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Places to Roadside Camp in Early Spring in Adirondacks

The two longest back country roads in Adirondacks — Cedar River-Limekiln Lake Road and Piseco-Powley Road — are generally closed during mud season. Other dirt roads like Moose Club Way tend to be muddy, and their is a risk you’ll get stuck back there.

It’s always a good idea to bring extra weight in your truck bed, a come-a-long or whinch, and snow shovel. You might not be far from a blacktop road at these campsites, but that is no guarantee you won’t get stuck.

1) NY Route 8 / East Branch of Sacandaga River

The campsites are all off NY 8, an all season plowed and maintained asphalt road. Some sites are reinforced with gravel. Be aware some sites may be plowed full of snow from the winter clearing of NY 8. Roughly 15 campsites along this road, however some may be too muddy for this time of year.

2) South of Arietta Town Line on Piseco-Powley Road

There are 7 campsites along Piseco-Powley Road, north of Stratford, prior to the Arietta Town Line gate, which is near the Potholers on East Canada Creek. This road is well packed dirt, reinforced with gravel up to gate, and should be accessiable year round, minus the snow.

3) NY 421 at Horseshoe Lake

NY 421 is an asphalt road, and there are 4 campsites prior to the gates for Horseshoe Lake Road and Lows Lower Dam Road. These gates will be closed, but the sites along NY 421 before the asphalt runs out should be good as long the snow is off of NY 421..

4) Mountain Pond

Mountain Pond Campsites are on an old routing of NY 30. While now unplowed in the winter, the road is mostly hard asphalt, asphalt chips, and gravel. Many of the campsites are reinforced with gravel, but be careful with some of the sites.

5) First Campsite on Wolf Lake Road.

There is a campsite on Wolf Lake Road, right before the parking area and winter road gate for Wolf Lake Road Extension. This campsite is grass, however if it’s relatively dry, snow and mud free, this is possiblity.

6) Reeds Pond Campsite.

Before the black top runs out, there is a campsite along Reeds Pond, which is nice for it’s solitude, but nearness to a dirt road. The campsite may be muddy, depending on the conditions.

How’s Your Luck? Hike to Good Luck Lake or Bad Luck Pond.

In the Adirondack Park there is a Bad Luck Mountain and Bad Luck Pond, along with a Good Luck Mountain and Good Luck Cliffs. I have only been to later, but maybe sometime I will get a chance to visit the much more remote Bad Luck Pond as described by CNY Hiking.

If you are not feeling particularly lucky, consider visiting Big Bad Luck Pond, off of NY 28, roughly halfway between Northville and Indian Lake. It’s a little too far to carry a kayak back into, but it is a 3 mile hike from the trailhead to the pond, passing over the col of Bell Mountain, and several other small ponds. There are some designated campsites near the lake, and it’s below Bad Luck Mountain.

Alternatively, if your feeling lucky, consider visiting Good Luck Lake. Located north of Caroga Lake on NY 10, there are 12 paddle-in or hike-to campsites along the lake, which is located below Good Luck Mountain. It is a delightful paddle on in, but if you go, make sure to visit Good Luck Cliffs and Good Luck Mountain above it.

The Impact of Gas Prices on My Summer Plans

I have been thinking a lot lately about the High Gas Prices and what they mean for summer plans. I typically enjoy traveling by doing roadside camping in the Adirondack Park and other public lands, so one of the biggest costs in my experiences is gasoline.

I knew gas prices might be high when I bought my truck by spring time. They often are highest around election time, only to fall back down to lower levels after election season. This summer is no exception.

So I was thinking about what this all means…

1) Planning longer trips and fewer shorter trips. A lot of the gas is consumed driving back and forth to destination. Far less gasoline is consumed when one is at their destination.

2) Chose to spend longer time in one destination. Usually when I am on vacation I tend to rush to one place to another, consuming a lot of gasoline.driving from one place to another in the Adirondacks or wherever I may be. Why not pick a campsite, and spend more time enjoying the immediate landscape?

3) Avoid idling as much as possible. Hopefully with the deep cycle battery on my pickup, I will be able to keep idling to generate electricity for camping to a minimum.

