Help
Interacting with the map
Make sure you have JavaScript enabled on your browser, without JavaScript you won't see the map. Also try to upgrade your browser (especially from old Internet Explorer) for better functionality. Interacting with Google Maps is very intuitive. You can zoom in/out and pan the map with the zoom and pan controls to the left of map. Pan is also possible by holding down the left button of mouse and moving the map. Zoom functionality can alternatively be
achieved by rolling the mouse wheel.
Regions:
A province or state is divided up into regions (and further subregions) which are distinguished by colored polygons and a title for each region. The title is a hyperlink which takes you to the specific web page of that region. A region may have some content such as trails, huts, campgrounds which are depicted
by icons (lines for some trails). Clicking on an icon or line will open up a balloon (info window) with information about the particular feature. At present all kinds of trails/routes are depicted by hiker icon. This will be corrected in future to distinguish between backcountry ski, hike, climb, ... routes.
***Important***: In regions where there are many trails, such content might not appear on the map right away. Give it some time and if necessary you can zoom in or refresh the page, and the trails should show up.
Map types:
A map type can be chosen from the links along the top right of the map. Apart from the standard map types of google maps (namely "Map", "Satellite" and "Terrain"), you can choose topographic maps or the 3D Google Earth.
"CanTopo" brings up the 1:50000 scale contour map covering all of Canada. "BC-TRIM" is the 1:20000 scale Terrain Resource Information Management (TRIM) contour map covering the province of British Columbia. "Topo" refers to USGS 1:24000 contour map covering United States. "DOQ" refers to the Digital Orthophoto Quadrangle images of United States derived from aerial photographs. Note that the contour maps and DOQs are served from government servers and are not
part of Google's service. Hight traffic and heavy load on servers may affect the speed and functionality of the service. USGS topo maps and DOQs can be especially slow at times. If you don't see the map, be patient until it shows up.
You might have to refresh the page, and click the desired map type again.
The "Earth" link serves the 3D Google Earth on the web. When you use it for the first time you will be prompted to download the Google Earth plug-in to your computer. After the download, the "Earth" link will function similar to other map types and you will be able
to interact with the 3D terrain with satellite image. Note that even if you already have Google Earth downloaded on your computer, you'll need this plug-in in order to interact with GE over the web.
Google maps and other 2D map types such as topo maps have a fixed direction, i.e. North is toward the top of the map. However the 3D Earth map type can be turned towards any desired direction.
***Known Issue***: Please note that if you are in an area with lots of content such as trails/huts, etc., the 3D map might be slow to load. Zooming in and then clicking "Earth" link might help. After a while trying to load the map, you might get a prompt such as "script is running and whether you want to continue or cancel".
You can either continue until the 3D map loads, or if it doesn't, then you have to cancel, go to another region, load the 3D map and pan to your region of interest.
Map coordinates and locating a point:
The geographic latitude/longitude coordinates for a point on the map corresponding to the location of the mouse pointer shows up in the text box below the map. These geographic coordinates are based on WGS84 datum similar to Google Earth.
You can find a brief introduction to datums and projections in the Google Earth help.
A point with known coordinates such as a GPS waypoint can be located on the map by entering its latitude and longitude in decimal degrees and clicking on the "Locate Point" button.
Printing / Saving the Map
A print button link is located under the map for convenience. You can access the same functionality from the File menu in your browser. You can also see a Print Preview of the map from the File menu before printing.
To save (or print) the map, a good idea is to create a .pdf file. You can download a pdf writer freely (e.g. CutePDF) and choose the pdf writer instead of your printer when printing the document. As a trip leader you can plot a proposed route on a topo map and share with group members or friends before the trip. Also an image of the travel route can be especially useful for a trip report after the trip.
***Known Issue***: Please note that map print feature does not work properly in some browsers (for example icons don't show up correctly). It works well in Mozilla FireFox. If you don't use the Firefox browser, a solution is to get a screen shot of the whole page (with "Prt Scr" button of keyboard) and paste it to another software such as a photo editing software (Photoshop, Gimp) or "Word", "PowerPoint", "Paint", etc. Then crop the image and save or print it.
You will have to get a print screen for "Earth" as for some reason this map type doesn't show up when printed.
