The height of Mount Everest, according to the most recent and reliable data, is 29,035 feet (8,850 metres). In 1999 an American survey, sponsored by the (U.S.) National Geographic Society and others, took precise measurements using Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment. Their finding of 29,035 feet, with an error margin of plus or minus 6.5 feet (2 metres), was accepted by the society and by various specialists in the fields of geodesy and cartography.

So the most accurate mountain height in the world is plus or minus 2 meters.

From everything I've read and studied, it seems that Canadian and US peak heights as a whole are only accurate to plus or minus 5 meters. For example, Corbett's explanation in his chapter "How accurate are the summit elevations" concludes that the accuracy of NTS spot elevations is about 1/3 the contour interval. That would be plus or minus 33 feet or 10 meters. He says the TRIM heights are said to have an accuracy of plus or minus 5 meters.

I've plowed through some pretty technical papers on survey heights, but I have never seen anything that claims accuracy of more than plus or minus 5 meters that stands up to challenge.

So given that 5 meters is the accuracy, what does that mean? It means that if you see a spot height of 11,033 feet, and the accuracy is plus or minus 33 meters, then in 95% of the cases, the true height of that peak will be over 11,000. But 5% of the cases, the peak could be less than 11,000 feet. However if the spot height is 11,075, then you are almost certain that the height is over 11,000. (33 feet is 10 meters). So the spot heights are plus or minus 10 meters.

Estimates based on contour lines are less accurate. A peak that has a contour of only 10,900 could easily be over 11,000 feet - all that is necessary is that one contour line is missed. A peak with only a 10,800 foot contour is less likely. In 95% of the cases the contour lines are within half the contour interval - 50 feet. So in 95% of the cases, there would be at least a 10,900 contour if it was truly 11,000'. However, in 5% of the cases, that contour could be missing as well. Such could be the case with Mount Warren.

Now the second stage is: how confident are we that my assertions above are correct? What tests can we do? A set of "true values" is of course not available. And I don't think that any amount of study of survey methods is going to give you the answer.

One way to test the assertion is to see how much variance there is between two different sets of peak measurements, each supposedly accurate to +/- 5 meters. So we can compare NTS spot heights with TRIM spot heights. If we look at a whole bunch of them, and see a significant number varying by more than 10 meters, then we can reject the assertion.

I did such a comparison. Based on the sample I have so far, I see the highest spread is 18m which could be explained as one set being plus 9 meters and the other being minus 9 meters of a true value. So I can't yet reject the assertion that the NTS are within 10m. But it's close. I need a bigger sample. See Height Variance Report. See also an earlier study into this question. Peak Height Variances between TRIM and NTS Maps.

Summary: Over the years, I have done several deep investigations into what is know about map accuracy at the Geological Survey (GSC) and then statistics people at the USGS. I was looking for other types of statistical measurement. (I've been studying this since graduate school). But in my map investigations I did not find anyone who knew any more than I did. Most they could do was refer to some 50 page document that someone had written on a contract, and which no-one understood. My conclusion is that when talking about map accuracy, again you have a hard time going beyond the simple statements.

3. Current Bivouac Data Plan
As of 2013, the current design of the Bivouac database is that every mountain record has a field for mountain height. This height can be either in feet or meters. It is a text string, and labelled with the units. Eg: "12294 feet". Behind the scenes, the text string is translated into meters, for sorting purposes.

The current Bivouac policy is to enter heights in the units given in the source. For example, if the height we used for Mount Columbia was the usually quoted "12294 feet" we would enter it as such. However since we use the TRIM height as the source, we enter it as "3741m".

This standard helps you trace where the number came from. In addition to the traditional height field in the mountain record itself, there is now a separate record type called a "Height Measurement record". There are usually multiple "measurement" records for each peak, and each one shows the height according to that source. For example, see the table at the top of the Mount Columbia page. Each height measurement is either in feet or meters, and then converted and rounded to the other units. Thus you can usually see the chronology of the measurements by looking at the numbers. On the Columbia page, click on "Height Report" to also see notes analyzing where the heights came from.

  Source                      Meters   Feet
---------------------------------------------
  TRIM Spot                   3741 -> 12274
  Corbett                     3747 -> 12293
  Rockies North (Metric)      3747 -> 12293
  NTS Imperial spot           3747 <- 12294
  Rockies North (Imperial)    3747 <- 12294
  NTS Metric Contour          3780 -> 12402

In the above height table, the rows go from the lowest values to the highest. Note the "direction arrows such as "->" and <-" which tell you the direction of the units translation.

In the height table, the first column is the "source" of the number. If you click on it, you can read all about that source, and their general methods of getting the heights in the first place. For example, the book "Rockies North" written by William Putnam usually counted contour lines on the government 1:50K maps as their primary "source", and often "tweaked" these numbers.

A chronological list of all important Bivouac documents relating to Mountain Heights is given Mountain Heights. These show how the design evolved to deal with various issues.

4. Rocky Mountains of Canada Series (Putnam)
There are four separate books which are often quoted as a source for heights in the Canadian Rockies. They are sometimes referred to as "Putnam" guides, after William Putnam, one of the authors common to all the later versions.

Rocky Mountains of Canada - North
 Yellow, plastic cover, imperial, 1974

Rocky Mountains of Canada - North
 Green book, metric, 7th Edition, 1985

Rocky Mountains of Canada - South
 dark green, plastic cover, imperial, 1973

Rocky Mountains of Canada - South
 Dark green, metric. 1979

  Feet and Meters:
 The original guides gave heights of all peaks only in feet. In the last edition those numbers were simply converted to meters. In most cases the conversion was properly rounded, but in a few cases it was just truncated at the last digit. (For example, Mount Temple was 11,626 feet, which converts to 3543.6 meters. It should have been rounded upto 3544, but Putnam just chopped it to 3543, which then became the new standard number. On the other hand, sometimes the number got rounded up when it should not. Eg: Lunette had 11150 feet, which is 3398.52m, but somehow in the metric book, it appears as 3400m. It didn't come from NTS as there is no closed contour for Lunette.

The origin of most of the heights is still the same: either the NTS 1:50,000 maps or boundary survey numbers. So if you want to trace where certain numbers came from, you need to refer to the imperial version of the guidebook, because the metric ones were just conversions and the rounding just obscures the source.

For example, the commonly quoted height for Mount Columbia now is 3747m. First of all, note that this number did not come from any new metric maps for that area. Its origin was the spot height on the older imperial version of the 1:50,000 map. This was copied to the older Rocky Mountains of Canada Guide. But then the subsequent metric edition translated it as 3747 meters. (thus losing the 12294 number). Once you have only the metric version, authors such as Corbett use that as their source, and when giving the height in feet, convert backwards, and sometimes get a slightly dilfferent number. For example Corbett gives the height of Columbia as 3747/12293. So now you know the origin of any 12293 measurement you might see quoted.

History:
 The series was first authored in 1921 by Dr James Munroe Thorington, and since then, there have been 7 editions by different groups of authors. The most recent edition was in 1985. They were published by the American Alpine Club although the last one in 1985 was co-published by the Canadian Alpine Club.

How to Refer to them:
 Because the titles varied slightly over the years, and because the name "Rocky Mountains of Canada" is somewhat generic, these books are often referred to as "Putnam". To distinguish between Imperial and metric, one needs to tack those words onto the reference. Eg:

Putnam Imperial
  Putnam Metric

And then each is split into North and South volumes, which are published at different times.

Where did Putnam get the heights?
 Putnam gives no source of the heights but I think most originate from the 1:50,000 maps, and in some cases he tweaks them to get relative heights correct. Here are the cases:

1. Spot Height
    If there was a spot height, that was used directly in the imperial edition, and then simply converted and either rounded or interpolated in the metric version.

2. Highest Imperial Contour, rounded to metric
    In these cases, he uses the highest contour directly (without interpolation). Eg: Mt Mitchell he uses the 10,000 foot contour directly. He gives the height only as 10,000 feet, the highest contour, not 10,050'.

3. Standard Interpolation of Imperial Contour, rounded to metric
    In these cases, he interpolates the imperial contour in a standard way. (Eg: If highest is 10,500 standard height becomes 10,550.

4. Interprovincial Boundary Survey Maps
    I (Robin Tivy) talked to William Putnam himself on May 4, 2013 about the source of heights. He says that a big source of height numbers was the Interprovincial Boundary Survey maps produced by Arthur Wheeler. I assume he is referring to Wheeler and Cautley's 1913-1922 Interprovincial Boundary Survey. Putnam says the survey used the railroads (Canadian Pacific and Grand Trunk, and Canadian Northern) as the baseline for the triangulation. They then produced long strips of maps. So that would be a probable source of heights such as Mount Victoria 11365 feet. Or Mount Cline. The railroad was used as the baseline till the 1970's.

5. Fancy Interpolation (not verified)
    In some cases, Putnam appears to have taken the highest contour and then make the height 1/3 contour higher, rather than using the standard 1/2 split. Eg: Edith Cavell was given a height of 11,033'. (Or perhaps this came from the boundary survey).

6. Tweaked Imperial (not verified)
    It is possible that some heights were "tweaked" just to get the relative heights of the peaks correct. For example, Mount Drummond has a height of 10,330 feet. He may have tweaked the numbers in certain areas so that relative heights of peaks were correct. (There were no GPS units available then, and as far as I know, no surveys were done since the maps.

7. Tweaked for Metric edition
    In these cases, the number in the metric edition is not just a rounded imperial number, but is adjusted. One reason is when the imperial was simply a truncated imperial. Eg: The Helmut
    However in this case the imperial was 11,200 (which did not interpolate), and the metric is 3420m which is 20 feet higher. I don't know where the 3420m came from, since there is not yet a metric map. The trim is 3418m. So I think Putnam just tweaked the old 3414 up 6 meters to make up for previous failure to interpolate.

8. Truncated Conversion
    In these cases, when the imperial was converted to metric, the answer was truncated rather than rounded. Eg: Silverhorn mountain, his non-metric version gives the height as 9550 feet which converts to 2910.8, but the metric edition gives the height as 2910, when it should have been rounded up to 2911m.