4) Consider campsites that have as much nearby as possible to do. Possibly choosing campsites near a lake for paddling — like the Wakley Dam Campsites at Cedar River Flow or any of the campsites along North Lake in Adirondacks.

5) Realize that gas costs really haven’t gone up that much from last year. While gas may cost an additional buck an gallon, that still only means an additional $20-$30 per trip, if the plan is drive between 400-600 miles for vacation. If your already spending $60-90 for your trip on gas, what difference is between that and $80-$120. More money, but if your having fun, so be it.

6) Not Skipping Things on Trips Because of Gas Costs. In my view it’s pretty stupid to not spend an additional $10 in gas, if have already burned through $40 in gas to get to your destination. If there is something worth seeing, you got to do it.

7) Finally, just not worry about it. If I am on vacation, just put the gas on the credit card. I will worry about paying it down when I get back home. Things are going to cost what they cost, and I don’t really care much one way or another.

Public Parks vs Occupy Movement

I am concerned about what the Occupy Movement means for our public parks. Public parks are the commons in our society, the places where anybody may go to gather and to recreate. Public parks belong to us all, therefore private individual organizations must not be allowed to have exclusive use to them.

Inherit in the concept of a public park is that man is just a visitor, and that nobody resides there permanently. Parks are places where men dwell only temporarily for fellowship or solitude, it is an escape from the private places we normally reside in.

When kayaking on a lake or hiking a mountain, one may stop to enjoy the view. You only stop for a few minutes to enjoy the view, and then you move on. Your experience is non-exclusive, anyone can walk by when your there, or come by five minutes after you’ve left in solitude. Laws prevent you from building a house or setting up long-term residency there, you must move on an allow others to see what you once saw.

Campsites are same way. Whether in a DEC Campground or a back-country site, one can only set up a campsite and camp there for a set amount of time. Typically this is limited to two weeks except during Big Game Season. When your time is up, you must pack up your gear, and leave the site cleaner then you have found it.

When your camping, a campsite becomes your temporary place of residency. You unpack your gear, you make a fire, you set up your tent. You cook your meals there, you camp there, and you probably do your business in an outhouse or in woods a short ways from there. For all purposes, you live there and campsite is like your house for a short period of time.

A campsite is never an exclusive site. Campsites can get elaborately set up, with lots of canopies, tents, lanterns and other gear. Some people hang Christmas lights and drive in large RVs to campsites. You may dwell there for a while but after a number of days you must pack up and leave. Others may then use your campsite, enjoy the views and benefits the public lands provide for all that wish to use them.

Public parks are excellent places for individuals and groups to get together and discuss public business. They are good places to get together and protests. Many parks are large, and can accommodate large groups of people. Many parks are appropriate for camping and other recreational pursuits.

Yet, we can not allow any individual or group to remain in a park for too long of a period. Individuals must remain visitors, those who come only for a short period of time to enjoy the land in solitude or fellowship. Two weeks, needs to remain the maximum use for a piece of land, except in very narrow exception.

… Allowing people to stay too long in a park, only serves to undermine the concept of public lands and the commons.

Adirondack Park State Land Acquistion Policy

Today’s fodder is based on the text of as Adirondack Park Land Acqusition Policy, as described in the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. I added the headings and pictures to make it more readable. — Andy

The Agency has an important interest inr future state land acquisitions since they can vitally affect both private and public land within the Adirondack Park. As a result the Agency recommends that the following guidelines should govern future acquisitions of state lands within the Park…

State Should Only Acquire
Adirondack Park Land for Forest Preseve.

1. Future state acquisitions within the Adirondack Park should generally be restricted to the acquisition of forest preserve lands. Where special state purposes are such that non-forest preserve land might be acquired (if such acquisitions are constitutionally permissible) the amount acquired for other than forest preserve purposes should be kept to the minimum necessary. Thus, should the state acquire a 100-acre tract on which it wished to place a hospital, a prison, an office building or another facility only that part of the tract, say twenty-five acres, that is actually necessary for the facility should be classified as non-forest preserve.

Reasons Not To Acquire Land.

