Feature: Trail Mapping Made Easier

To call snowmobiling a popular winter activity in Upstate New York would be an understatement. The area north of Interstate 90 sits at the same latitude as the Canadian province of Ontario or higher. Western New York, in particular, is ideal for anyone who enjoys winter sports as it sandwiches between the lake-effect snow factories of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

The state has an estimated 11,000 miles of snowmobile trails, and the need to map and mark them for navigation and safety—in summer as well as winter—inspired a trio of surveyors from western New York to form a trail-mapping service called Endless Trails last year. Even though the venture began as a way to combine their surveying expertise with winter fun, they discovered that doing the job right has not been child's play. It requires the kind of advanced GPS and GIS technology they use in their core businesses.

"Like everything else, this just kind of happened," says Steve Hubertus of Stephen J. Hubertus Land Surveyors, Hornell, New York. In 2003, during a particularly rough winter, Hubertus and his friend Jim Ball of Wellsville-based James Ball Land Surveyors had bought utility snowmobiles to help them get around for their surveying work. While using the new machines, they discovered that recreational snowmobiling could be fun, and Ball suggested that Hubertus join Ball and his son Jason in the activity where Ball lives. But there was no such thing as a map of Allegany County snowmobile trails. So Hubertus, Ball and another friend Chuck Hathaway, who works for the New York State Department of Transportation, Region Number 6, set out to develop a county trail map with funding through the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation's (OPRHP) Snowmobile Trail Grant Program.

In the tradition of renowned New York conservationist Teddy Roosevelt, the existence of the grant program and the politically active New York State Snowmobile Association (NYSSA) indicates how popular snowmobiling is there. The 12,000-member association, an umbrella organization of clubs throughout the state, handles information such as trail mapping and also obtains funding for trail maintenance through the OPRHP, based largely on the information provided by the clubs. So the resources exist for classifying and properly mapping and marking trails in areas such as Allegany County, whether they are a section of the state trail corridor or a local trail that might traverse part of a landowner's property.

GPS Becomes Important

One OPRHP initiative is to develop and map all snowmobile trails with GPS systems. Funding for trail maintenance is based on mileage, and mileage accuracy is increasingly important, making the use of GPS mandatory for mapping the trails. In 2005, the NYSSA launched a Trail GPS/GIS program to assist clubs in providing the NYSSA with GIS-based trail information. The surveying trio does not need to be educated on the use of GPS for mapping trails—Hubertus has conducted seminars on the use of GPS at a local outdoor sporting goods store—but found that a need exists for the kind of precise surveying work they do using advanced equipment. Local economies and even the state's tourism industry as a whole benefit from the availability of GIS-based snowmobile trail maps during the winter months.

"A lot of the maps are available through local snowmobile dealers and different points of interest where you might stop and get gas or food," notes Hubertus. "We are basically creating a trail that you, as the snowmobiler not familiar with our area, can come here, find a map, use it, go off and ride. We also designate on our maps where there is food, lodging, gasoline, supplies, and safety/aid stations. It's critical to make sure that the snowmobiler unfamiliar with our trails is safe and can comfortably navigate the trails."

GIS is particularly useful for marking local trails that cross private property. Rather than ride across or set up a sign on a given homeowner's property, it helps the trio to know who lives there so they can call ahead and explain what they plan to do. A GIS program allows the trio to create an initial shape file that includes county tax assessment information to which they can refer in the field to determine who lives at a particular location.

Hubertus says using the type of handheld GPS unit available at many retail stores to capture data for GIS did not provide the necessary accuracy. Hathaway, the GIS expert, discovered this when trying to develop Endless Trails' first maps using the data from the handheld units.

Hubertus recalls how time-consuming it was just to consolidate the various pieces of data into one shape file using GPS data from a handheld unit. "I did a 40-mile trail here in Steuben County, for instance. To get it into a shape file and send in for approval by the state—this was a brand new trail—I ran this through two software packages three times each. I probably spent close to two eight-hour days on my own."

