Time to Plan an Adventure!

High quality Topo maps from home!   There have gotten to be a lot of good GPS apps for phones but most everyone will still recommend having a high quality printed map in hand is still a must for serious backcountry travel.  But finding printed topo maps is getting harder and harder.  Most gear stores are no longer stocking printed maps.  But for many years we have been printing our own topo maps.  It takes a couple of pieces of free software and an inkjet printer but you to can have custom printed topo maps of just about anywhere in the world.  

​First you will need to download BaseCamp™ from Garmin  LINK  Several pieces of software download as a suite with Basecamp.

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Second Visit GPS File Depot and Choose the State or Country you are looking to print maps for.   LINK

Once you have installed the Basecamp software and downloaded the map sets you want from GPS File Depot install the Map set by double-clicking the file extractor. Basecamp Map Manager will open asking you to add to the maps list. 

Now you can open Basecamp, click the Maps Drop down from the menu and select the State or country map set. You can now browse the map, zoom in, add tracks, type in notes, and then select an area to print just like printing a standard document.



Be sure to use the Print Preview feature on the print control popup to scale the map, position it and get just what you need in your printed map.  

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Add Notes, Waypoints, Tracks, Highlight Trails, and keep track of Points of Interest.

There are a lot of features in Garmin BaseCamp and paired with the free topo maps from GPS File Depot gives you an easy way to make your own custom topo maps.