SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

I’ve just posted a review of the Swiss Map 25 DVD electronic mapping product here :

Swiss Map 25 DVD Review

Vendor Webpage : Swiss Map 25

Swiss Maps

Swiss Topo have a set of eight DVD’s covering different parts of Switzerland, there’s a small overlap between each volume in the set which is helpful when buying them. I’ve been thinking of getting some of these for a while instead of accumulating more and more paper maps, I’ve started with volume 1 which covers “Suisse Occidentale” which is the Western part of Switzerland.

I have a problem with the Swiss maps, there’s too many versions for the same areas. We have the brown 1:25000 maps which are the most detailed, marking paths and showing enough detail to navigate through some complex terrain, these don’t distinguish between paths though, every path is marked with no notation to signify which are the marked and accepted routes on the ground. The yellow 1:50000 maps are more use for paths, these are marked in solid red lines for normal paths and broken red lines for higher level or more serious paths, however in some terrain it’s hard to navigate using the 1:50000 scale, there’s not really enough detail. Then there’s the blue ski touring maps, these are 1:50000 scale but mark ski lifts and ski tour routes, they also use a terrain marking that lets you identify slopes in excess of 30′ which are liable to avalanche, I find these are adequate for navigating on a ski tour. In addition, I have electronic versions of the 1:25000 maps with my mapping GPS.

One of the key things the Swiss Map 25 offers is a 1:25000 scale map with recognised paths marked on them, in some ways the data from the yellow maps at the brown map scale. Swiss Map 25 actually includes the data from both the 1:50000 and the 1:25000 maps.

The Software

You can run the maps straight off the DVD but it makes more sense to install them onto your hard drive. This takes about 900 megabytes for the Suisse Occidentale volume. Once it’s on the hard disk you can update to the latest version of the software from the Internet. Later if you add more volumes there’s a method to just add the map data to the existing installation. I’m using an Apple computer running Mac OSX but it’s much the same in Windows. No other operating systems are supported at this time.

It’s here my problems started though. The performance of the software (on Mac OSX) was poor, it took a huge amount of system resources to run the software and was slow to respond to commands. This appears to be due to the program being built for an earlier and obsolete version of Apple hardware (PowerPC), when it runs on the new (Intel) version it does using emulation and that’s very slow.

I contacted Swiss Topo and had a chat with them about this, in the first instance they recommend a special installation method which they have a guide for. Basically that means not installing from the DVD then performing an update, their improved method is to install a clean version and add your maps to it. This does certainly help, the CPU usage is down from as much as 80 or 90% to a more reasonable 50%, now moving between items in the multi-tool is a lot more responsive and an activity like turning the display of hiking paths on or off is much more responsive.

Making Routes

There’s special overlays for most Swiss trails, there’s a slight problem in that the data is slightly incomplete where the trail shares the route with a small road, the overly doesn’t extend to this and you cannot select that leg to add to your map, the workaround is make a line and way-points manually. The problem here is one of definition and Swiss Topo were saying that it’s largely dependent on the data that the canton provide to them.

Anyway, these overlays let you select segments of paths and join them together to make a route. This route can be downloaded to a GPS, there’s nominally a set of supported GPS devices but in practice you can export and/or save the route in a number of different formats that your GPS is likely to be able to read. It’s just with a supported device you’re able to cut a step out and transfer the route directly. There’s one little trick here though, in the raw form there’s a lot of way-points in the route and my first attempt for a 20km route exceeding my GPS memory, I found that there’s a function to reduce the number of points which is invaluable. Also, you can save a route as a GPX, KML or KMZ, any of these would work in Google Earth.

The routes can be profiled giving some information about ascent and descent, this is one from L’Etivaz, for some reason it’s not recognised it as circular and it’s giving a return time though:

Printing

This is a little frustrating, first, there’s some limitations built into the software to protect Swiss Topo from copyright theft, for example a limit to the print size, you couldn’t get a big flat bed printer and make your own full 1:25000 sheets.

What’s really painful is for linear routes, and longer routes, these won’t fit on a single sheet so you need to plan a little what segments you print on each sheet. It works out that a piece of A4 paper will hold a map of 7km x 5km and can be landscape or portrait. I’d like to see a function that lets me plot a route and then have the software print multiple sheets as required. You could select the area around the route and just hit the print button but this isn’t really a good idea at all, you’re making the scale of the map alter and not only is it going to be difficult to read but also the romer scale on your compass isn’t going to work.

Some care in printing sections is required, obviously there are situations where we need to alter our route and we need maps for that, in practise this shouldn’t be a challenge for an experienced navigator but it’s just the sort of trap the inexperienced can fall into with electronic mapping and GPS devices.

On the Hill

Before I’d bought this DVD my plan was that I’d pre-print a few maps of areas I go a lot and laminate them, in fact I’d started to look at laminators. Once I’d installed the software I soon realised that wasn’t going to work. It makes more sense to print sections around the area you need on any day and just stick them in a plastic bag, that works well and you can stick the map in any pocket then.

The quality of the print is just fine in terms of usability, in fact my printer’s been warning me for ages that it’s running out ink so I’m not entirely sure I’m seeing these maps at full quality so it might get better.

I used just the A4 print for a walk around L’Etivaz and was really pleased with the map. I had downloaded the route to GPS but I don’t really navigate by GPS so I didn’t use it. The GPS data looks just fine and I can’t see any issue with it all though.

In Use

It’s actually early days for this with me. I think I’ll probably have a few minor variations in the way I’m using the product. I still like the pre-printed paper maps though, my thinking at the moment is that it’s worth carrying the 1:50000 map as well, this lets you get an overview of the area, for example when you’re wondering what the name of a nearby peak is or considering a route for another day. That’s consistent with why I got the product as well, I’d decided I needed that 1:25000 scale coverage and it was a choice between buying this or the brown paper maps. As the paper versions are about 11 chf each and this product has 42 maps for 178 chf (158 chf for CAS members) then it looks good value although you need to factor in the cost of printing as ink cartridges can get expensive.

In fact, I think it’s early days for products like this as well. GPS devices are still regarded with some suspicion in parts of the outdoor community and how we use and interact with GPS and electronic mapping still hasn’t stabilised. For ski touring in particular I’ve really found it useful to plot routes which makes me look at the map carefully and then look at those routes in Google Earth, that means I’ve got a good understanding of new terrain before I go there and a good idea what hazards to expect. 

Who’s it For?

I can’t quite weight this up. If you were coming to Switzerland for a trip would this work? It might be difficult, if you were coming to a particular area with fairly fixed plans then you print out and laminate the map sections you need ahead of time and that would work well. If you had more flexible plans then lacking access to a printer (and probably a computer) might be a problem.

Ski Routes

I discussed the fact that the ski routes on the blue maps aren’t available as overlays with Swiss Topo and they have some reservations about this. Obviously winter navigation is really problematic and any route is as much a function of a local snow pack analysis on the day as it is of the marked route on a map. Swiss Topo expressed a concern that offering an ability to download the ski route to a GPS would encourage the inexperienced to follow that line somewhat blindly. I understand this concern but I do think by the same logic we could say the mere existence of a the blue ski maps could encourage the inexperienced to venture into dangerous terrain, in fact we might say this of any map it’s just a question where you draw the line. Clearly it’s something Swiss Topo have been thinking about and I hope personally it’s something we see in the future.

Product Updates

What’s clear after talking with Swiss Topo is that this is an active product and it will be updated, those updates are free and available online. I think it’s likely that the next major version will have some significant improvements in performance and features.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Esperina at the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (Swisstopo), who helped me work out how to get the best from the system.