***Important***: When you save or print the digital map, there will be distortion or resizing of the map. Make sure you use the Google bar scale on the map for measuring distances and do not rely on the representative fraction (fractional scale of the topo maps). Also for any serious map and compass navigation it is safer not to rely on copied and printed maps that might have any kind of distortion.
Condition reports
Condition reports for the region of interest submitted by other users can be viewed by following the link "Public Submitted Reports" at the bottom of Conditions section to the left of the map. Reports can be viewed in two forms: as separate paragraphs or in table form. Read the "Terms and Conditions" for the website.
You can submit a condition report for your trip by navigating to the specific region in the website, and access the form to fill out from the "Submit Condition Report" link located on top of the page.
You will need to login to submit a report. You can write your username, full name, nickname, etc. as reporter. Make sure the date is the trip date(s) not when you fill up the report. Please use common sense in filling up forms. This is not a story of your trip.
Think about reporting important information that would give the reader a good idea of the local conditions. You are not limited by space for writing, the boxes will scroll as you type pass the bottom.
Please fill up only the boxes that are relevant to your trip. Even one or two sentences can be very helpful. Read the "Terms and Conditions" for the website. You can check out couple examples here.
***Important***: Please note that condition reports are specific to a region. Therefore submit a report for the region where travel took place. Some adjacent regions are combined with respect to their condition reports. If you cover more than one region during a single backcountry trip (e.g. a traverse from Yoho to Banff), you may want to submit the same report for both regions.
Also if you'd rather protect your powder stash or if there is great local's secret terrain (and don't want the crowd to find out about), you can write a general report, such as general snowpack condition on certain elevation/aspect in that area.
Planning a route / saving GPS data
This page will be deprecated in near future, and a newer feature with better functionality for map making, saving and uploading data to GPS will be added.
You can plot a route and save the waypoints as a GPS compatible file.
Zoom into the area of interest. Click "Start Recording Route" button, then click on the map where you want to start the route. Clicking on the next point draws a line between two points. Note that you can zoom in/out, change the map type, and pan the map
in order to find the next point of interest. You can view your route with the "Earth" map type but can not plot any waypoints in 3D terrain. The last segment distance as well as total distance of the route can be calculated in kilometers or miles. Note also by merely changing the unit, the distances in text boxes don't convert right away;
distances in new unit will be calculated after choosing the next waypoint.
Important to note: the calculated distances are straight-line distances between chosen points, they do not take into account the undulations in the terrain or meandering of the hiking trail, therefore they would underestimate the actual trail distance or travel route.
For a closer estimate of travel distance, choose the waypoints closer to each other especially when the terrain has a lot of undulations.
To save the route as a GPS compatible file, export the route in desired format (track or route), copy and paste the content into a text editor (e.g. notepad) and save the file with a .gpx extension (e.g. "myhike.gpx"). Then you can upload the file to your GPS or open it in Google Earth for further editing.
Alternatively you can input coordinates individually from the CSV file as waypoints into your GPS. Functionality for uploading your own GPS data to GeoKov map is not available at this time.
Import and display data on map
It's a good idea to backup your GPS device data (e.g. through MapSource) before accessing it by Geokov.com. The implementation of this feature is fairly new to Geokov.
Your Data Privacy:
Once you've installed the Garmin Communicator Plugin, connect your device to the computer and turn it on. Upon clicking on "Find Devices" you'll get an alert box (as below), by which you'll be prompted to allow or disallow access to your Garmin device from the Geokov.com web page.
Please note that the whole process of importing and displaying your data is done through the program code (i.e. javascript) run on your browser on your computer. None of the data is accessed, saved or cached by the Geokov server. Therefore as you delete your data from the text area, close the page or browse away, the data will be gone also.
Same process is implemented when you paste your data file content into the text area to be displayed on the map. Geokov.com does not access your data.
In the case of importing remote data from a third party website, Geokov server has to make a request for that data, fetch it and pass it to the client browser to be displayed on the map. This is the only case that the server is involved, however again no saving of data takes place.
In the future, in case the functionality is put in place by Geokov for public data sharing, you'll be explicity informed regarding any contribution of your data for public use.