2. As a general guideline, the state should avoid acquiring lands for non-forest preserve purposes (if such acquisitions are constitutionally permissible) within the Park where:

— the tract is not contiguous to a public highway; or,

— the tract is of a native forest character, i.e., stocked with any size, native tree species with twenty-five percent crown cover (plantations are not considered to be native forest land); or,

— the tract involved consists of more than 150 acres; or,

— the tract is contiguous to existing forest preserve land; or,

— the tract is within one-half mile of a block of forest preserve land of over 1,000 acres; or,

— the tract lies at an elevation greater than 2,500 feet; or,

— the proposed use of the tract will materially alter the surrounding environment; or,

— the tract is of significant scenic, ecological or geologic value or interest.

New Intensive Uses Should Be Restricted
to Private Companies and Individuals.

3. Save for (i) the two existing alpine skiing centers at Whiteface and Gore mountains and the Mt. Van Hoevenberg area; (ii) rustic state campsites, a long accepted intensive use of the forest preserve; (iii) visitor information centers, memorial highways, beaches and boat launching sites; and (iv) historic areas (guidelines for which are provided elsewhere in this master plan), the state should rely on private enterprise to develop intensive recreational facilities on private lands within the Park, to the extent that the character of these lands permits this type of development, and should not acquire lands for these purposes.

Lands Most Desirable to Add to Forest Preserve.

4. Highest priority should be given to acquiring fee title to, fee title subject to a term of life tenancy, or conservation easements providing public use or value or rights of first refusal over,

(i) key parcels of private land, the use or development of which could adversely affect the integrity of vital tracts of state land, particularly wilderness, primitive and canoe areas and

(ii) key parcels which would permit the upgrading of primitive areas to wilderness areas.

Preference for Consolidation of State Parcels of Land.

5. High priority should also be given to acquisitions of fee title which permit the consolidation of scattered tracts of state land.

Protection of Deer Wintering Habitats.

6. Fee title or appropriate conservation easements should also be acquired to protect critical wildlife areas such as deer wintering areas, wetlands, habitats of rare or endangered species or other areas of unique value, such as lands bordering or providing access to classified or proposed wild, scenic and recreational rivers.

Protection of Scenic Vistas.

7. Efforts should be made, by conservation easement or fee acquisition, to protect the major scenic resources of the Park along travel corridors, with particular attention to the Adirondack Northway and those scenic vistas specifically identified on the Private Land Use and Development Plan Map and listed in Chapter III of this document.

Obtaining Right-of-Ways to Public Lands.

8. The acquisition of fee title to or rights-of-way across private lands that effectively prevent access to important blocks of state land should be pursued, except where such acquisition would exacerbate or cause problems of overuse or inappropriate use of state lands.

Obtaining Canoe water Right-of-Ways.

9. Canoe route easements should be purchased to reopen Adirondack canoe routes for non-motorized access in appropriate areas of the Park.

Obtaining Fishing Right Easements.

10. The highly successful fishing rights easement purchase program of the Department of Environmental Conservation should be continued and expanded on appropriate streams.

Avoid Purchases of Highly Productive Timber Stands,
Consider Conservation Easements for Timber Stands.

11. Due to the importance of the forest products industry to the economy of the Adirondack region, bulk acreage purchases in fee should not normally be made where highly productive forest land is involved, unless such land is threatened with development that would curtail its use for forestry purposes or its value for the preservation of open space or of wildlife habitat. However, conservation easements permitting the continuation of sound forest management and other land uses compatible with the open space character of the Park should be acquired wherever possible to protect and buffer state lands.

Adirondack Park Agency Prohibited from Reviewing Land Purchases Prior to Purchase.

While the Agency has not been given authority to review proposed acquisitions before title has vested in the state, once new lands have been acquired the Act requires the master plan to be revised by classifying the lands and setting guidelines for their management and use pursuant to the statutory procedures (consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation and submission to the Governor for approval). The following procedures for revisions of the master plan will be followed in connection with new acquisitions:

— land acquisitions should be classified as promptly as possible following acquisition and in any case classification of new acquisitions will be done annually; and,

— prior to classification by the Agency, lands acquired by the Department of Environmental Conservation or any other state agency will be administered on an interim basis in a manner consistent with the character of the land and its capacity to withstand use and which will not foreclose options for eventual classification.

