Reviews > Software > Topographic Mapping > National Geographic Back Roads Explorer > David Sowards-Emmerd > Field Report

Field Report - National Geographic Back Roads Explorer
November 4, 2004

Backpacking Background:
I began backpacking semi-frequently about four years ago, soon after moving to California. I generally take weekend (1 night) trips, and occasionally take 3-4 day trips. Most of my backpacking experience is at moderate altitude, 6,000'-12,000' (1,800-3,650 m), in conditions ranging from dry desert to hail/heavy snow in the mountains. In winter and spring I split time between Southern California (SoCal) deserts and snowshoeing/skiing/snowcamping in the Sierra/Cascades. Summer and fall I tend to stick to the high country. I have reduced my packweight down to less than 50 lb (23 kg) over the past year - including food/water and a bear barrel. I'm trying to include more mountaineering, climbing and bouldering in my trips.

Product Description:
Manufacturer's website: www.nationalgeographic.com/
MSRP: $59.95

Back Roads Explorer is a software package that combines moderate resolution topographical maps with road data for the entire United States. For a more detailed description of the product see my Initial Report.

Field Use:

My first field use for Back Roads Explorer was on a 5 day road trip from Phoenix, AZ driving to Las Vegas, NV. For this trip, I decided to use Back Roads Explorer on my laptop, and leave all the other AAA maps at home. At the airport, waiting for the plane to arrive, it appeared as though I had lost all my road and detailed (Level 4) data. However, it turned out this was not the case (see under 'Problems' below). Each day, I checked on our course to see approximately how long of a drive we had, and which areas of interest were within range. This also kept me entertained scrolling around and playing with the maps on the first leg of the drive where I was a passenger (as well as at the airport).

The second real world use of the software came on a bouldering trip to Bishop, CA over Labor Day weekend. On this trip I printed out maps rather than bringing a laptop along. I should note that I have pretty sharp vision, and I like to squeeze as much information as possible onto a map - the limiting factor being the print quality. The problem with printing the maps was that I didn't realize at this point that labels could be created for roads by simply clicking on them. Thus, very few roads on my printed map were labeled - although many of these were backcountry dirt roads and didn't have signs at intersections. This created a problem and we missed our turn to head in to the Sad Boulders (a popular bouldering area outside bishop with access from several directions), and later down the road, we also were unable to find the correct pullout for Pocketopia (a lesser known bouldering area well north of Bishop). This probably could have been avoided had I closely examined and matched up the bouldering guide map with the Back Roads Explorer map and I should have brought my GPS with the waypoints uploaded for this trip - next time! In any case, routefinding on the road scale (as opposed to hiking trail scale) was definitely doable with the maps I had printed for this trip.

Third, I used software to find the Stoney Point bouldering area while on a weekend trip down to Los Angeles, CA. I also used the software to locate the hotel and various other destinations where we were meeting people on the trip. When looking at city areas on the maps, I found it essential to use the Level 5 maps to be able to distinguish between roads - also it's nearly impossible to use the mouse on the Level 4 maps in this case, because the mouse is almost always over a road, so clicking just pops up a road label as opposed to moving the cursor, zooming in, drawing a route, etc..

Locally, we've had a lot of construction on the way to both my wife's and my place of work. In some cases this means left turns were blocked or traffic lights were out or flaky. I used Back Roads Explorer here to find several alternative routes home. Also, I've tried to find alternate routes for returning home Sunday nights from backpacking trips. I am able to calculate mileages and convince myself that the roads actually go through, however, I can't tell how many stoplights are on a given road, or tell whether the speed limit is 25 mph / 40 km/h or 55 mph / 89 km/h just by looking at the map. The colors used for the roads don't seem to clearly distinguish between types of roads.

Problems I've Run Into:

• Generally, I'd like to print Level 5 maps, because this level displays considerably more roads then the Level 4 maps. However, the road labels, both user-created by clicking and those already on the maps, end up approximately one quarter of the size when printing Level 5 maps and are completely unreadable on the typical laser printer at work. Below are maps saved from Level 4 and Level 5 with blue symbols (GPS tracklog) overlaid. On the Level 4 version, the road designations are readable, but on the Level 5 version, the labels are barely visible.