5. NTS 1:50,000 Maps
In most of Canada the NTS (National Topographic Series) 1:50,000 series maps are the best comprehensive source of peak heights. They are the origin of every height quoted in a guidebook. The only exception is in British Columbia which has 1:20,000 TRIM maps for the whole province. On the NTS maps, there are two ways to get the height of a peak: (1) a spot height or (2) contour interpolation. Some of the maps are metric and some are imperial. The imperial are more accurate, because the metric were just interpolated from them and rounded. Thus in Bivouac mountain height records, we have four separate source codes:

1. NTS Imperial Contour

2. NTS Imperial Spot

3. NTS Metric Contour

4. NTS Metric Spot

As of 2013, the majority of the 1:50,000 maps available in Western Canada are still imperial units. These maps have 100 foot contours, and every 5th contour is darker color. Eg: There might be a dark 3500 foot contour, and then 5 lighter 100 foot contours before the next dark 4000 foot contour. The contours are sparsely labelled so it is often quite a job to determine which contour you are looking at. Example: Mount Garibaldi.

Starting in the 1980's Ottawa undertook a poorly organized project to start converting the 1:50,000 series to metric. They started with Jasper, a high profile area, and had three different contour intervals. (1) The most common interval is major contours every 200m and then 5 minor contours of 40m. My notation for that is 200/40m. (2) Some map sheets such as Mount Brazeau had 250/50m which make everything look real easy till you get there. But the worst of all were the ones that had split contour interval: 100/20m below 2000m and 200/40m above. These maps are a nightmare to use because you can't even see where the steep terrain is. Fortunately after numerous complaints from the guides association, they standardized. But they never fixed the mapsheets that were done with the rogue methodsd. So if you look up Beauty Creek, and look at GMap, you'll see what appears to be an incredibly steep valley, and then relaxed terrain above 2000m.

In some parts of eastern Canada there are different contour intervals. For example Newfoundland has 50/10m. This looks good on the map because nothing is very steep. It makes moderate hills such as Lewis Hill appear to be rugged mountains.

I have also seen cases in the far north where too detailed a metric contour was used, 100/20 such that you can't read the maps.

Here are some examples of each:

  Edith Cavell   uniform 200/40m
  Mount Fryatt   uniform 200/40m contours
  Beauty Creek   split: 100/20m below 2000m, 200/40m above
  Vancouver      100/20m
  Cabox (Nfld)   50/10m
  Brazeau        250/50

6. Canada Topo
The Bivouac GMap defaults to the MyTopo version of the 1:50K NTS map. However, in the drop down menu you can choose "Canada Topo" and see the "toporama" map by the federal government. This is the new system that the government is using. In most cases, the contours are the same as on the latest NTS mapsheet, available from MyTopo. It is often easier to read because the contours are more frequently labelled.

Are they the same?
 Usually the contours are the same contours. But in some cases the Canada Topo contours are improved from the most recent NTS map listed by MyTopo. For example the Canada Topo contours for Sky Pilot are more recent than the contours on the NTS map displayed by MyTopo, and more recent than my latest paper copy of 92 G 11. (Edition 3, published in 2003).

7. Peak Height Policy in Alberta
In summary, the order of preference for which height to use is as below:

1. TRIM Spot (only available in BC border peaks

2. NTS Spot Height (Imperial before metric)

3. Putnam or NTS Contour interpolation *1

*1 In the case where there is a Putnam value such as Mount Drummond which has been deliberately adjusted, we use the Putnam rather than a contour interpolation. But if Putnam has just copied the highest contour, such as Mt Mitchell, then we use an interpolated value.

As part of a major project to check all the Alberta heights in Bivouac, I wrote the following document covering just Alberta. See Peak Heights in Alberta

8. Peak Heights in British Columbia
In British Columbia, we give preference to the TRIM spot heights. They are supposed to be accurate to +/- 5 meters. To check any given TRIM height in BC, jst click the BC Topo link. To check ones just inside Alberta, you have to use BC Basemap. See the Height Source record for more details.

9. Peak Heights in USA
In the lower 48 states, the standard maps are the 1:24,000 series maps. These have many more spot heights than the Canadian 1:50,000 maps, and are given to the nearest foot. These are the best source of "official" heights. Eg: Colorado

In Alaska, the standard maps are 1:50,000 scale, there are no 1:24,000 scale.

10. Provincial Boundary Survey Maps
The provincial boundary surveys from 1913-1916 were the source of many of the spot heights given in the Putnam Guides along the British Columbia - Alberta border. Bivouac member David P. Jones has copies of these actual maps. William Putnam also told me that these were the source of the heights in the imperial Putnam guides that are not on the maps.

They use the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern as the baseline. (Grand Trunk and Canadian Northern became Canadian National Railway. There are three volumes.

Part 1 - US Border to Kicking Horse Pass

Part 2 - Kicking Horse Pass to Yellowhead Pass

Part 3 - Yellowhead north

The maps are long strips, approximately 20 km on either side of the continental divide.

There are books at the Whyte Museum Archive in Banff that document the survey of the provincial boundary. The name of the exhibit is "Gateway to the Rockies". See Surveying the Rockies and Arthur O. Wheeler"

Author's Manual

1. Preface
The purpose of this manual is to give a new author a quick intro to the main types of posting to the website. Eg: how to insert road bulletins, trip reports, photos, etc. This document assumes you have already browsed the website and understand the difference between the different types of pages. The five main types are (1) a mountain page, (2) a trip report page and (3) a feature photo page, (4) a road page, and (5) a road bulletin.

2. Road Bulletins
Road bulletins are the simplest type of posting you can do in Bivouac. Just find the correct road page and then push the little brown "insert" link beside the "bulletins" title. To find the correct road page, you can either search for it's name, or use the "GMap" link from any nearby mountain page. Often the map is the best way to ensure you have the right road, because the names can vary. Once you've found the correct road page, see Insert Road Bulletin.

3. Photo on Your Member Page
One of the first things authors usually do is fix up their member page by uploading a photo of themselves. This is useful because every one of your road bulletins, trip reports, etc. have a link to your member page, and people naturally want to get to know the authors.

To upload a photo onto your member page, start by searching for your own name, using the search function on the front page. When you click on your name, you are looking at your member page. You will see a link called "Upload Photo" opposite your name. Click on that link and follow instructions. When you have uploaded the photo, the instructions will lead you to cut and paste the filename into a special field in your member record.

4. Feature Photos
A "feature photo" is a stand alone photo, not part of a trip report,etc. We used to call them "photo essays". A feature photo consists of a "photo record" plus an "image file". The record contains the title and description of the photo, etc. The process of entering a photo essay is now one continuous sequence of screens. First you insert the photo record, and when you insert that, it will allow you to upload the image file. Here are the details of how to enter a feature photo from your author menu. See Insert a Feature Photo

5. Trip Reports
Trip reports are the foundation of the guidebook, because any photos and road bulletins can be linked to the trip report. The most basic trip report is just a simple, concise chronological description of where you went, and then a few waypoints. See Insert Trip Report

6. Cross Indexing
Photos, trips and road bulletins are more useful if they are linked together. The links "cross index" the content such that if you are looking at a road bulletin, you can link to the associated trip report, etc. All this linking is done by means of "Id" values of the data records. For example, the Road Bulletin has a cross index field called "TripId". To get the trip Id for any given trip, just go to the trip page, and look in your browser's address window. You'll see something like "TripPg.asp?TripId=5650". The 5650 is the trip Id.

When writing road bulletins, don't worry about a bit of duplication. Don't hesitate to describe a trail in a trip report and then put in a road bulletin which duplicates some of the info.

Coordinate Converter - User Guide

This guide describes how to use and understand the Bivouac Co-ordinate Converter.

1. Purpose
The Coordinate Converter converts from any map coordinate format to any other. For example, you can translate a NAD27 grid reference such as "11 U 501000 5706000" to a WGS84 Lat-Long. Or convert a latlong in DM (decimal-minute) format to DD (decimal degree). See Map Coordinate Systems if you are unfamilar with the different coordinate systems.

The converter is especially useful for getting the lat-longs that correspond to the old style grid references such as GR648317 on map 83 C 11. Old timers in the Rockies such as Rick Collier used NAD27 Grid references throughout their reports. See examples;

Note that there are links on the trip and road pages which allow you to display the waypoints in any format. However, on the database they must be lat-longs, and they must be WGS84.

2. Input Formats
The Input field can be either a UTM grid reference, or a lat-long.

Lat-Long Inputs: A lat-long can be in any one of the three bivouac formats:

DD Decimal Degree (49.500-123.500)
  DM Degree:Minute (49:30.0-123:30.0)
  DMS Degree:Minute:Second (49:30:00-123:30:00)

UTM Inputs: If your input is a UTM grid reference, you must specify the zone number, zone letter and the leading digits. But the old convention of writing grid references truncates the leading digits, so that you end up with a grid reference like 468-395. To convert this to a full grid reference, you must figure out what the leading digits were.

Example: GR 468 395 from map 92 J/13 (this is Mount Binkert). To get the full UTM grid reference, either look in the upper left corner of the map, or look up some nearby peak. Eg: The full grid reference for Mount Fulgora is: 10 U 446059 5636394. The truncated grid reference is the 2nd,3rd and 4 digits of the first number (easting), and the 3rd, 4th and 5th of the second number (northing). Eg:

10 U   446059     5636394.

The highlighted numbers are the typical 6 digit grid reference. Eg: GR 460 363. To get the full grid reference for our original Mount Binkert, we would just substitute its truncated reference.

10 U   446859     5639594.

Now we have the full grid reference needed by the converter.

Below is another explanation:

10 U 666666 7777777
  10 U 6666 77777

A given 1:50,000 map has the same zone number for the whole map. Note the space between the zone number and the zone letter. If you are starting from one of those 6 digit truncated grid references, you must first determine the zone and leading digits. Easiest is to look up a nearby peak in Bivouac. The full UTM is given at the top of every mountain page.

If your input is a lat-long, it can be in any of the Bivoauc Lat-Long formats, as shown below:

49:30.1-123:40.2
  49.567-123.345

Then push the "convert" button. The system will automatically detect the position format of your input, and do the necessary conversions of both the Datum and the format. The results screen will show you the intermediate calculations. For example, if you are converting from a WGS84 Lat-Long to NAD27Canada UTM, you'll see the same point in three formats:

  WGS84  Lat-Long
  NAD27Canada Lat-Long
  NAD27Canada UTM

3. Output Formats
You can specify one of four different output Formats:

  UTM
  LatLong_DD  (Decimal Degree)
  LatLong_DM  (Degree:Minute)
  LatLong_DMS (Degree:Minute:Second)

When you do the conversion, you will see several lines of output. It starts with the input format you gave, and then shows each stage of the conversion on a separte line. This will help you understand what is going on in the calculation, and test the same conversion using your GPS.