Making Maps of Round Lake Wilderness in QGIS

You are thinking about going to the Round Lake Wilderness for a Canoe Trip. You would like a map, but don’t want to spend $10 bucks to buy one, when you get a better looking map for free with more accurate data from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation and NYS Department of Transportation, using a free GIS program known as Quantum GIS or “QGIS” for short. When you are done with this tutorial, you will end up with a map that looks like this.

QGIS like all GIS programs can seamlessly glue together multiple topographic quadrangles (such as the Sabbist and Little Tupper Lake quads needed for this map), and then superimpose campsites, trails, and other data you need — that might not be available on a typical topographic map. As your printing your own map, you don’t have to worry about keeping it dry or keeping it from getting damaged.

All GIS software is highly technical and a bit complicated to use. Putting together a good map is a fair bit of work, but once you master it, you will be able to put together quite nice looking maps. I hope this rather length fodder article will send you on your way to making good maps of NY State.

Step 1: Download and Install QGIS.

First you need to download a free copy of the open-source Quantum GIS program from QGIS.org. It runs on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X and is relatively easy to install. Then open QGIS on up. It will look something like this, depending how many plugins you have installed and your version of QGIS.

Hint: Save your work regularly when working in QGIS by going to File -> Save Project menu. It’s always good to save regularly in any GIS program, as your dealing with large files, and its always possible that QGIS could crash, and you would lose your work.

Step 2: NYS DOT Topographic Index.

Next, you will need to get some data to fill up that blank screen. You will probably want to go the NYS GIS website and download the 7.5 minute topographic index (aka 1:24,000 scaled topographic maps). This “Shapefile” — a file containing data used to draw shapes, dots, or lines in a Geographic Information System (GIS) program — contains an overview map of NY State, with boxes representing each of the 965 7.5 minute topographic maps that make up NY State.

NY 1:24,000 Topographic Map Coverage Index Shapefile. (90 KB) Contains the outlines of all 965 7.5′ topographic maps in NY State. Freely available from NYSGIS Website, under the Digital Raster Quadrangles.

Download, expand, and open the NYSDOT Topographic Map. You can open it in QGIS by using Vector -> Add Vector Layer.

7.5 minute topographic maps are the most accurate topographic maps typically available. The NYS Department of Transportation provides high-resolution, 509 DPI, scans of all 965 topographic maps it creates. Each scanned in map is in a file called a “GeoTIFF”, and is divided into 3 or four files, consisting of each color used on a standard DOT topographic map.

Step 3: Projection.

It’s Very Confusing, BUT VERY IMPORTANT!!

When you load that 7.5 minute topographic index into QGIS, you might be surprised to see how that map is distorted, and does not look like the map above. This is because the earth is not a flat surface, and there are many ways to draw a map of the earth, to reflect the curvature of the earth. We call that the projection of the map — how we project a curved surface on a flat sheet of paper or a flat screen.

There are actually thousands of ways to project the surface of the earth, such as unprojected latitude and longitude (called WGS84) that squashes north and south on maps, regular Mercator which puts things on an even latitude or longitude on a flat plain (NY State appears with a flat border along Pennsylvania at the 42nd parallel), and Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), which most accurately shows distance and relative position of items, at the cost of over distance appearing somewhat distorted.

For all your New York State mapping projects, you are only going to use one projection — Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Zone 18. This is one set in official state regulations as what all state agencies are supposed to use, and it’s what NYSDOT Topographic maps are drawn in. For your adventures in making maps for hiking, camping, hunting, fishing, and boating, your going to want to always use NAD83 / UTM Zone 18N in NY State.

Go to File -> Project Properties, and click on the Coordinate Reference System (CRS) tab. Browse through the list for NAD 83 / UTM Zone 18N. Click on “Enable ‘On the Fly CRS Transformation”.

