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The Colorado Trail® Map Reference Series
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The Colorado Trail® -A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail® -Trail Re-Route & Update Information
"The Colorado Trail" is a registered trademark of The Colorado Trail Foundation. "Bear Creek Survey Service, Inc." holds a copyright on trail data included within the reference set, and the trail location images included on this page.
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Reference Set Cost: $40 Availability: "The Colorado Trail Foundation" and selected iGage Mapping Partners. Mentioned Links: The Colorado Trail® Foundation: +1 (303) 384-3729 x113 www.coloradotrail.org iGage Mapping Corporation: (Digital Mapping Products) +1 888 450-4922 www.igage.com Bear Creek Survey Service, Inc.: (Trail Mapping) +1 970 259-5458 www.bearcreeksurvey.com Trimble Navigation Limited: (GPS Equipment) http://www.trimble.com/ The "Colorado Trail GIS Reference Map Series" is a digital mapping resource for planning and traveling on "The Colorado Trail". The product contains:
Featuring incredibly high resolution images, the series allows map printing, image export, GPS interface and includes over 100 beautiful predefined atlas pages, ready for printing. The Reference Series User's Guide included a complete list of GPS waypoints and segment information. The Colorado Trail® Map Reference set is compatible with: Win® 95 / 98 / 2000 / ME / NT / XP / XP Pro. Check out these links for detailed "Colorado Trail Reference Series" product information: [ A Brief History of The
Colorado Trail® ] [ Project Notes ] "The Colorado Trail" and the annotated reference map series are the culmination of heroic efforts by many organizations and individuals:
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| A Brief History of The
Colorado Trail®
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A Brief History of The Colorado Trail®The Colorado Trail is a back country route connecting Denver to Durango, Colorado via 487 miles of trails. It slices across Colorado from north to southwest, crossing eight mountain ranges, seven national forests and six wilderness areas. The daunting logistics of maintaining the trail is performed entirely by volunteers and primarily financed by donations. Hundreds of workers spend thousands of hours each summer working on the trail. Their efforts have clearly resulted in the best hiking trail in Colorado. The Colorado Trail began as a joint project between the US Forest Service and the Colorado Mountain Trails Foundation, a nonprofit volunteer organization. Gudy Gaskill was named the ‘Executive Trail Director’ for the CMTF. Originally funded with a $100,000 grant from the Gates Foundation in 1973, the original plan called for supplementing the numerous existing trails with newly constructed connections. The trail was projected to be completed in 1976. Progress on the trail was much slower than the original projections, and the CMTF became fragmented and ineffective. Gudy Gaskill persisted and continued her efforts through the Colorado Mountain Club. A 1984 Denver Post article described the failure of the CMTF, expressed doubts of any possible success and pessimistically labeled the project the ‘Trail to Nowhere’. This article inspired Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, a hiker and environmentalist, to commit the Governor’s Office support to the project. The trail project was invigorated and renewed. A new organization, the ‘Colorado Trail Foundation’, chaired by Gudy Gaskill evolved. Volunteers worked industriously for the next several years. In 1986 alone, over 400 volunteers participated. The Colorado Trail was officially opened on September 4, 1987. Since that time, the route has been steadily adjusted and improved by hundreds of volunteers each summer. The Colorado Trail Foundation has evolved into a strong organization. In addition to maintaining and improving the trail, the Foundation provides nature study classes at its hut on Cinnamon Pass near section 22 of the trail. Gudy Gaskill, who has stepped down from her position as president of the CTF, directs these studies. |
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| The
Colorado Trail® GIS Project Notes
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail® |
The Colorado Trail® GIS Project Notes (By Jerry Brown)
I am the owner of a small geodetic mapping and consulting company (Bear Creek Survey Service, Inc.) based out of Durango Colorado. My company provides software, management, and training for exploration projects around the world. We routinely use high quality GPS equipment in the course of our business. I first became interested in The Colorado Trail in 1989 after reading a news article about its completion. As an avid mountain biker and outdoorsman, I was intrigued by the concept of cycling such a long route. I planned a ride on the trail, and completed an eighteen-day, self-contained solo ride in 1990. The ride was a life milestone, my own Colorado style version of swimming the English Channel. I subsequently began making annual contributions to The Colorado Trail Foundation. Each spring, I timed my contribution with the first day I was able to bicycle all the way from my Durango home to the popular CT destination "Gudy’s Rest" without putting a foot down. When this annual milestone was accomplished, I would send off my donation to the trail foundation. The CTF kept me on their mailing list, and I received their "Tread Lines" newsletter, which