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Sir Edmund Hillary
July 20, 1919 – January 11, 2008

Last week, one of the greatest explorers and adventurers of our time, Sir Edmund Hillary passed away.

In an age without goretex and spring-loaded cams, he and Tenzing Norgay managed to climb Everest against all odds.

As a mountaineer, I am still in awe of the climbs that they accomplished during a time when things must have seen a lot harder, and Everest a lot taller than it is today. In fact, for the longest time, I had a poster of the Hillary Step in my room that reminded me every day of perseverance and the motto “Carpe Diem” — seize the day, while you still can.

More importantly, Sir Hillary embodied a sheer force of will, respect for the outdoors and for other climbers — something that is sorely missing in a lot of today’s adventurers.

So here’s to Sir Edmund Hillary. Way to climb, just for the hell of it.

As someone spends a fair bit of time outdoors, I understand the importance of maps. So, here are a few sources maps that I find quite useful.

National Geographic

One of the great sources of quality black and white maps is National Geographic’s Xpedition. It provides PDFs of maps in vector format that can pretty much be zoomed into whatever resolution you want (of course, it does not contain much detail). And while it is made with kids and education in mind, it is extremely useful, especially when you are planning on venturing into areas totally unknown to you.

Secondly, also from National Geographic is their MapMachine. I would highly recommend MapMachine over traditional map sources if you are going to unknown places (say, the Arctic circle). Its satellite imagery and resolution is far better than what other sources provide (e.g. Google or Yahoo! maps). For instance, look at the results for a fairly middle-of-nowhere place — Barrow, Alaska — for Google Maps and for NG MapMachine.

National Geographic MapMachine map of Barrow, AK

Google Maps map of Barrow, AK

See the nice little frozen arctic and the frozen polar ice cap to the North? That’s what’s missing from Google Maps. Plenty of such small details go a long way in helping you understand what’s out there. Now, Google Earth is also quite similar.

Google Earth map of Barrow, AK

Now don’t get me wrong - I like Google’s traditional offerings for urban locales, but they aren’t the very best for places that are “out there”, so to speak.

Another excellent source of maps is National Geographic’s Topo, which is quite good. If you are a subscriber to the Adventure magazine, they do give the software away for free every once in a while, with some free trails and maps. You can also find several such maps online, or can buy them off NG. Usually, if you hang out in the right outdoorsy forums, you can find someone willing to give you their map collection for free. These usually tend to be very region specific, though.

University of Texas

For physical geographical maps at a slightly higher level of abstraction, I would strongly recommend University of Texas Libraries’ Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection. It is quite detailed and extremely useful. They have maps of various regions (oceanic, polar, historic, political etc.) as well as the more traditional maps.

They also have a lot of their maps in PDF formats, which is an extremely big plus. On the other hands, some of the older maps are lacking in resolution, which is rather unfortunate.

USGS

The United States Geological Survey has some of the best maps in the world. You can browse a lot of their maps in their online library, or buy their physical maps at the USGS store.

If you are looking to downloading their maps, I would recommend using the USGS Map Locator and Downloader utility. Just enter the name of the place and you can find the list of maps available. Be warned, though - in some of the more remote places, you will find maps that are quite old (e.g. 50s and 70s).

GIS Tools

How can one talk about maps and GIS without mentioning ArcView? ESRI has some of the best GIS software and maps in the world. While their stuff is mostly for commercial/academic usage, it is totally worth its weight in gold.

But it must be mentioned that unless you are quite serious about what you do and genuinely use a lot of GIS applications and data, this will be an overkill for most people. On the other hand, the ArcGIS Explorer is a free version that you could use for personal purposes.

ArcView Explorer map of Barrow, AK

They also have several other “free” tools that you could use to play around with GIS data.

The other company worth looking at is MapTech. They also have some very good navigational and topographic products - although a lot of them seem geared towards sailors and aviators. Often times, you can see them using materials and data from ESRI and USGS for a lot of what they offer.

Atlases & Books

Of course, I still have some fantastic Atlases with me, mostly by National Geographic or by other companies. Most of these use USGS data in unique ways. Lonely Planet also has some good maps on occasion, but their maps aren’t very good for the serious outdoor enthusiast.

At the end of the day, maps are very personal things — once you are used to a particular style and way of doing things, you tend to prefer maps to be in that style. Having used National Geographic maps for most of my trips and ventures, I rather like them.

On the other hand, let me just say that maps are only as good as the navigator. If your navigation and path-finding skills aren’t particularly great, even the best map in the world cannot help you.

Get a good compass and learn to find your way using a compass and a map — once you have that learnt, the rest will automatically follow.

I love the cold. I love snow and ice. I hate hot weather with a passion. And I have been to parts of the world where thermometers do not mean much (mostly because they would crack and break, of course).

Given this and my penchant for adventure, I had given my name for an expedition to the Arctic. I was put on the waiting list since it was quite obviously an expedition that was much in demand. What more, it was in the winter — just who wouldn’t want to be in the Arctic in the winter, with the Northern Lights, polar bears and the simply gorgeous weather with all that snow?

So, last evening I get a call from the Earth Watch Institute telling me that a position had opened up in the expedition and asking me if I would be interested in going. The only downside of course would be that it would put me back by a good chunk of money (you know, all that equipment and doing things up there costs money).

And here I am, with my snowy dilemma. To freeze or not to freeze? At the end of the whole thing, it would be about two weeks out there and I would be more than a few dollars poorer.

On the other hand, I get to go to a place where few people have been. The downside of course is the age old conundrum between desirability and affordability, as Akshay puts it.

So, my dear readers. Do I spend money to spend days out in the snow, at -50 c, freeze my sorry ass, work on some interesting but tiring stuff, watch the northern lights but wake up at unearthly hours — or do I just give in and hope that something else comes along in the future?

After spending my time sleeping in bivy sacks on my climbing trips, I finally decided to get myself a cheap-but-good tent for regular short climbs.

It’s a 7×7 foot Swiss Gear three-person, three-season dome tent. I do need to get some soft-shell spray-on to waterproof the tent before I take it out.

And the moment I got back home from work, I couldn’t resist putting it together to see what it looks like and snap up a couple of pictures. So far, I’m impressed, especially considering the price that I paid for it!

And oh, it looks a tad weird because I put it together on the concrete. So, the tent could not stretch out on the floor (which would have been possible on the ground by driving stakes through the base). But despite that, it seems to be a pretty good investment.

I’m a happy camper!

I totally had to post these two base-jumping videos. To say that I am jealous would be an understatement — at least now I have a new hobby that I am going to work on!

I’m jealous!