4. Testing Coordinate Converter with a GPS
Below are the tests I did to make sure the numbers that come out of the coordinate converter are exactly the same as what comes out of a GPS. I used WGS84 Lat-Long to NAD27 UTM as an example.

1. Run the Co-ordinate Converter:

WGS84 49-123
  NAD27Canada 49.00015-122.99871
  NAD27Canada 10 U 500094 5427253

2. Change the setup in your GPS to WGS84m, Lat-Long (*1)

3. Mark a waypoint, and edit it to be exactly 49.0000-123.0000 (*2).

4. Go back into setup menu and change the datum to NAD27Canada and the position format to UTM. (*3).

5. Go back to the same waypoint, and read the co-ordinates with the new format and datum. This gave me:
  10 U 0500094 5427254 (almost identical to what "CC" gave me)

To test the reverse, I can start with the above result, and just key it into "CC":
 From NAD27CANADA UTM to WGS84 LatLong.

5. Example Conversion - Some Waypoints near Mount Horsey
Rick Collier had a problem with the converter, and emailed me the grid references. Below is EXACTLY how to convert them. Its worth going thru the example, because I learned a few things myself when I did a real example.

  328 923 Natural bridge parking area
  315 921 Old picnic grounds
  308 919 Start of first hill
  260 927 Start of second hill
  230 022 Otto Creek Fire Road

If you don't have the map itself, and somebody gives you a bunch of grid references, you can usually get the leading digits by looking up a nearby mountain. In the above, I looked up "Mount Horsey", then cut and paste its complete grid reference off the mountain page and into the converter.

  Mount Horsey:  11U 519600 5700800

   Input: WGS84  11 U 519600 5700800
   Output: WGS84   LatLong_DM

  WGS84 51:27.5-116:43.1

Although Rick didn't specify the map datum, I assumed his old map is NAD27 datum, so I specified that the input was NAD27. Below is the complete input:

   Input: NAD27Canada  11 U 523000 5702200
   Output: WGS84   LatLong_DM

The answer was:

  WGS84 51:28.2-116:40.1

Then I started down the list of the rest of them:

Natural Bridge Parking Area 328 923

Right off the bat, I got the wrong answer for Natural Bridge, because I forgot that I can't just blindly use the same leading digits for the whole map. The top part of 82N/7 has leading digits "57" but the bottom part is uses "56".

6. Convert Typical Rick Collier report
As of 2023, I verified this still all works. Rick's report Southern Italian Group: Abruzzi, Connor, Lancaster & Minton had numerous grid references he got off the old NAD27 paper maps that I wanted to convert to standard waypoints. Eg: GR 356788 is supposed to be a finger lake.

One test reference is a grid reference for a finger lake which he said was at "GR 356788". We want to convert that to LatLong. The converter wants a full UTM code. the truncated grid references given in reports are missing the first digit of the "Easting" and the first two digits of the "Northing". So the finger lake is at the following:

                       Easting  Northing
----------------------------------------------
 Finger Lake:    ?? ?  ?35600   ??78800
 Mount Abruzzi   11 U  633401   5589582
 

Since Finger lake is nearby, I assume it has the same leading digits. The zone is "11 U" and the first grid number starts with "6" and the second must start with "55". So the complete grid reference for finger lake is 11 U 635600 5578800

  Finger Lake 11 U 635600 5578800

So put the following into the converter: (note there is just a simple space between the components.

  Input: NAD27Canada  11 U 635600 5578800
  Output: WGS84  LatLong_DD

The output is in decimal degrees, with the standard datum of WGS84.

HOW I GOT THE LEADING DIGITS FOR ABRUZZI
  I could have gotten the leading digits from the paper map. However I got the leading digits by using GMap, looking up Abruzzi and then switching the position format to "UTM". That will display the entire UTM coordinates as I scroll around the map sheet. I only need the digits once, they will be the same over the entire map sheet. (6 and 55) Although the GMap is displaying UTM using the WGS84 datum, the leading digits will be the same when we convert NAD27 grid references.

1. Start up GMap at Mount Abruzzi
    In bivouac, search for Abruzzi, then click the GMap link at top of the mountain page.

2. Switch to UTM
    By default, GMap is displaying lat-longs as you move the mouse around. We want it to display UTM coordinates. This is done using the menu drop down in upper right corner. On the "Menu" choose the link UTM,USNG,MGRS. On the screen that pops up, click "UTM". Now notice that in the lower right corner you see UTM coordinates as you move the mouse around.

3. Hover over Abruzzi
    We want to see the full grid reference for Abruzzi so we can get the leading digits for the entire map sheet. When I scroll over Mount Abruzzi, I see something close to 11U 633617,5589476. Ignore the comma separator and put a space between the 11 and the "U". So the input for the converter we would use for Mount Abruzzi is as follows:

   
      WGS84   11 U 633617 5589476
   

4. Verify Abruzzi round trip
    To verify the converter is working correctly, take the UTM Grid reference from GMap and convert it to LatLong_DD. And then see if that is the same as if you read out the coordinates in decimal degrees.

5. NAD27 not WGS84
    Note that the coordinates we obtain from GMap are WGS84 whereas Rick's grid references he got from paper maps are probably NAD27. So when we use the converter on the Abruzzi test, set the input datum to WGS84, but for Rick's grid reference, set it to NAD27.

Data Model Introduction

This document describes the main types of data record and how they fit together in the encyclopedia.

1. Introduction
This document is a simple introduction to the "core" types of data records in the system. There have always been two main types of record in the website: Reports and Infrastructure. This reflects that the website is both an "alpine journal" and a "guidebook". The two types of record work together.

Journal Records (articles):

 1. Trip Reports
  2. Photo Essays

Guidebook Records:

 1. Mountains (with sub-records for route descriptions)
  2. Areas (with sub-records for access)
  3. Roads and Trails (with bulletins)
  4. Features (passes, waterfalls, canyons, etc.)

In addition to the core types there are dozens of secondary types of records such as product reviews, guidebooks, etc. These are not discussed here.

2. Trip Report Records
(Trip Reports, Route Reports) Since the beginning of the website, we've had a type of record called "Trip Report". In the current data model, the trip report record is stretched to include route description articles. In fact, it can accommodate ANY article that is localized such that it can be positioned with one or more waypoints. So it can be about a specific mountain or group of mountains. Some authors have already been using the trip report records for things that are not trip reports. One of the examples we wrestled with for ages have been the excellent articles written by Rick Collier, which he always put in as "trip reports", but were often really an article about the mountain. Other "articles" include the ones by Klaus Haring, which compare multiple aproach routes to a mountain. Route detail articles, which contain photos would also be handled as Mountain Articles. "Trip" is just one special type of mountain article.
  Trip (chronological story)
  Route (instructions)
  Other (geographic article, combination, comparison) Ones of type trip are plotted on the maps.

3. Photo Essay Records
These are similar to articles, except the main focus is on a particular picture, rather than the picture being supporting information.

4. Mountain Record
This record is obviously the foundation of any mountain guidebook, since it contains a record of every mountain.

b. Route Summary - Sub-Record (Rts) Route summary records are just sub-records of the mountain page. The main climbing routes used to be discussed as part of the mountain description itself. The reason for breaking them out as a separate record is so we have control over the formatting.
  S Ridge:
  N Ridge:
  SE Ridge

Routes should generally be used only to cover the actual climb. Approaches to a mountain (if necessary) will be mentioned in the description itself.

Note: At present, there is also a "Route Detail" record which in the ideal model is just a variation of the Trip record. These can contain detailed waypoints and pictures, and are under control of a specific author.

5. Road/Trail Records
Separating the "Road/Trail" record from the area "Access" record is something you don't find in a lot of guidebooks. For example, Fairley has a section called "Approaches" at the beginning of each of his chapters, which is a description of certain roads, but from the perspective of a certain area. In Bivouac, we have two separate records, each with a separate focus. When discussing a road, the focus is on the road itself, and when discussing an access, the focus is on getting into a particular area.

b. Road Bulletins These are just sub-record of each road, and for data model purposes can be regarded as part of the road record.

6. Area Records
Area records are primarily for the purposes of grouping together a bunch of mountains. An area should be an official name as marked on the map. For example, mountain ranges and icefields. However, there are some cases where we create our own "Groups". Here is our definition of group: A "group" is a compact group of peaks which are lumped together for purposes of discussing common access. Note that we do NOT use groups simply as a means of defining "sections" in the guidebook.

b. Access Summary Sub-Records (Acs) The access summary is just a sub-record of the area record. Originally the access was just a field in the Area record. The reason for breaking it out was to give more control over the format. Thus each record is specifically written for and firmly attached to a group or range.

7. Feature Records
These are just records that handle things like Passes, Huts and Lakes, that have a lat-long and a description. Theoretically mountain could have been handled as a "feature", but it has so many special fields such as height, that it is handled separately. The main features of importance are: Passes, Huts, Lakes, campgrounds and hotsprings.

Database Scope and Completeness

1. Preface
(Database intent and extent). For any database, it is important to have an idea of what it is intended to contain, and how complete it actually is, and what it is not supposed to contain. While such databases are being updated, it is important to have rules as to what should be in the database and what should not. And what priority should be given to any types of additions. These boil down to a set of insert/delete rules.

In each of the chapters which follows, I will outline the following:

1. Intention
    Intented contents of the database, when complete. What is the database supposed to contain? Eg: It is supposed to contain every officially named peak in Canada, every P500, and every P300 within 50 km of a trip report.

2. Current Extent
    (Completeness) How complete is the actual data, as compared to the intention? Eg: We think we have 98% of them. Such a statement implicitly assumes we have a general idea of how many there actually might be. For example, we believe we have 99% of all 500m prominence peaks, because we have looked at the topo maps in just about every area of Canada where such peaks might exist. It is highly unlikely that we would suddenly find areas that contain enough peaks to disprove this hypothesis. So "completeness" statements are in the form of a hypothesis. Such hypothesis are valid unless someone could identify huge areas where dozens of such items existed.