Clarification. Then click the triangle next to Projected Coordinate Systems, then click the triangle next to Universal Transverse Mercator, then scroll down to NAD 83 / UTM Zone 18N (ESPG:26918). Alternatively on the search box on that same page, search for Authority: All, Search for: ID, and enter in 26918. QGIS will remember your settings and default to this projection for future projects.

To ensure everything is projected in NAD 83 / UTM 18N, make sure to Enable ‘On the Fly’ CRS Transformation. QGIS will automatically convert “Shapefiles” and other vector data into the proper projection. QGIS can not do this for scanned in images or similar “raster” data.

Check and recheck to make sure you did this projection step correctly. Otherwise, you will get messed up maps, and you will get lost. Confusing, definitely but the most important step.

Step 4: Now Let’s Load Some Data.

Shapefiles and vector data are all loaded in the same way. You download the file, expand it, and load it into QGIS. Here are some Shapefiles I recommend you download and load into QGIS:

DEC Lands Outlines Shapefile. (5.4 MB) Contains the outlines of all lands under the control and jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Conservation. Does not include Town Parks, Canal Authority Parks, Parks Maintained by Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. Also does not include Conservation Easements. Freely available from NYSGIS Website, under the DEC Section.

DEC Roads and Trails Shapefile. (5.8 MB) Contains many of the roads and trails maintained by the DEC. Does not include local, county, or state roads, and in some regions of state, there is no trail data available. Freely available from NYSGIS Website, under the DEC Section.

DEC Physical Assets Shapefile. (0.2 MB) Contains many of the physical facilities maintained by DEC — specifically lean-tos, back country campsites, boat launches, fishing docks, firetowers, etc. This is available using a Freedom of Information Law Request. The DEC will send it to you in 5 days, if you email the Records Access Officer. I have put a copy of this file on my blog, of the exact form I got it back from the DEC, to allow you to avoid unnecessary FOIL requests.

OpenStreet Map: NY State Shapefile. (105 MB) I found this some time ago on a now defunct website and have made several modifications to it over the years. It is freely available data, originally based on US Census TIGER lines, but with certain modifications, such as removing certain roads from wilderness areas. One should consider it public domain as it’s just US Census data, and you are free to edit and redistribute it. You can download my copy from this blog.

Once you load the data into QGIS you should be able to zoom in and explore the map, and get a general idea of what area you are interested. The random colors chosen by QGIS to display this data are pretty hideous, but we will change them in a bit.

Zoom into the area you interested in, by looking at the general outlines of the public lands. You can use the maganifying glass to zoom in, the hand to move around, and the cursor next to the (i) icon, to display information about various features.

Step 5: NYSDOT Topographic Maps.

Next we need to figure what NY State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) 7.5″ topographic maps we will need to make a “base” map of Round Lake. Click the cursor next to the (i) icon, then onto the the map, where you need to figure out what topographic map you want. As I see from the results, I will need the Sabbatist Quadrangle (among 4 others nearby), which is available from NYSGIS.

NYSDOT Topographic GeoTIFFs at 1:24,000 Scale. (2 MB per quad) There are 965 quads in NY State. The NYSDOT topos have the most up to date roads on them, and come with each color layer seperate. The average file is about 2 MB. I downloaded the whole set from their FTP site, but you can download only the ones you need at first, but having the full set sure is convient.

NYSDOT Topographic Maps are scanned at 508 DPI, and are georeferenced NAD 83 / UTM 18N GeoTIFF images, that QGIS will automatically position on map for you to create a seamless map across data layers, as long as you properly set the projection in QGIS in Step 2. Maps will line up perfectly, even a certain map consists of many different quadrangles.

I do not recommend the USGS Digital Raster Graphic (DRG) Quadrangles. They are typically older, use the obsolete UTM 18 / NAD 27 coordinate system, and do not have individual files for each color layer. Moreover, the 1:100,000 Digital Raster Quadrangles and 1:250,000 Digital Raster Quadrangles, do not have the needed resolution (detail) for doing hiking or other outdoor maps. If your doing a broad overview maps — like for spotting peaks off a firetower, they might be useful, but not for general use.

