Navigation and NatGeo

Boy, are those National Geographic maps full of errors. We noticed this a few years ago, when we saw that NatGeo had Red Can Lake as Red Canyon Lake. And some of the trail mileages were really off as well. We hiked one section above Benson Lake that was marked at 0.6 miles, and we did it in about 45 seconds. It was closer to 0.1 mile.

On this last trip, we noticed a few more. Wilmer Lake is called Wilma Lake on the NatGeo, and the mileage down to Hetch-hetchy was off by over a mile compared to the NPS signs. And our hiking experience confirmed the NPS mileage. Plus, there is so much color shading on those Nat Geo maps that you can read the contour lines half the time. Makes you wonder if anyone from NatGeo ever uses these maps on the trail…

We now print out maps from acmemapper.com. They are free, and you can print out any scale you want---including much better detail than the Nat Geo maps.

Plus, they make a nice trip record for each of our backpacking trips...