3. Priority for additions
    Given the current extent of the database may fall short of the intention, what is the priority for adding the missing items? The most common addition method is to add them as noticed while doing something else. Eg: If someone was working on a trip report and noticed a 500m prominence peak that was not in the database, we would immediately add any missing 500m prominence peak, and all such peaks in an area. Various projects have been undertaken to investigate remote areas to make sure we have all such peaks. Eg: Fred Touche spent weeks on Labrador. However, we don't currently have anyone systematically making sure we have all officially named peaks.

4. Rules for deletion
    (cleanup rules) What is the database NOT supposed to contain? In certain cases, you may come across an item in the database, and say "this item should not be in the database". So what we want to know are the rules and examples of things that should be deleted. Eg: If someone had added a dozen mountain records for little rock towers, all within 1 km of a peak, and all with less than 20m prominence, such "peaks" would be subject to deletion. The reason for deletion is they clutter up the map and also make the database hard to check and manage.

5. Case Studies
    A good way to communicate what is going on is to give some examples of things being added or deleted. Eg: Walker McBryde finds missing official peak near Banff, so we added it.

2. Peaks

1. Intention:
    The database is supposed to contain every officially named peak, and every peak over 500m prominence, and every peak of mountaineering interest over 50m prominence. The database may also contain peaks over 20m prominence.

2. Extent:
    (Completeness) Currently as of 2013, we believe that the database contains 99% of all the 500m prominence peaks, and 99% of all officially named peaks in Canada. Occasionally someone finds a missing peak, and we add it immediately. A report shows there are 123 peaks with less than 20m prominence, and these are being investigated. There are 19 in BC. A typ

3. Priority of additions
    Any P500 peak discovered will be immediately added. In the past few years, we very rarely find any new P500 peaks.

4. Deletion rules:
    It is very rare that we find peaks to delete, but occasionally certain peaks are deleted that have less than 50m prominence that are less than 1 km from some other peak. The reason to delete them is usually to clean up clutter, so that maps are not overwhelmed with names of bumps on ridges, or little rock towers. Projects: Projects have been undertaken to search for all such peaks.

5. Case Studies

   - The Elephant, with only 4m of prominence This was added by Fred Touche, and there is a photo of it. So I suppose it could remain in the database. However, we do not normally go looking for such things.

3. Roads
The database is supposed to contain every backroad in western Canada potentially useful for mountain access. It also may contain any backroad that is no longer useful, but is referred to in old guidebooks. Completeness: As of 2013, I'd say we have only 80% of the useful roads, and 95% of the roads actually used in one of the 5000+ trip reports. So there are still hundreds of useful roads that are missing. The highest priority is to add any road mentioned in a trip report. The second priority is to add all the major valley roads in BC and Alberta south of 55 degrees. Adding roads is considerably more difficult than mountains because roads must be investigated and researched, they can't just be added off a topo map. At present, the database is supposed to contain any road mentioned in a trip report, and the trip report is supposed to be linked to that road via a bulletin.

4. Trails
The extent of the trails in the database is that we have most of the trails that are the main method to access significant peaks. Eg: You would expect to find the main trails used to access any major peak in any of the national or provincial parks. Any trail of this type missing should be added immediately, as long as we know at least 5 waypoints.

If a trail is missing, and you can add at least 5 waypoints plus a description of its "General route", then add it.

Definition of "Mountain"

A mountain is a mass of land rising above surrounding lowlands. The area associated with a mountain is often discussed in terms of "ridges" leading out from the mountain. For example, "the west ridge of Edith Cavell". Mountains are measured using two main statistics: their height above sea level, and the height above the saddles that separate them from higher mountains. The second measure is called the "prominence" of the mountain.

Mountains are often listed. When preparing lists of mountains, a subject that often comes up is "what defines a separate mountain?" What mass is part of a given mountain, versus being part of some other mountain? There are several ways that the uplifted land can be subdivided. One definition is that any given "mountain" consists of only the mass above its lowest contour. Any lower mass is part of some larger mountain. The mass above the lowest contour line is the minimum mass you would have to remove such that there is no trace of the mountain. Hence that mass IS the mountain.

Another way of defining what IS part of a given mountain is to pick an arbitrary minimum vertical separation and then draw boundaries between the mountains based on the key saddles and rivers that separate the mountains. For example, one could divide up North America into all the mountains over 1000m in prominence, and then figure out the boundaries. Any land mass inside a given mountains boundaries is part of that mountain. I call these "mountain regions" because the boundaries are only defined in terms of the other mountains. It is harder to pinpoint exactly what is necessary to "remove" such mountains - by the definition, all you'd have to remove is enough of the top of mountain that it no longer qualified as a separate peak in your regional breakdown.

We use the term "peak" to refer only to the top point of a mountain. "Mountain" tends to refer to the full land mass, whereas peak tends to refer only to the top. Example usage: "Mount Lyell has 5 different peaks".

Equipment Reviews - User Guide

1. Preface
Why bother having equipment reviews on the Bivouac website? Aren't there enough scattered across the web already?

The reason I find the Bivouac reviews are worthwhile is because I can quickly investigate the type of experience the writer has by looking up their trip reports, etc. The problem I've had with a lot of the reviews scattered across the web is that its too hard to tell how much experience the writer has.

And you can email the member, and get more details. And you can see who else has this model by looking at who has inserted a comment to the review. See Equipment Review Lister.

2. General Features
Note the following:
 - the reviews are sorted with the newest reviews at the top of each equipment type. For example, the newest GPS reviews will be at the top of the section called "Gps/Map Display".
 - You can restrict your choice to just one department, and then further restrict to just the latest review.

3. Oldest_Year
Use this field if you are only interested in the latest reviews. Eg: Nothing before 2010.

Analysis: Some categories of review stay relevant longer than others. For example, any GPS review older than 5 years is probably irrelevant if you are buying a new GPS. In this case, the models change significantly every 2 or 3 years.

However, some types of product such as sleeping bags or boots don't really change much even after 6 or 7 years. The reviews are primarily relevant to a given model, but old reviews can also tell you something about the manfacturer.

4. SearchTerm
The review lister allows you to specify only reviews with a certain search term. This may not be all that useful, since most users would just scroll down to the relevant category. However, it can be used to quickly find what category a given type of item is in.

The fields that are searched are:

   Title
   Description
   Manufacturer

Famous Peak Lists

1. Introduction to Peak Lists
Throughout the world, there are various famous lists of "peaks", such as the Eight Thousanders in the Himalayas, the "Fourteen Thousanders" in Colorado, the "Eleven Thousanders" in the Canadian Rockies, and the Munro's of Scotland (peaks over 3000 feet). The general idea of these lists is simply to list how many "peaks" there are in a given area that exceed a given height. These are "height based" lists.

A list is two things: a certain "class" and a certain "area". Eg: All 11,000ers in the Canadian Rockies.

Any list eventually runs into the need to have a rule as to what constitutes a separate peak, otherwise the list just keeps growing as subpeaks are promoted to full blown peaks. Eg: In the Rockies, first there was North Twin and South Twin. But now the list commonly referred to in various publications also has a "Center" Twin, and a West Twin, making up 4 twins. The most common definition of "separateness" is to have a rule that any peak on the list must have a vertical separation of a certain amount. For example, the Colorado rule for separate peak is a 500 foot vertical separation. The name these days for this vertical separation is "prominence". Nowdays, most peaklists are moving toward having some measure of prominence in their definitions.

Originally, all the famous lists were based mostly on height, with prominence only used as a means of determining what is allowed as a "separate peak". However, once prominence became formalized, new lists emerged which were based ONLY on prominence. The most famous of these "prominence only" lists is a list called the "ultras". An ultra is a peak with 5000 feet of prominence. The original definition was 5000 feet, but then was changed to 1500m (4921') to make it international. Peaklist.org says there were 1,524 peaks with 1500m prominence as of June 10, 2007. As of 2012.08.22, wikipedia only lists 1515 ultra prominent peaks with 5000 feet. (which makes sense, because 5000' is slightly higher than 1500m). See Ultra Prominent Peaks in Wikipedia. It is possible that these lists could change a bit due to newer surveys, but it is more stable than any "height only" list, because it doesn't depend on anyone's opinion as to what is a separate peak and what isn't.

In addition to height based lists, and prominence based lists, there are hybrid lists, which combine both height and prominence. For example, an interesting list is the list of all peaks in Canada over 3000m, and with a prominence of 1000m. Such lists are sometimes more interesting than pure prominence lists, because the height threshold ensures that the peak is truly of mountaineering significance. The height rule eliminates the possibility of a 1500m forested bump on an island. Such a list could be called a list of 3000/1000ers.

One other factor that is sometimes considered when making up lists is how far the peak is from some other peak. Eg: A peak that is less than 1 km away from another peak on the list is not considered a separate peak, regardless of prominence. This property is called "Isolation". Although there is some recognition of the notion of isolation in certain famous lists, it is not usually included in the definition.

In Bivouac, we have three important "classes" of peaks:

  Type     Prominence
--------------------------------
   P2000   2000m of prominence
   P1000   1000m of prominence
   P500     500m of prominence

2. Eleven Thousanders of Canadian Rockies
The list of Eleven Thousanders (11,000ers) is a well known list, and has been talked about for at least 30 years. The first person to climb all the peaks in such a list was Don Forest, and the second was noted Bivouac author Rick Collier. (Rick was the first to do all of them without air support, since Don flew in and out of Clemenceau and perhaps Tsar and Robson. Bill Corbett was the third person to summit all the 11,000 peaks, and wrote an excellent book on these peaks.

The simple definition of this list is this:

All the 11,000 foot "peaks" in the Canadian Rockies

Sounds simple enough, but exactly which peaks are on the list varies depending on what definition you use for "separate peak", and what elevation data you use. For example, Bill Corbett's latest book on the 11000ers, has 54 peaks listed. The current bivouac data shows there to be 56 peaks on the list. (In fact, even the Bivouac list was recently revised from 53 to 56, based on a detailed examination of certain peaks. However, if you apply the standard 500 foot prominence limit which has been adopted by other such lists, you end up with only 42 distinct peaks.