Each NYSDOT Topographic Map consists of 4 different black and white GeoTIFF images. There is no transparency data in this maps, nor any color in them. You are free to set transparency or color as you please. They are as follows:

plan – Man made features and labels such as roads or mountain names. May also include unnavigable streams, borders on lakes, etc. Anything that would be printed black on the NYSDOT topographic map.
hyd – Lakes and navigable waterways. Anything that would be printed light blue on the NYSDOT topographic map.
topo – Topographic lines showing general elevation and slope. Anything that would be printed light brown (color of topographic lines) on the NYSDOT topographic map
bua – Built Up Area, background. Areas that have a lot of development, such as cities. Anything that would be printed light pink or yellow on a NYSDOT topographic map. I usually don’t use this layer, not found in rural quads.

You can load them using the Layer Menu -> Add Raster Layer, menu item. Using the control key, you can load multiple files at one. I try to load all the layers I will need at once, as it can take time to load layers, and it’s good to get it done at once.

Remember, these are scanned in images or pictures of the topographic maps, they can not be easily edited or queried in QGIS. Zoom in too far, and they become pixelated. Yet, they usually provide an excellent back drop for outdoors maps.

When you first load one of these maps, you will see a picture like this. The topographic layers for some reason chose to load first, and appear on top, and with no color or transparency set, they are pretty useless out of the box.

Typically you will want to arrange the topographic layers, so that the plan layers are on top, followed by the hyd layers, then the topo layers, and finally the bua layers. With the plan layer up top, the map will start to make a little bit more sense, give you a better idea if you loaded the proper quads.

Next you will want to go through every GeoTIFF Topographic Map layer you have uploaded, and change white to transparent. You do this by right clicking on each layer, and choosing Properties. Then click on the Transparency tab in the Layers Properties dialog that comes up.

Double click on -32768.00 on the Indexed Value column, and change it to 0. This will make all white portions of the map 100% transparent. NYSDOT Topographic Maps do not contain any useful transparency data, so you will want to make all white areas in the map transparent.

If you are working on a hyd layer, topo layer, or bua layer, you will want to go the color map layer, and change the color for value 1.00000 by double clicking on the color next to it. Black is the default color, but that isn’t helpful except for the plan layer. You need not change the 0.0000 color, as you have already set that to be transparent, and it will not be visible on the map.

Then click OK, and the dialog will close, and transparency and colors will be visible on the map layer you just changed. Besides those awful background colors, the map that is being displayed starts to look a lot more useful now.

Right click on NYS_QuadIndex and choose Properties. Go to the Style tab. While we really do not have to use this layer any more, and could just disable it by unchecking it, I like to use it as a yellow background to indicate non-DEC lands on a map. To do this, click on the color box next to Fill Options, and set it to light yellow, as I did, or whatever color you want to represent private lands. Then go to Outline Options and choose an invisible line, to hide the quad boundaries.

It’s now starting to look a little better.

Now it we do the same with DEC Lands Outlines, setting it white or whatever color you prefer. Make sure it’s dragged above NYS Quad Index on the Layers, but below the Topographic Maps. I prefer no borders to be shown, as I find DEC boundaries to be confusing, as often Wilderness borders Wild Forest or Primitive Areas, leading to strange lines appearing in the maps. If you care about such borders, do leave them on though.

Now you got a map that is almost ready for use, that is once we delete roads that we know don’t really exist in a wilderness area, stylize campsites versus other facilities, stylize roads versus hiking trails, and maybe add some labels.

Step 6: Stylizing Roads versus Trails.

I like to make hiking trails a dashed black line of 0.75 map units, and roads a solid black line of 0.75 map units. This ensures on black and white printers one can tell the difference. To do this, right click on DEC Road and Trails, then the Style tab. From here, choose Unique Value from Legend Type.

We will use the MOTORV field to decide if something is a road or a hiking trail. Obviously, if this was a winter map, we might change this field to SNOWMOBILE or X-COUNTRY SKI. This field contains, ‘Y’, ‘N’, ‘M’, ‘U’, and sometimes ‘YES’, ‘NO’, depending on the forest ranger that inputed the data. Set the style as you wish.