detailed each year’s planned work and activities. R.E.I. provided the original funding for mapping the CT in the late 1980’s. The trail was outlined by using topographic maps, forest service maps, and other cartographic sources. The trail began as a collection of existing trails, many of which were shown on the existing maps. New sections built by volunteer crews connected these trails. In some places these original maps are remarkably accurate, in others they are way off. The original trail line was placed on the map by the forest service. Revisions were made in subsequent years, but the maps became quickly outdated after each revision due to the incessant efforts of the CTF to make improvements and changes along the way. In the winter of 1998 the CTF newsletter contained a call for suggestions on how the trail might be mapped utilizing GPS technology. I offered to help in this effort, and in the summer of 1999 we strapped a Trimble GPS receiver to a mountain bike and began riding west from the Waterton trailhead near Denver. Richard Nolde, a current CTF board member who started the CT GIS project; and Merle McDonald, the current president of the CTF, manned the support effort carrying batteries and supplies.
Working between access points along the trail, we were met each evening by a CTF support crew to recharge batteries, download data, camp, and repeat the process the following day. The first summer we mapped all the sections open to mountain bikes up to a point near Saguache. We returned to finish the trail in 2000, first starting with the sections open to cycling, then backpacking the wilderness areas. We finished the project in late September in the Collegiate Peaks and Holy Cross Wilderness areas with snow on the ground and night time temperatures in the single digits. A total of 43 days were spent on the trail gathering data, and a roughly equal amount of time was spent mapping the information. A Trimble Pathfinder Pro XRS professional grade GPS was used to collect data. With enough batteries to collect data for a day, it weighs about 27 pounds and fills a large backpack. Capable of collecting only about 15 hours of sub-meter observations spaced a second apart, data must be routinely downloaded to a laptop. By contrast, the small consumer GPS receivers are only capable of establishing positions within 50 – 100 feet under typical trail conditions. Trail position data was collected in either 1 or 5 second intervals as we followed the trail. The point spacing depended upon specific access, terrain and collector memory constraints. Over 466,000 positions were collected—about one point every six feet over the 487 mile trail. Whenever a notable feature was encountered (like trail intersections, streams and gates) the receiver was allowed to obtain a higher accuracy static position fix. These features are listed as waypoint annotations in this product for trail users using GPS navigation aids. The immense data set was culled down to a final database of just over 85,000 positions, or an average spacing of 30 feet. These points were then connected to draw The Colorado Trail on the digital map sets. All of the GPS data was differentially processed. This is done by a precise comparison of the field GPS data with data from another professional grade GPS receiver running at a fixed, known location. Simply put, the positional errors observed at the base station are turned into corrections, which are applied to the field unit, thereby removing ionospheric and atmospheric errors. Differential Processing also removes the effects of government Selective Availability (SA) which was active during parts of the project. Selective Availability was a deliberately introduced error, which made the data available to the military better than that available to the public at large. This practice was removed by presidential decree May 2, 2000, resulting in significant improvements to raw GPS quality. This sort of mapping is entirely novel and new. I know of no project anywhere, which has been done on such a large scale. We developed skills and knowledge as we moved along, changing methods and even writing new software to handle the unique tasks at hand. The results have been dramatic; the new maps are a tremendous improvement over the old ones. That is not to say the data is perfect. GPS accuracy is totally dependent upon visibility and geometry. The trail has numerous areas where terrain diminishes the quality. This is the primary reason for culling the original data set, to eliminate less reliable positions in favor of better data. The Trimble Pathfinder has a rated horizontal accuracy of less than 1 meter under ideal conditions. Under the conditions along the trail, positions are less accurate. I estimate that 80 % or more of the trail is plotted correctly within 5-6 meters horizontally, and 95% within 20 meters. The width of the line on the maps is about 16 feet, so for the most part, the trail falls within the thickness of the drawn line. The line is placed upon a digital USGS topographic base maps which have a horizontal accuracy of about 200 feet. GPS elevations are up to 5 times less accurate than the horizontal. If a position is off by 5 meters horizontally, the elevation cannot be judged to be more accurate than 25 meters. |
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| Trail
Re-Routes and Updates
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
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SECTION 02 RE-ROUTE
(Completed June, 2001)
<click image to enlarge. Blue Line depicts
re-route.