Here is a link to the Bivouac version of the list without any limit on prominence:

Canadian Rockies Eleven Thousanders 56 peaks

If you want to reconcile this list with the 54 peaks in Corbett's book, you'll find that the Bivouac list does not include Mount Huber, because the best available data (TRIM) indicates that this peak is only 10984 feet.

Prominence Filter
Here are the true "separate" peaks if you apply the standard 500' prominence limit: List with 500 foot prominence limit 43 peaks.

Here are the ones that were excluded: Peaks below 500' prominence threshold 12 Peaks

Height Variation
Near 11,000ers: Apart from prominence, the other thing that affects the list is the possibility that a more accurate survey would suddenly include additional peaks. These are usually referred to as "Near 11,000ers". The "near" means peaks that are close enough that there is more than one chance in 100 that they could be on the list. This means we have to decide what the statistical accuracy of our heights are. This list should include all peaks that are close enough to 11,000 feet to be within the data tolerances. The TRIM data is supposed to be accurate to within 5 meters, 90% of the time. For NTS survey heights, I think we can use 10m, and perhaps even 5 m. See Map Accuracy Theory and Terminology. However, any peak whose height is only known by contour interpolation could be out as much as 50' (which is 15m), assuming the contours are absolutely accurate. So the three possible tolerances are 5, 10, and 15m. Therefore if we use 50 feet (15m) as the tolerance, we come up with a list of peaks between 10950 and 11000.

Peaks between 10950 and 11000 feet 5 Peaks

And if you really wanted to be safe, your list could include all the peaks within 100 feet of the magic number:

[a href=PeaksInArea.asp?Area=Canadian%20Rockies&Units=feet&MinHeight=10900&Columns=MultiUnit]All Peaks over 10900 68 Peaks

The above list includes the following "marginal" peaks: [a href=PeaksInArea.asp?Area=Canadian%20Rockies&Units=feet&MinHeight=10900&MaxHeight=11000&Columns=MultiUnit]Peaks between 10900 and 11000 feet 13 Peaks

My latest tests indicate that a handheld GPS with WAAS can be accurate to within 5m, so it is possible that the heights of the Alberta peaks can be refined by some hand held readings.

Prominence Limit Discussion:
 Corbett's list (and all the Calgary based lists) don't yet use the concept of a minimum prominence. So their lists includes some fairly insignificant peaks such as Lunette Peak, with only 125 feet of prominence. (Lunette Peak is actually just a sharp spur on the south ridge of Assiniboine). It got onto the list in 1901 whne Outram was confused, thinking he had reached the summit of Assiniboine. Similarly Rae Peak (Goodsir Center Summit) has only 44m prominence, and until recently was viewed as part of Mount Goodsir. And since the they are on the list, there is nothing to prevent someone from including other bumps that may come to light.

The Bivouac policy for heights is to use the latest BC Government TRIM data if available. Trim spot heights have a stated accuracy of being within 5 meters of the true value, 90% of the time. This is much more accurate than any height based on interpolating 100' contours. The comparable accuracy for an interpolated height is only within 15m, 90% of the time (and that assumes the contours are absolutely accurate).

Other books use elevation data derived from NTS topographic maps. While NTS survey heights may well arguably as accurate as TRIM data, many of the 11,000' peaks do not have a NTS survey height. In this case, the "official" guidebooks simply interpolate the 100' contours. For example, the height of Mount Huber is given as 11,050', which is based on the fact that there is a tiny 11,000 contour on the old imperial topo map for this peak. The table below shows the height of Mount Huber according to various sources:

                                        Feet    Meters
  BC Basemap                           10,984   3348
  Bivouac                              10,984   3348 (BC Basemap)
  NTS 1:50,000 Imperial Interpolation  11,050   3368    
  Corbett's 11000er book               11,050   3368
  Putnam (1973)                        11,051   3368

3. Ultras
As previously discussed, an "ultra" is a peak with 1500m of prominence. There is no minimum height, so an ultra can be a forested bump on an island, as long as it has 1500m of prominence. The original definition was 5000 feet,

Various peak list enthusiasts worldwide have compiled a list of ultras for the whole world. According to Wikipedia in 2012, there are 1524 such peaks worldwide. Below are some links to various lists from Bivouac.

1. North America Ranges 268 peaks
2. Canada 141 peaks
3. United States 130
4. British Columbia 102
5. Alberta 9
6. Alaska 66
7. Colorado 3

First Ascent Search

1. Preface
This document contains the Help Messages for the First Ascent Search function.

2. LastName
This field is where you put in the last name of the climber. In most cases, use only their last name, to avoid the problem where some first ascents might be listed with only the initials. For example it is safest to search only for "Kain", not "Conrad Kain".

However, for John Clarke, there is a problem with also getting a few peaks ascended by Lewis and Clarke. In this case, search for "John Clarke". As of today (2009.03.12), I have converted all the J. Clarke ascents to "John Clarke", so you can search for "John Clarke". However in future, it is always safest to make sure there are no peaks with J. Clarke.

3. SortOrder
The order in which you want to sort the list of first ascents for a given climber. The default is to sort them by date, so you can see their whole career.

However, for comparison purposes, it is also useful to sort by prominence, which is probably the best measure of the significance of the peak. For example, in comparing the number of first ascents of John Clarke and Conrad Kain, if you put both lists in order by prominence, you'll see that both climbers have 9 first ascents of peaks over 1000m of prominence.

4. MinProm
Use this field to set the "minimum prominence". For example, if you set the limit to show only peaks with a vertical separation of over 500m, you'll see Conrad Kain has 20, and John Clarke 53.

Form Help for Gpx and KML Generators

1. Introduction
The 'KML Form' and 'GPX Form' links are both the same idea. Unlike the regular GPX link, the "xxxform" version allow you to customize the gpx file. In both cases, the idea is to load a set of mountains, trails, campgrounds onto your smartphone. The way it works is Bivouac generates a .kml or .gpx file and then you "open" that file with your GPS program. I generated the file right on my Smartphone and then load it into Backcountry Navigator. The gpx files will work on both Smartphone GPS programs and Garmin GPS. The Smartphone is more convenient because the trails and roads are all turned on automatically, whereas on a Garmin GPS you have to turn them on one by one.

The Gpx and Kml files can contain trail descriptions. Also peaks, huts, campgrounds, etc. So it turns your GPS App into a guidebook. You tap an item on the map and read the description.

If you want to understand what is in the files, you can open them with a text editor. To understand the syntax see KML Generator Tutorial or Creating Custom Gpx Files.

2. GPSType
Choose what type of GPS mapping App is your target. For example Gaia. This controls what icon names Bivouac will embed into the KML, which will match available built-in icons in the App. Unfortunately each app uses different names for the same thing. For example one app might call a bivouac Hut "Hut" and another might call a bivouac hut "building_24". There is no standard set of icon names, and in fact many GPS apps don't have any. But some GPS programs like Backcountry Navigator (BCN) offer lists of built in icons such as "mountain", "campground", "alpine_hut". The bivouac generator will use these names if you set GpsType=BCN.

  BCN           Backcountry Navigator 
  Google Earth  Causes kml file to refer to custom icons
  OtherGPS      Use this for all other models of GPS

1. BCN
    Backcountry Navigator (BCN) offer lists of built in icons such as "mountain", "campground", "alpine_hut". The bivouac generator will use these names if you set GpsType=BCN.

2. Google Earth
    Google Earth is a special case. It allows Bivouac to supply URLs for custom icons. But it only works when you are online.

3. OtherGps
    Causes the generator to make a gpx file without specifying any icon names. Your app will then use it's own default icons.

4. Garmin: If your target is a Garmin GPS, use "OtherGPS". Although Garmin has custom icons, we don't know their names, and you may as well pick the icons at the time you turn on the waypoint.

5. Gaia: Use "OtherGPS". Gaia does not yet have any built in symbols. All waypoints will be displayed as their default icon.

3. Radius
The radius in km around the center of your gpx or kml file. Eg: All the mountains within 10 km of Banff. The generator will not work for large radius unless you specifically turn off some of the items in order to get others. For example, you could get all the Car campsites within 100 km of Smithers, but you would have to turn off the mountains and roads. For large radius files, you must limit the number of mountains and roads using the other fields.

Example: Show all the campsites within 100 km of Smithers, BC.
 This large radius will exceed the limits for mountains and for roads. To produce a gpx, you need to turn off the "Roads" and reduce the number of mountains. (eg: set minimum prominence to 500m. And

4. Labels
The Labels field controls the <name> element of your Gpx or Kml file. Eg: You may want your map to show the full title of each feature, or just the first word. The labels field applies to Roads, Mountains and things like campgrounds. Things like parking lots do not need labels on map.

What you want to do with <name> depends on your GPS. Some GPS Apps label everything on the map, others don't display any label till you click. BCN gives you the option. See Standard KML Operations. If you have a GPS that labels everything, use 1_Word. This will be less clutter than the full name. If your GPS does not show the name until you click, you may as well set Labels=Full. Below are all the choices:

  Auto Single word titles
  1_Word
  Full
  None
  Extended

1. Auto
    Auto is the same as 1_Word. It is the most sensible option with most GPS units, because it avoids clutter if labels are all displayed at once.

2. 1_Word
    For roads and Features, this option takes the first word of the title. For example, a hut called "Elfin shelter" will just be labelled "Elfin", and you rely on the hut symbol to know it is a hut. For roads, it uses the RoadCode if there is one. Otherwise it chops off the first "word" (delimited by a space). For mountains, it is just the abbreviated name. eg: Garibaldi or Black Tusk.

3. Full
    Displays the full name. For Features the full name of the feature. Eg: "Smithers Municipal Campground". For Roads, the full name of the road. For mountains, the full name and the height "Mount Brew 1500m".

4. None
    With this option, there are no labels. This might be handy in areas where the basemap already has peak labels.

5. Descriptions
Gpx and Kml files can contain descriptions for waypoints and tracks. The GPS apps on phones allow you to pop up these descriptions. For example, you could see the details of a certain campsite you see on your map. What is the condition of a certain trail you see on the map? Having descriptions embedded in your phone is like having a little guidebook with you in the field.

  Yes    descriptions for all mountains, roads and features 
  No     no <descr> tags
  Auto   same as "Yes"

The method of seeing the descriptions depends on your GPS app. It is a bit tricky, so I wrote a separate framework so you can click on instructions for your particular type of GPS. See Standard KML Operations. In particular see the row titled View Descriptions.