• Since I have access to a large plotter at work, I was hoping to print a large (3' by 3' / 1 m by 1 m) map of Death Valley (and possibly more park maps depending on the success). However, after dragging the box to enclose the area I intend to print, a window pops up stating 'Error in saving map' and the map isn't saved to file.
• Several times I've had the program crash for no apparent reason.
• Road names are generally not available for highways, only the road number. On several occasions, I've been unable to find the correct road on the map because the directions I was given only used the road name.
• Missing roads: only half of the scenic drive through Red Rock Canyon (outside of Las Vegas, NV) is shown on the map. Below is the image saved from Back Roads Explorer - the road ends between the 'O' and 'N' in 'CANYON' on the map, but should continue as a loop to the ESE.

• Location of data files copied from CD: originally, I copied just the data I needed for my brief AZ/NV road trip to the small hard drive on my aging laptop. Copying to the 'TPO_DATA' directory inside the Back Roads Explorer installation directory seemed like and obvious choice (and it's what is recommended in the help file). However, I didn't have room for all the data on the CDs which contained the states I was interested in, so I started selectively deleting files - see how to do this under the 'Secrets' section below. Back Roads Explorer didn't seem to be too thrilled with this and frequently locked up, and it seemed that it wasn't displaying the data that I knew was on the HD. However, it turned out that by moving all of the data folders outside of the installation directory, and then linking to this new location solved the problem.
• Elevation near North Palisade, Eastern Sierra, CA: When trying to determine the elevation of a saddle (the U-Notch) for preparation for a hike (using the CA State Series data) I noticed a sudden drop from 14,000' / m down to a little over 4000' / m (as read off when I placed the cursor over the position). I checked and a similar unphysical drop is there in Back Roads Explorer. This appears to be an error in the way the original USGS maps were read in - my guess is there was an error in the switchover between meters and feet on two individual USGS maps.

Upgrades and Installation along with the State Series Maps:

Installation and upgrading Back Roads Explorer on a machine that doesn't already have an installation of TOPO!. However, two possibilities exist: the two programs can be installed in the same directory, or the two programs can be installed separately. When installed in separate directories, the data from the two programs can be cross linked; howerver, all is not well, and this is an issue that I'll discuss further in my Long Term Report. Additionally, the upgrade did not work when I had Back Roads Explorer and the CA State Series software installed separately on the same machine, and the CA State Series was up to date (the version number did not change). However, after uninstalling both, and reinstalling Back Roads Explorer, the upgrade worked. In any case, the current updates appear to only upgrade GPS compatibility - and my fully functional GPS still isn't supported.

Secrets:

The data on the CDs is organized into subfolders based on the naming convention 'DXXYYY' where XX is the latitude and YYY is the longitude. Therefore, since I was short on disk space, I was able to delete all unneccessary data from my hard drive - something around 90% of NV, 80% of AZ and all of UT and NM which I would not have had space for otherwise.

Features I'd like to see added:

• Ability to use the arrow keys to move the cursor one pixel at a time.
• Compatability with more GPS units.
• Some method to treat the GDT roads as partial routes, so that instead of tracing over these roads, routes could be formed by clicking these
• More information on private roads and 4WD roads.
• Some indication that a road has a typical winter closure (standard on paper maps).
• Ability to create/save larger maps.
• Different colors for roads based on typical road conditions (gravel, dirt, 4WD, paved). The USGS maps give some indication of this on the 1:24k maps, but those maps are not current, and are not included in Back Roads Explorer.
• Integration of Back Roads Explorer data with the State Series maps so that roads could be overlaid on 1:24k maps.

That being said, I find Back Roads Explorer to be a very well thought out and functional mapping program and I love the ability to check out any random spot in the US when I sit down at my computer. I find it to be an excellent replacement for both the 'road atlas' style maps and AAA maps at home. However, I'm not about to toss these out yet for two obvious reasons: limited battery life on a laptop and the need to boot up to see a map (as opposed to unfolding).

Future Use:

Use over the next four months will be similar to how I've used Back Roads Explorer during the Field Testing period. Two main trips during this period include a 9 day bouldering road trip to the Eastern Sierra over Thanksgiving and a week long trip to Northern Michigan to visit parents over the new year. Finally, I'll look into integrating the State Series maps with Back Roads Explorer as well as how useful GPS navigation is with an uploaded road route. Unfortunately I ended up doing the majority of the driving on my AZ/NV road trip so I didn't spend much time navigating by handheld GPS.

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Reviews > Software > Topographic Mapping > National Geographic Back Roads Explorer > David Sowards-Emmerd > Field Report