Enough Was Enough

Hubertus and Ball had a business relationship with Roy Boyd of Boyd Instrument and Supply Company, Horsham, Pennsylvania, and spoke with Boyd about what they needed to map the snowmobile trails. Because the area they were mapping is quite hilly, typically with elevations to 2,000 feet and valleys dropping up to 900 feet, they needed equipment that provides better accuracy than a handheld GPS unit alone. And since they would be plotting a tremendous amount of data, it would help if the data were more portable than with an over-the-counter unit. Ball relates how he and Jason Ball, who works at his surveying firm, took a handheld unit and a laptop out into the field to map a trail and had to stop every 10 miles or so to download the GPS data into the laptop.

Hubertus had seen an advertisement for a commercial-capability handheld GPS receiver equipped with an integrated electronic compass, a digital camera, and dual-constellation technology, meaning it would receive signals from both GPS and Glonass satellites, which are positioned to the north of the GPS satellites and thus provide better coverage on north-facing slopes. "I'm looking at this thing and it was almost perfect for what we wanted," Hubertus recalls. Boyd gave Hubertus and Ball a demonstration of the Topcon GMS-2 unit, and they were encouraged to learn that they could also use a software program called TopPad developed by Topcon and ESRI that, similarly to ESRI's ArcPad, generates shape files. "That eliminates working through a lot of different programs."

The two contacted Hathaway about their new purchase and let the GIS expert try it out. "Steve and Jim gave it to me to play with it and see what I could do with it, see what makes it tick," says Hathaway. "I have a couple of buddies here in Steuben County who gave me permission to ride close to 1,000 acres of fields and streams and roads and gullies." Hathaway first uploaded aerial photos from the New York State Office for Technology's New York State GIS Clearinghouse onto the new unit. Then, while riding into a canyon and against a few north-facing slopes with heavy Hemlock tree cover, he verified his locations on the aerial maps using the new unit and an external PGA-5 antenna.

Real-Time Corrections Enter the Picture

Such an antenna can mount on a utility terrain vehicle or working snowmobile. The antenna and a BR-1 Beacon Receiver that accesses the Coast Guard Beacon real-time correction service provide Endless Trails with much higher data accuracy than the handheld unit alone. The Beacon service enhances the signal correction provided by the GPS receiver's Wide Area Augmentation System signal correction and differential GPS capability, which provides location mapping nearly in real time. Boyd points out that this combination allows the trio to achieve sub-meter accuracy on its trail maps. "From a trail aspect, it's a lot tighter than you need, but it's better to have it that way than the other way," Hubertus states.

They really noticed a quantum leap in productivity from the portability of their collected location data as they mapped Allegany, Steuben, and Delaware county trails from September 2006 to April 2007. "As long as we had an SD [secure digital] memory card and we were getting good satellite coverage, it was nothing for us to use the unit in whatever conditions we were in," says Ball. "I think one day we had a 70-mile trail location." Adds Hathaway, "We can gather that information and put it right onto a card. You can put another card in and keep riding."

With the handheld unit they used previously, he adds, he could download the data from the unit to a laptop computer, but then he needed to download translator software to convert the data to a shape file. In addition, the other handheld unit did not allow them to upload county tax assessment information, so it was difficult if not impossible to determine whose private property might be on or along a trail during the mapping process. They rode the trails and logged location data with an all-terrain vehicle, utility terrain vehicle, and snowmobile and walked the trail on private property when necessary. "In some areas where the landowner had issues, we also had to walk the trail to get a location, and each individual landowner had a different set of specifications for us," Hathaway explains.

Endless Trails' jump in both accuracy and productivity allowed the trio to map 600 miles of trails for 13 clubs in three counties prior to the start of the winter of 2007-2008. The accuracy obtained with the new unit versus the over-the-counter handhelds "is not even in the same league—it's like comparing a bicycle with a Harley," Hubertus muses.

While Endless Trails does not have definite plans for growth, Hubertus sees plenty of potential for the new venture outside its own backyard. The trio could personally map trails of all types anywhere in the nation, but more likely, they could train land managers on the proper use of GPS equipment. "It's not just snowmobile trails; we've mapped hiking trails, and if anybody has a trail they want us to locate, we can do that," he says. "New Hampshire, I believe, has 3,000 miles of roads and 6,000 miles of snowmobile trails. We could go up there and educate those people on how to use this stuff. We can do a lot of different things."

About the Author

Don Talend of Write Results, West Dundee, IL, is a communications and publicity consultant specializing in the trade media.

» Back to our May 2008 Issue