6. ShowRoads
The ShowRoads control allows you to turn the road/trail layer off for large radius maps. (both Gpx and Kml). For example, if you were doing a road trip and wanted to plot all the car campgrounds for a 500 km radius, you need to turn roads=No. Otherwise the huge amount of data would overwhelm your GPS. On such a large gpx file, you would not need the Bivouac roads anyway, as the main roads would already be on the base map.

 * Auto: Roads and trails show up to 20 km. Normally this is the best setting unless you are doing something special.

 * Yes: This overrides the maximum radius used by 'Auto". Eg: In a remote area with few bivouac roads, you might be able to have a large radius like 100 km and still show all Bivouac roads. Eg: In the Yukon.

 * No: No roads will show. Use this when making special purpose KML files, such as all car campgrounds for 500 km radius.

7. RoadColors
The RoadColors setting controls how the KML file specifies Road and trail colors. (Gpx files do not have color attribute). This only has an effect if your GPS obeys the KML file. Google Earth and Backcountry Navigator obey the settings. Initially Gaia did not, but I asked that this be fixed.

  Random   Distinct colors will be assigned to each road/trail
  Class    Roads/trails will be colored according to road class
  MonoStyle  All roads and trails are the same color
  Auto     Same as random

1. Random
    The way this works is Bivouac assigns different colors to each trail in a random fashion. This is definitely what you want for loading trail networks onto your GPS, because otherwise all the trails would just be green lines. I have found this to be the most useful setting for my KML files.

2. Class
    As you may know from using GMap, there are different "Road Classes" such as Spur1, Spur2, Spur3 or Trail1, Trail2. The "Class" option allows you to have the roads colored according to class. Trails will be green, spur roads orange, etc. Not as useful as with GMap because you typically plan access to an area long before you are in the field with your GPS.

3. Monostyle
    This is only used for making simple KML files for testing. If you specify "Random" or "Class", the KML file will contain 15 or 20 "styles" to implement all the different colors. However if you set it to "MonoStyle" then the KML will only have a single style section.

4. Auto
    This is the same as Random.

8. Mountains
Controls whether or not your KML file will contain mountains. This works in conjunction with the Spacing and Distant Peaks settings which will be discussed later.

  Auto   if radius < 20 km, mountains 
  Yes    Shows mountains
  No

1. Auto
    Shows all mountains within specified radius, up to a radius=20 km. If you specify a large radius such as 50 km, it would not normally show mountains. This allows the radius to automatically control whether or not you get mountains.

2. Yes
    Use this to override the auto setting.
    

3. No
    When would you want to turn mountains off? One time would be for large radius KML files such as a KML with all the campgrounds within 300 km. You want mountains turned off because such a file would have thousands of mountains and completely bog down the server and your App.

9. MinProm
Mimimum Prominence, in meters. Use this to reduce the clutter of irrelevant subpeaks. Typical setting is 100m

10. Distant peaks
This setting causes your KML file to contain an "outer ring" of distant peaks which are beyond the main radius.

 Auto  Same as yes
 No    do not show outer ring
 Yes   surrounding peaks greater than P1000

The peaks shown should be greater than 2500m height, and more than P1000.

How to use this feature:
 I have found this feature to be very useful on trips where you climb a peak with a view. For example, if you were going to climb Wedge mountain, your normal KML radius would be perhaps 20 km, so as to contain the peaks, roads and trails of immediate interest. But when you get to the summit, it is handy to have certain other distant peaks on your map, so you can identify them. So if you had
 zoom out so your phone map is covering 100 km or so, and then use a compass to identify certain large distant peaks. On a clear day, you'd see the following:

  Matier      32 km NE
  Birkenhead  44 km N
  Sampson     60 km NW 
  Cloudburst  40 km SE
  Tantalus    52 km SE
  Ashlu       55 km     

Current Settings:
  Outer Radius: 100 km
  Outer Prominence: 1000m
  Outer Height: 2500m

If the inner radius is greater than or equal the outer radius, then Outer peaks are not charted.

11. CarCamp
Carcamp has it's own control, as opposed to Other Features.

  Auto    Shows  CarCamp up to 20 km radius
  All     shows all car camping sites, even for large radius like 300 km
  No      Does not show any carcamp sites.

As I explained in the help for the "GpsType" field, the icon name embedded in your kml file depends on what GPS you have selected. For example, if your GPS Type is Backcountry Navigator, car campgrounds will have the line <Icon>camp_site</Icon>.

12. BackCamp
Backcountry Camping. These icons are usually a different color. Often you turn these off if you are looking for car camping possibilities. Include Forest Service Rec Sites, and Provincial/State parks

13. Picnic
Use this to look for Picnic sites. Which features are marked as "Picnic" depends on the area. For marine areas, they indicate day use areas where you can't normally camp. On the highway, they indicate rest areas, places with toilet.

14. Huts

 Auto   Huts will show automatically if radius < 20 km
 Yes    Huts will show no matter what the radius
 No     Huts will not show at any radius

15. BackCampF
Backcountry campsites

16. Other Features
Shows all other features such as Attractions, parking lots, waterfalls, etc. for whatever radius you have selected.

  Auto   Shows them up to 20 km radius
  All    Show all of these features
  None

Some "Other Features" have their own icon, such as Attraction (which has a star icon in Gaia) or Parking which has a "P" for most displayers, but other obscure things like waterfall may not have their own icon and thus just display with the default icon for the GPS Mapping App.

 Attraction
 Parking
 Building_Lodge
 Building_Shelter
 Building_Hostel
 Building_Private
 Falls
 Hotspring

There are more obscure types like Cape and Channel, but those are for special purposes to work on raster maps, not something to be listed on a GPS App.

17. Towns
Use this field to show towns on your GPX. This is especially handy in areas where there are town records for certain important intersections. For example, on the Lost Coast area of California almost every important intersection has a historic town name associated with it, even though in most cases nobody lives there anymore. Eg: Thorne Junction or Garberville. Although the towns may be labelled on the basemap itself if you zoom in enough, the principle is to have them available at a glance at the high levels when planning your driving route.

GPX Parser - User Guide

1. Purpose
The purpose of the GPX Wp Parser is to allow authors to translate the waypoints in a .gpx file to bivouac format. GPX files are text files that contain your waypoints. To get .gpx files off your GPS, plug it into the USB port. With newer Garmin GPS, the .gpx files on your device will then be visible in the normal windows folders. Open the .gpx file with notepad and paste its contents into the bivouac parser.

OLD METHODS: map would themselves act as GPS interface programs. Or use the free program called EasyGPS.[/i

Once you have the .gpx file, then start up the Bivouac GPX Parser and paste the contents of the .gpx file into it. This will translate the waypoints into Bivouac format, which you can then paste into your trip report.

In addition to EasyGps, most digital map programs such as Garmin Map Source, and Memory-map will also download GPS waypoints and allow you to save them as a gpx file. (Memory-map has one disadvantage in that it does not output the elevations, so it is better to use one of the others.)

2. Step By Step
Parses a given XML file into Bivouac waypoints. For example, suppose a given author has 50 waypoints on his GPS from a trip called "Whitegoat".

1. Start up your GPS program (EasyGps or MapSource)

2. Plug your GPS into a USB port, and use the program to upload the waypoints. This will typically display all the waypoints in the program, either on a map or in a list.

3. Save the waypoints to a .GPX file. For example "whitegoat.gpx".

4. Create a trip report.

5. Open the gpx file with notepad, and cut and paste the contents into the parser.

6. Copy the output of the parser into your trip report.

3. Notes
1. GPS Programs: Memory-map has a problem in that it does not export the elevations. So it is better to use EasyGps.

2. Note that at present (2010.12.22) we only parse the [wpt] tag and [rte] tags, not the [trk] track tag. The basic purpose is to parse gpx files that come from GPS units on trips. Other flavors of gpx file are exported from bivouac, containing both wpt and trk tags, but the only part we currently parse is the wpt.

Gpx Tutorial - Tricky Syntax Rules

1. Preface
I wrote this when I was working on the Gpx generator programs in Bivouac. For that project, I gradually learned some subtle rules which I documented with examples. If you just stumbled on this document you might want to go back to Creating Custom Gpx Files which is a simpler introduction.

This document, like the other one, is all about examples, because that is the only way I understand Gpx. I tried to read the official XML definition for rules, but it is not useful for humans. So most people learn by example.

From the simple examples, I quickly learned how to make simple gpx files. But all the rules are not evident just from the examples. For example, I discovered that the sections had to be in a certain order to work everywhere. My files would work in one place, but fail in another. In the end, I concluded that I had to use a XML Validator to check certain syntax rules.

Here is the main validator I have been using. It prints out error messages which you can click on:

  The validator seems to be fairly strict. Certain things work fine in various gpx viewing programs such as {URL=Gpsvisualizer.com] , Backcountry Navigator, Gaia. but the validator reports errors. For example, the validator will report an error if a gpx files contains waypoints, then lines, then more waypoints. But such files work fine in GpsVisualizer.com

In theory, the official Gpx specification would spell out the order.

  But I don't know how to tell from the spec that that order is necessary. I learned it from trial and error.

The rest of this document is chapters each of which establishes an important point about gpx files. The way to find new errors is to copy an appropriate example into the validator and then edit it in the validator. (Rather than regenerating the file from Bivouac.) When the principle is discovered, then I changed the bivouac code.

2. Simplest Gpx
Simplest gpx with only one simple waypoint, containing only the lat-long and the <name>. This file validates: (1 cabin)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="Bivouac.com 2015.12.13 https://bivouac.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<wpt lat="49.60907" lon="-123.60884">
<name>Steele Cabin</name>
</wpt>
</gpx>

3. Multiple Waypoints with elevation
This validates - Two peaks, 1 Cabin Note that the peaks contain an elevation section <ele> but the cabin does not.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="Bivouac.com 2015.12.13 https://bivouac.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<wpt lat="49.60500" lon="-123.60500">
<ele>1659</ele>
<name>Mount Steele 1659m</name>
</wpt>
<wpt lat="49.60778" lon="-123.59889">
<ele>1647</ele>
<name>Raven Dance Peak 1647m</name>
</wpt>
<wpt lat="49.60907" lon="-123.60884">
<name>Steele Cabin</name>
</wpt>
</gpx>

4. Tracks
The syntax for tracks is a <trk> and </trk> tags, and within them each point is marked with <trkpt> and </trkpt> tags. Note also that within a <trk> are <trkseg> and </trkseg> tags. A track can have more than one segment, although all the track files I'm discussing only have one segment.

