[pct-l] Re: Way points won't work.

[Brick Robbins <brick@fastpack.com>]

At 11:55 AM 1/15/99 -0800, reynolds@ilan.com wrote:

>Thru the Sierra the PCT is pretty well shown on the topographic maps that
>are in Topo! Are you saying that if I place my cursor on Forrester Pass
>[for example] the lat, lon will be incorrect?

Dunno. I'm just repeating what I was told.

I had dinner with Schaffer one night and we discussed the USFS attempt at
GPS mapping the PCT up in the northern Sierra.

I heard they had several problems (reception in canyons was a biggie).

The one that is relevent to this discussion was this:

The line that the GPS data put on the map seldom coincided with the one
that Schaffer had drawn. He can be rather pedantic (he talks like he writes
in the guidebook <g>) and he went to great lengths explaining to me that he
knew his line was not correct in terms of lat-long, but was correct in
referece to the features depicted on the map. Since most folks navigate by
reference to landmarks (not GPS), he made a great case that this was the
better way to do it.  I tried to summarize what he said in my last message.

For this reason, the way points (in lat-long) that you get from the maps
will only be as accureate as the USGS maps - in other words, up to half a
mile off.
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