This is the line file for AllTopo for a reroute on section 02 of the Colorado Trail, which was officially completed and opened in June, 2001. Right click on the link below to get the file. The new route was re-mapped with GPS on May 3, 2001. Open the file as a annotation file in AllTopo maps. (Ctrl-O). The new line will then be drawn on your map. The re-route begins just after crossing the Platte River bridge. Section two re-route (click on link to get data) SECTION 08 (H) RE-ROUTE (Will be
finished early 2002)
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Section
eight re-route |
Section
eight waypoints |
Two waypoints from section "P" (16) were accidentally mixed into section "O" and identified as "P" points.
This has two effects:
1. The map shows both a "O" and a "P" mile 6.0 and 7.0 on the "O" section, and the "P" section is missing these waypoints.
2. The GPS waypoint file for section "P" contains two points that actually are in section "O". A GPS user might be confused by these points when they come up in a file (they will show the next waypoint to be very far away).
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Corrected
GPS Waypoints for Section 16 |
Corrected
GPS Waypoints for entire trail |
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(OALL.txt) |
NEW Abbreviated FULL Trail waypoint list.
498 point route created by for a single download to include full trail
Warning! We had to remove 700 waypoints to create this database. We tried to remove mile markers and leave the critical intersections, but there are places where waypoints are over two miles apart. Remember to carry "The Colorado Trail Users Guide" to enable you to load points manually in a bind.
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
The reference series includes a trail ready reference booklet containing a full list of Trail Segments and GPS coordinates for trail reference points.
The segment length, elevation gain/loss and distance to Durango/Denver are included on the Trail Segments page:
<- click to enlarge
Over 20 pages of GPS Coordinates provide full trail coverage for GPS users:
<- click to enlarge
In addition to the printed GPS coordinate reference, all coordinates are available for direct download using the All Topo GPS tool. [ Take the All Topo Map GPS Tool Tour ].
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
This image shows comparisons of "The Colorado Trail" as marked on:
The full sample atlas page of this area is included below: [ S24 Map X2 ].
A casual trail user may not notice the misplaced switchbacks (image left) but the missing loop (image right) and creek crossing (image left) would confuse almost any map user. GPS receiver users will appreciate the accuracy of the new GIS Reference maps, 1/2 mile downloadable waypoints.
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
Explore The Colorado Trail® using the USGS 1:250,000, 1:100,000 and the 1:24,000 scale maps. With over 500 levels of zoom with-in each scale.
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
The CTAtlas program included with the Reference Map Series prints out high resolution, fully annotated 8½ x 11 inch trail atlas pages. Click on the links below to view sample atlas pages, your browser may allow you to print these as full resolution :
These images are intended to be printed to 8 1/2 x 11 page size, 250dpi for 1:24,000 scale maps.
S01 Map A1, M 0.0 (Waterton Canyon to South Platte River)
S24 Map X2, M 3.0 (Way Cool Section of the CT! See the accuracy notes above.)