<trk>
<name>Edwards Lake Trail</name>
<trkseg>
<trkpt lat="49.598920" lon="-123.666710"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598920" lon="-123.666710"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598480" lon="-123.665310"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598350" lon="-123.664740"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598160" lon="-123.664390"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598210" lon="-123.662520"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.599180" lon="-123.661190"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.600240" lon="-123.658990"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.600200" lon="-123.658370"></trkpt>
</trkseg>
</trk>

5. Track Example with Description
- note that the <desc> preceeds the <trkseg> The example below is chopped so that it fits nicely into this document. An actual track typically has many more <trkpt> sections.

<trk>
<name>Mount Steele Trail</name>
<desc>Steep but continuous beaten path. From the Edwards Lake cabin continue east.
</desc>
<trkseg>
<trkpt lat="49.595850" lon="-123.620950"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.596100" lon="-123.620570"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.597150" lon="-123.620220"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.597710" lon="-123.620290"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598070" lon="-123.620460"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598180" lon="-123.619990"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598350" lon="-123.619520"></trkpt>
</trkseg>
</trk>

6. Wpt cannot follow Track
Two peaks, One trails, 1 cabin (error). This example has a couple of <wpt> sections, then a <trk> section, then another <wpt> section. The validator says this is a mistake, but it works OK in most programs.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="Bivouac.com 2015.12.13 https://bivouac.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<wpt lat="49.60500" lon="-123.60500">
<ele>1659</ele>
<name>Mount Steele 1659m</name>
</wpt>
<wpt lat="49.60778" lon="-123.59889">
<ele>1647</ele>
<name>Raven Dance Peak 1647m</name>
</wpt>
<trk>
<name>Mount Steele Trail</name>
<trkseg>
<trkpt lat="49.595850" lon="-123.620950"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.596100" lon="-123.620570"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.597150" lon="-123.620220"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.597710" lon="-123.620290"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598070" lon="-123.620460"></trkpt>
<trkpt lat="49.598180" lon="-123.619990"></trkpt>
<wpt lat="49.60907" lon="-123.60884">
<name>Steele Cabin</name>
</wpt>
</gpx>

7. sym must follow desc
The following file fails because <sym> is before <desc>. Paste it into the validator, see the error, then move the <sym> section to follow </desc>.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="Bivouac.com 2018.01.23 https://bivouac.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<wpt lat="54.06019" lon="-124.62067">
<name>Beaumont Provincial Park</name>
<sym>camp_site</sym>
<desc>
Beaumont Provincial Park
Roadside campspot east end of Fraser lake. 49 sites, 5 walk in tent sites. Interpretive trail. A roped off swimming area is located at the beach/picnic area. Dropoff Marked by floats.
</desc>
</wpt>
</gpx>
{/pre]
A similar test is Mount Steele - GpxForm with the following:

  GPSType       BCN
  Radius          1
  Descriptions  Yes
  Mountains     Yes
  Distant Peaks Yes
  Huts          Yes
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<gpx version="1.1"
creator="Bivouac.com 2015.12.13 https://bivouac.com"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<wpt lat="49.59450" lon="-123.62364">
<name>Edwards Cabin</name>
<sym>Hut</sym>
<desc>
Edwards Cabin
The cabin is located about 1 km northeast of Edwards lake. It is on a level bump just west of "Steele Creek". 
</desc>
</wpt>
</gpx>
8. Things discovered from tests
Here are some things I discovered by trial and error.

Tracks must follow <wpt>
 (the <trk> sections must be last. The validator generates an error if it sees a <wpt> section following a track. I initially had gpx files with some mountains, then some trails, then some cabins, and these generated an error. It generates the error at the start of the second group of waypoints.
<sym> must follow </name>
 In a <wpt> section the <sym> tag must follow the <name> tag. It cannot preceed the <name>.
<sym> must follow </desc>
 See chapter with example.
Ampersand and en-dash
 I remember Ampersand & crashing the validator. I'm not sure if the validator picks up other special characters like en-dash reported by Andrew.
I need to go through and pull out any special microsoft characters using routes I had before.
9. CDATA
According to wikipedia, CDATA means "character data". It is marked for the parser to interpret purely as textual data, not as markup. In other words, it is a way of escaping possible markup characters within a field. CDATA syntax seems be the following:
 - angle bracket,
 - exclamation mark
 - square bracket, 
 - CDATA keyword
 - square bracket, field value, close square
 - second close square
 - close angle
 
   <![CDATA[head of lake ]>
When I exported the waypoints from BCN, I see that every field is enclosed in a CDATA function. 
<wpt lat="49.39465010189614" lon="-123.14680337905884">
<ele>165</ele>
<time>2018-02-21T02:51:51Z</time>
<name><![CDATA[head of lake ]]></name>
<cmt><![CDATA[]]></cmt>
<desc><![CDATA[this is Lakehead
]]></desc>
<sym><![CDATA[circleblue]]></sym>
</wpt>
I also note that Notepad doesn't recognize whatever linefeeds are in the data, but when I paste it into this form, most fields are on their own line.
I note that in Wikipedia they say not to use CDATA sections in XML files generated programatically.
In general, the simplet policy is to avoid any non Ascii characters in XML data.
10. Labels and Descriptions
For this experiment, I made a gpx file using BCN and walking down 6th avenue at my house. I also marked a couple of waypoints at Cleveland Dam. The table below shows 

                 Labels   ClickTitle    Descr
-------------------------------------------------          
GMap WayPt         no         yes        yes 
GMap Track         no          no         no
GE WayPt          yes         yes        yes
GE Track          yes          no         no
GPS BCN Waypt     yes         *yes 
        Track     yes         *yes
With GE, the track is labelled "down block", but when you click on it, you see an empty white box. You can click on the waypoint and see both the name and the description.
So the lack of ability to get a track description in GE has nothing to do with Joseph. It must be some issue with the Gpx, because I've seen track descriptions in GE (but maybe for kml).
With the actual GPS BCN, the track is labelled. To get the description, position center and click Waypoint button. The description is there.
Conclusion:
  GE is unable to show Gpx tracks. The file has the track, and the file will import properly into BCN, but 
Guide to Difficulty Classification
1. Introduction
Mountaineers have long had a system for rating the difficulty of climbs. The most common system has 5 classes, such as Class 2, Class 3, Class 4 and Class 5.
The main purpose of the "difficulty level" field in trip reports is to be used by the trip finder function. Otherwise, people should rely on the text in the difficulty field. We graded every trip report with a "difficulty level" from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most difficult. These grades roughly conform with the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) grades, but have been extended to include ski trips, and to reflect route finding and other types of difficulty besides pure rock climbing difficulty.
To classify a trip, one starts with certain objective aspects of the level of climbing. Eg: Does the climbing involve handholds and footholds? Does it involve dynamic moves? Is there a lot of exposure? That gives you the class of individual sections of the trip, as in "This was a class 2 gully". However, to get the class of the whole trip, we take into account other things like the danger of rockfall, avalanches, and route finding. In general, these things tend to increase the level by 1. For example, a peak like Mount Stewart has a complex route involving a series of climbs up cracks with loose rocks is at a higher level than something like Black Tusk, which has one little chimney with no loose rock. The reason it's at a higher level is because you have to evaluate the handholds.
Here is a rough description of the levels:
List of Difficulty Levels
Our goal is to help people find relevant trips.
As of 2007.03, I am still working on actually classifying the trips. Any trip that is not yet ranked will not show up as soon as you set this field. Thus in any given area, you should check first how many trips show up with neither field set.
Note also that there is also a separate access level field that you can use if your main concern is getting to the start of the hike.
2. Whole Trip or Features?
Are we talking about the whole climb or just certain features?
The 5 classes are often used to describe individual features of an overall climb. For example Fred Touche talks about finding a class 2 gulley on James Turner. That doesn't mean the whole trip is class 2.
With peaks not involving ice travel, the class refers to the exposure and difficulty of the hardest moves. ? Eg: How hard is James Turner? Factors to be considered are exposure, strength and balance required. It does not talk about objective danger, route finding, etc.
Ski trips are something else, because we are talking about skiing skills. Eg: Steep tree skiing or side hilling, or confined trail skiing imply skill and level of equipment.
And strenousness of the overall trip is a separate thing.
thing you want to know is how hard a given peak is.
The "Difficulty" field in Bivouac is used differently depending on the type of trip. If the main objective of the trip was to climb a peak, then the difficulty is how hard the climb was. Eg: James Turner is class 4 because I remember a long exposed climb up a face. Same thing with Windsor Peak.
Danger: If something involves risky moves up gulleys with loose stones, such as Mount Stewart in the White Goat, I'd say it was class 4 just because of the danger of rocks pulling loose. A peak like Elusive is at least class 3 because you have to scramble over unattached fridge sized boulders.
If somebody is talking about a Class 2 gully, they mean a gulley you can walk up, only occasionally using hands, and no actual "moves" or "Holds".
If anywhere on the climb you are paying attention to specific "Foot holds" and "hand holds", that climb is at least class 3. And if you are required to do multiple moves in sequence before again being at a safe spot, that is class 4. And if the holds involve friction considerations on the rock, then I'd say you are probably talking about class 5. Especially if you are using your arm strength and pulling yourself up.
3. How Trips Are Graded
Everybody that has been around for a while knows that there is usually some leeway in how climbs are graded. One person calls it a class 4, someone else calls class 3.
In order to make the rankings in this encyclopedia as consistent as possible, we have compiled a list of reference criteria and reference trips to be cited when ranking any given trip:
See Reference Case List
Each example discusses the factors that were judged when setting the rank.
There is a general concept of raising the level slightly if a trip has extensive difficulties of other types, such as hours of heavy bushwacking/ routefinding, etc. Thus Black Tusk ranks as level 2, even though it has a little chimney that might technically be considered class 3 if it was on a remote peak, and required routefinding.
What we want is to make the ratings as "objective" as possible. And not dependant on level of expertise. In other words, class 4 is class 4 even if an expert would just breeze through it. One way to think about it is a system where if you had a video camera hovering in the sky. If you see the person using hands, it's class 2. If you see them using specific footholds or handholds, its class 3. If you see them pulling themselves up, or using gymnastic skill, it's class 4. If you see them putting in protection or rappelling, it's class 5.
4. Factors to be Considered
The factors below should be considered in any new case.