Choose classification field MOTORV, then click the classify button. All of the different possibilities for roads or trails allowing motor vehicles will be shown. From there, set the colors and line styles as you so choose.

Step 7: Removing Invalid Roads from NYS Highways Shapefile.

If you use the OpenStreet Map Highway file future on the page, you will see it often has lines that overlap DEC hiking and truck trails, and has old woods roads or other invalid data, that you will need to delete to clean up your map, and avoid confusing users. It’s pretty safe to delete all highways from Wilderness-areas, unless you are sure that such a road actually exists.

You need to right click on New York Highways Shapefile, and choose Toggle Editing. A pencil will appear next to that layer. Then use the select tool on the second toolbar, in the upper left (selected in box below). Highlight the streets you want to delete, and they will appear yellow.

Use the Delete Selected button to delete the roads you have highlighted. Notice buttons nearby that allow you to split features into multiple features. These are helpful if you know only part of a road has been closed or abandoned, and you want to remove only part of the road from your map.

I zoomed in on Round Lake to search for other invalid roads I wanted to remove. Looks okay now, although I still question some of those roads located in Whitney Headquarters. Having not been there, I can not say which ones have been gated or abandoned, so I will leave them on for now. Right click on the NY Highways Layer to save your changes to that Shapefile.

Step 8: Stylizing Assets.

Next we need to change the various DEC Physical Assets from a single color dot, to icons that represent the asset. With the current map, we can not tell the difference between a campsite, a parking area, or trail register. This could be rather confusing for anyone using our map.

This is very similar to changing the symbols for roads versus hiking trails in the previous step. Go back to the properties dialog. This time, we want to stylize things based on Unique Value, then Classification field Asset. Then, click Classify. This will create unique color for each icon. By browsing the “Point Symbol”, you can now give primitive campsites proper looking icons. Don’t forget to set the size. I usually set icons at Size 3.0 or 4.0, but it varies a lot on the final scale of the map.

Finally, I zoomed in to check on my work. Wit the icons set, we have a pretty nice looking map. I can spot the campsites, parking areas, trails, and the private property-public lands boundaries. I know where to put in my kayak, to explore Round Lake. It’s too bad, I don’t know which if any roads to remove from Whitney Headquarters, so I’ll have to go in person if I want to correct the map.

Step 9: Adding Labels to Trails and Roads.

Yet, I would also like to see some names on the roads and trails. Select the DEC Trails layer. Go to Layers menu and choose Labeling. From here, click Label This Layer, then choose Fields with Labels and select Name. The default style of 12 point fonts is almost always too large for most maps, a font size between 5 to 7 points is what you mostly likely will use. Then select, Buffer to create a small white background around each label. This is usually necessary to make your labels appear readable on the map.

Then click the Advanced tab. The default placement for labels is Parallel, which labels the largest amount of items, but doesn’t look very pretty. Curved is the prettiest, but it will not label particularly twisty lines. Priority controls which labels are most important if you have multiple layered roads. I usually set NYS Highway Shapefile to a low priority as the underlying topos usually also have road names, and trails to a much higher priority.

So now you should be set with labels. You have to do this with each layer with labels, such as the NYS Highways layer. You can do this also with the assets layers, although I generally do not bother, as I don’t really care about the sometimes lengthy names the DEC gives campsites.

Step 10: Printing and Making Images to Export.

Looking at a map in QGIS is kind of fun, but pretty useless when your on the trail. Go to File -> New Print Composer. A dialog like this will appear.

Next, you will want to change the paper size to something more reasonable then A4. Most likely you’ll choose Letter-sized paper. Below that set the resolution. Choose the orientation most appropriate for your map, I often use Landscape. To get high quality map print outs, you will want to set the the quality box somewheres between 300 to 500 dpi. Even if you are just exporting as a picture, it is good to preserve the resolution for future printing.

Then click on the canvas icon (circled in blue), to draw the surface the map on your canvas. This will provide you a canvas to draw on your page surface. You may wish to click “Snap to Grid” and set “Spacing to 5.0” to make it easier to line the canvas up. Click the magnifying glass, with the plus sign or the icon directly to the left of it, to expand the window so it’s easier to work on the canvas. This doesn’t change output, only the display on the screen.