S28 Map BB4, M 16 (Junction Creek Trailhead)
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
These 1:24,000 scale maps are included in the CT map series:
Platte Canyon, CO; Deckers, CO; Pine, CO; Green Mountain, CO; Kassler, CO; Littleton, CO; Indian Hills, CO; Windy Peak, CO; Nast, CO; Bailey, CO; McCurdy Mountain, CO; Topaz Mountain, CO; Farnum Peak, CO; Shawnee, CO; Observatory Rock, CO; Mount Logan, CO; Milligan Lakes, CO; Jefferson, CO; Montezuma, CO; Boreas Pass, CO; Keystone, CO; Copper Mountain, CO; Loveland Pass, CO; Frisco, CO; Dillon, CO; Breckenridge, CO; Vail Pass, CO; Climax, CO; Winfield, CO; Pando, CO; Mount of the Holy Cross, CO; Leadville North, CO; Homestake Reservoir, CO; Mount Champion, CO; Leadville South, CO; Mount Massive, CO; Mount Elbert, CO; Granite, CO; South Peak, CO; Harvard Lakes, CO; Mount Harvard, CO; Buena Vista West, CO; Mount Yale, CO; Buena Vista East, CO; Mount Antero, CO; Saint Elmo, CO; Nathrop, CO; Salida West, CO; Maysville, CO; Garfield, CO; Pahlone Peak, CO; Mount Ouray, CO; Bonanza, CO; Chester, CO; Sargents Mesa, CO; Lake Mountain NE, CO; Trickle Mountain, CO; West Baldy, CO; North Pass, CO; Grouse Creek, CO; Cochetopa Park, CO; Saguache Park, CO; Cold Spring Park, CO; Stewart Peak, CO; Elk Park, CO; Halfmoon Pass, CO; San Luis Peak, CO; Baldy Cinco, CO; Mineral Mountain, CO; Slumgullion Pass, CO; Hermit Lakes, CO; Cannibal Plateau, CO; Lake San Cristobal, CO; Redcloud Peak, CO; Finger Mesa, CO; Pole Creek Mountain, CO; Rio Grande Pyramid, CO; Silverton, CO; Storm King Peak, CO; Howardsville, CO; Ophir, CO; Snowdon Peak, CO; Telluride, CO; Engineer Mountain, CO; Rico, CO; Hermosa Peak, CO; Mount Wilson, CO; Elk Creek, CO; Orphan Butte, CO; Monument Hill, CO; La Plata, CO; Hesperus, CO; Durango West, CO; Durango East, CO
These 1:100,000 scale maps are included in the CT map series:
Montrose 100K, CO; Durango 100K, CO; Cortez 100K, CO; Silverton 100K, CO; Del Norte 100K, CO; Dove Creek 100K, CO; Saguache 100K, CO; Gunnison 100K, CO; Vail 100K, CO; Leadville 100K, CO; Denver West 100K, CO; Bailey 100K, CO
These 1:250,000 scale maps are included in the CT map series:
Cortez 250K, CO,UT; Durango 250K, CO; Leadville 250K, CO; Montrose 250K, CO; Denver 250K, CO
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
The map images contained in the reference series are very high (250 DPI, 660 dot per mile) resolution color images. The maps are stored with lossless compression so there are no ugly compression artifacts. Compare the following two images:
1. Sample Image from the iGage Reference Series (at 100%):
Image sample representative of the CT
series
2. Comparable image from other products:
<- This is NOT representative of the CT series!
The All Topo viewer includes a high performance RIP (Raster Image Processor) that allows viewing at any zoom factor, other products typically allow viewing at 25%, 33%, 50%, 100%, 150%... This is the sample image (the beginning of the Colorado Trail) at 40% zoom:
Sample of "Zoomed Out" screen display
-A Brief History of The -Colorado Trail®
The Colorado Trail® project picture album:
 GPS_Gear:
Trimble Pathfinder Pro and accessories used for the project.
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 S24_ElkPark
: Narrow gauge RR stop in Elk Park. Sec24
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+1 888 450-4983
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< Click to enlarge image
