four-color high-resolution
(relatively) images. The maps work best on either NGS plastic map paper or
high-quality laser paper, not plain paper. You will use much ink. Another
good reason to print them at work.

If you are unsure if these are right for you, before requesting the entire
CD please e-mail me and I will send you a single sample map as a JPEG
e-mail attachment to test print.

Respectfully,

DP