Next, click Item tab, and then the Extents label. This will bring up the map extent box. The extents of the map will be listed in Northing and Easting, a series of large numbers that tell you how many meters you are North and East of the Greenwich, England. This is the standard form of measurement used by the Universal Transverse Mercator positioning system. Just click, “Set to Map Canvas Extent”.

Click Map. You can use the Earth on Hand Tool (circled blue on this screenshot), to move around the image on the map. Then you can go to the scale box, and adjust the zoom. Smaller numbers mean more zoom in. A standard topographic map is at 1:24,000 scale, however, I generally prefer a scale of 1:18,000 or so to make the map more readable. If you zoom in too far, the topographic map — a raster map, will become pixalated. In addition, if you zoom in too far in or out, you will have to adjust the thickness of trails on the map, and the size of icons.

Scale Bar, Labels.

The labeling tool is fairly self explanatory. It appears like a tag on the top of the screen (circled red). Use it to add labels, such as the name of the map and other details. Set the font, background color, and other options under the Item tab and the various lablels.

More challenging is adding a scale bar. Draw it using the scale bar tool (circled in green). The big hint here is that topographic maps are projected in Universal Transverse Mercator or UTM, which is a metric system. Each map unit is equal to one meter. Chances are you don’t care about kilometers. Set Map units per bar unit to 1610, which is roughly 1610 meters per mile. There are actually closer to 1609 meters per mile, but you will never notice the difference, as the map is at too large of a scale to notice that extra meter.

Then set the Segment size (map units) to a fraction of 1610. I typically do maps at 1:18,000 scale, so a segment size of 402.5, which is equal to 402.5 meters or 1/4 mile works perfectly. For larger maps, you’ll want to use a segment size of 805 meters (1/2 mile), or maybe even 1610 meters (1 mile).

Below Map units per bar unit is 4 Right segments and 0 Left segments. Set them as you please, but if your doing a 1/4 mile per segment scale, then the default of 4 usually works well.

Finally, don’t forget to type in a unit label. This doesn’t effect anything, but it’s nice for the user of the map to know what the scale is done in.

Step 11: Printing or Saving.

Most of the time you’ll want to save your map as a JPEG image, that you can open up at any time easily, add to a Microsoft Word document, email to friends, or print at a later time. I circled the save as an image button with a yellow circle. Assuming, you set the resolution sufficiently detailed (such as 300-500 DPI), you’ll get an excellent print out later on. Save your image and your done.

Alternatively, you can print directly from QGIS. I circled the print icon with red. I do not recommend this option, as it’s a pain to have to open up the saved QGIS project, and then the open print composer, every time you need a particular map, compared to having it saved. Even on fast computers, loading QGIS can take a bit of time to load and navigate.

Conclusions.

If all goes well, you should end up with a map that looks like this map. Your styling choices may be different, but you will still know where to put your kayak out, when going up to Round Lake in the Round Lake Wilderness, and the location of all the campsites.

I appologize if I missed any major steps. There are a lot more you can do with QGIS, but I wanted to cover the major steps, and provide hints for some of the things I found most confusing about using QGIS when I started using it regularly about a year ago now. I hope this is helpful. — Andy

Where to Camp in Black River Wild Forest

I have spent a lot of this past summer exploring the Black River Wild Forest, and decided it would be a good to share my experiences and some of the roadside and other campsites I’ve discovered along the way. As of September 2011, Lands and Forests in Albany doesn’t have these campsites in the central inventory, so all of this campsite data is based on personal exploration of these campsites.

North Lake.

Some of the best camping in the Black River Wild Forest is North Lake in Atwell. There are 22 campsites — many of them vehicle accessible along this man made lake. The southern end of the lake has some private houses and cabins on it, but it still is relatively pristine and beautiful. Most sites have outhouses and fire pits. Some but not all sites have limited wood supply. All sites designated.

Motors are allowed on this lake — as are on all wild forest lakes — so don’t be surprised to hear a jet ski or small boat on there. There are no public boat ramp on lake, so only hand launched boats can get on the lake.