Athletic challenge
 How "hard" is the hardest move. How much strength and skill does it take. Eg: a lay up is more difficult than
Level of Routefinding Skill
 How hard is it to find the route. For example James Turner supposedly has a class 2 gully, but very experienced parties have not found this gulley, so the overall mountain cannot be "class 2".
Exposure
 How much exposure is there? How many places are there where if you slipped, you'd have no chance of recovery. Versus an exposed ledge, which with normal balance you are unlikely to slip.
Remoteness
 A climb that involves difficult route finding. Eg: Mount Odin ultimately has the same level of exposure as something like Frosty, but due to it's remoteness, would have a difficulty level of 3.
Inclusion Rules for Mountains
1. Preface
This is a document you use when you are deliberately working on covering new areas, and charting all the relevant peaks. See discussion Inclusion Rules for Mountains for latest updates.
This is a document that gives rules for deciding how many peaks to put into the database in different types of areas. It could be called the "scope" of the database, or the "coverage rules".
The "method" of doing the prominences for an area is you look at the topo map, and mark in at least one "placeholder" peak every 5 km, as long as they are over some minimum prominence threshold. The prominence threshold depends on the type of area. Up in the Yukon, all we need is placeholders every 5 or 10 km, whereas an area of more interest we would chart peaks as close as 1 km, and as little as P100. Eg: Victoria, Vancouver, Banff
We need guidelines as to what peaks should be added to the database, and in some rare cases, what peaks should be deleted to reduce clutter. For any given peak, there are three possible statuses:
- peaks that should be in the database for sure.
  - peaks that are already in the database but aren't essential
  - peaks that should be deleted, to reduce clutter
The rules vary by area and circumstances. Therefore this document gives a set of "inclusion rules". These inclusion rules are then tested and reviewed by a chapter of case studies.
See also the chapter giving project status, province by province in the
Prominence Editors Guide.
 
2. Coverage Plans
A "Coverage Plan" is a plan for all the peaks you should try and include if you are working on an area. Eg: All the peaks over P500, highest alpine peak in any 5 km square, any officially named peak, etc.
You need to define the following:
  Target Peaks   (the ones you want for sure)
  Suspect peaks  (ones that turn out to not meet the target criteria, but close
  Delete Peaks   (Ones that clearly don't meet the criteria_
For any given peak, it is included or not included according to what you are trying to do in that area. This boils down to a set of "inclusion rules" for each type of area. What we want are guidelines so people don't pick some area of low interest and then start putting in every little bump.
I've been trying to define sensible inclusion rules for Bivouac for at least 10 years. Initially, the rule was a simple prominence limit: no peaks less than 300m prominence. That proved unworkable because in many frequently visited areas there are important peaks with lower prominence. For example Ben Lomond only has a prominence of 189m.
I can now see that the rules have to vary according to micro area.
In an area surrounding a tricky traverse, it may be desirable to chart unnamed peaks as close as one per kilometer. For example this is what is desirable for the Powell Divide, in order to write good route descriptions.
So what comes out of this is a set of rules depending on the type of "micro area" we are talking about. For any given area, we can first decide what type of area it is, and then come up with a plan. For example, the Powell Divide area is an area where there are several important trip reports, which need peak names for detailed route descriptions. Once you decide what type of micro area you are in, any given peak can qualify in two ways: (1) As placeholders or (2) as high prominence peaks
 
POPULATING A NEW AREA
 First define the target. eg: All P300 peaks and largest peak every 5 km alpine area.
 The general method is to pan around a given area and plot all candidate peaks. With current maps and computer displays, it seems you can't be sure you are getting all the P500 peaks unless you plot at least one peak every 5 km, such that when you look at the computer screen for any area, you know you've dealt with that area. I call those "candidate peaks". Candidate are ones that you put into an area that look like they might qualify as "target" peaks but may turn out to fall short.. But after the prominences are plotted it is still useful to leave these "candidate" peaks in the database, just so some other editor doesn't again have to check them.
While working on the Yukon, I discovered I needed 5 km placeholders. Placeholders are just the largest in an area.
With 5 km, there will be at least one peak on the map when you have the 200m scale. The 200m scale bar is as far as you can zoom out and still see the detailed contour lines. The 500m maps are useless. You just don't spot them on the old raster map, because the numbers aren't on the contours. So perhaps the most efficient technique is just to set the map to 200 scale, and scroll around and put in the highest thing you see every time there is nothing on the screen.
In really remote areas, where we don't expect any trip reports ever, all we want is to "catalog" high prominence peaks. There may be vast areas on the 1:50K where we don't catalog a single peak. The next level are areas where there may be one or more trip reports. In these areas we want enough peaks such that for any given part of the map, you can see a couple of peaks on the highest points. I call that basic "map coverage". (peaks every 5 km). Next level is an area where there are multiple trip reports. In these areas we want more coverage, perhaps with the highest points every 5 km charted. Next level is guidebook coverage where you want to chart every peak that is typically climbed as a separate objective. This results in peaks every 1 km. In an area where we are documenting a popular traverse, we may have peaks every 1 km, even if low prominence, and not objectives.
One other thing worth mentioning is that in the past we sometimes put in a bunch of insignificant peaks just to work out the prominence of higher peaks. But in low value areas, this is not desirable. We don't want to chart every bump on Vancouver Island, just to handle some officially named hills on the coast. The plan is not to chart every officially named hill, the plan is to chart significant peaks.
In summary, for any given area, one has to decide what coverage category that area calls for. Then you can point at any given peak and say: this one is in the database for "basic coverage", or "this one qualifies because of its prominence". Below are summaries of the coverage spacing and prominence thresholds for each type of area.
3. Types of Areas
TYPES OF AREAS
Remote Alpine Areas: (Obscure areas)
  - all peaks over P500 meters
  - placeholders: all peaks over P200 (General Minimum) and 5 km spacing
  - all officially named peaks (over P50 or 1 km spacing)
  - all peaks with standing name, over P100 and 1 km spacing
  - intermediate peaks
High Use area: (Or trip report area)
  - all peaks over P200
  - all placeholders over P100 and 5 km spacing
  - all officially named peaks
  - all standing names or useful names over P50 and 1 km spacing
  - all names useful to a trip report (along powell divide ridge).
4. Qualifying Rules
Below is a list of how a peak can "qualify": "Qualify" means the peak should be in our database, even with a different name. Typical question when looking at maps, or at other guidebooks is: "Should this peak be in the database? If the peak "qualifies" by any of the categories below, the answer is "Yes". For example, if a peak is a placeholder, it should be in the database.
Major peak
 Any alpine peak above P500, regardless of spacing.
Placeholder Peak
 Any alpine peak more than 5 km from any another.
Greater Peak
 A "Greater" peak is any peak in the prominence walk that is both higher and greater prominence. For example, suppose in an area there was peak "A" of height 3000m. And you wanted to enter peak "B" at the end of the long south ridge of A. Suppose peak B is 2500m and you find the lowest saddle being 2300m. So you might think that you can just enter "B" and be done. But if north of your 2300m saddle, there was another peak elevation 2800m with a key saddle of elevation 2600m, it is a "greater" peak and must be entered. And then you'd have to change the line parent so that B -> C and C -> A.
Intermediate Peak: 
 An "intermediate peak" is one that would not qualify on it's own, but should be in the database to properly link some ridge end peak.
Eg: If the official was P50, and there was a higher P80 in the prom walk to the nearest P200, it would need to be in the database
Standing name
 A "standing name" peak is one named on maps, guidebooks or other major databases.  Eg: In Baldwins Guide, or on BC Basemap or in John Roper's USA peak database). However it must still must be over P50 and 1 km spacing. (We don't want to clutter up the maps because somebody decides to name a bunch of spires or towers. The peak must have some information about it. Eg: In a case where somebody has just named everything on the map, we don't recognize that as a standing name, such peaks would have to qualify for other reasons as well.
Special Interest
 A peak important to a trip report which otherwise wouldn't qualify. Eg: Peaks along a ridge traverse. Still must be over P50 and 1 km spacing.
Labelled Peak
 Any peak with a label should be in our database, even if it has another name.
Eg: We need a peak for the thing labelled "Merchant Peak", even though the true Merchant peak is 1 km north. Only exception would be if the labelled peakis closer than 1 km, less than 50m prominence and has no other reason to be included. 
When to match names?
 If we previously didn't have the peak, we may as well use the existing name, if suitable. Unless it is a "bad" name: Eg: We wouldn't rush out to propagate some 15 character non-pronouncable name. Or semantically confusing names such as "ridge". Here is a link to some of the name cases. See Name Cases
5. Deletion Rules
There can be two main reasons for deleting a peak:
1. Spacing: It is so close to another peak it messes up the Gmap. (Usually less than 1/3 km away. If this is a peak of interest, such as Mount Fee North Peak, convert the information to a Mountain Note on the main peak.
2. Unnecessary: Too many peaks in area of low interest
 This is the case where the peak may be spaced enough so as not to obscure the Gmap, but is well below what is required to ensure we've got all the P300 peaks. Eg: A peak just 1 km from a much larger peak that only has 40m prominence and in a remote part of the Yukon. I would just delete such a peak if there is no reason for it.
The previous chapter was about coverage rules and inclusion rules. Deletion rules are stricter, because once somebody has done the work of putting in a peak. In other words, in a remote area of low interest, you might never put in a peak only 2 km from another with only 130m prominence. But once it is there, you would probably leave it. However if it only had 40m prominence and was only 1 km away, you might just clean up the database by deleting it.
Glenn Woodsworth and I have deleted a few such obscure and useless peaks. My usual reason is they make the map unreadable. (Peaks closer than 1 km. )  In Glenn's case, they have been remote peaks up the coast that are not of any imaginable interest to anyone. Eg: very low prominence (less than 100m) and very close to some other peak (within a couple of km).
In general, in order to be deleted, a peak would need to exceed all the rules by a factor of two. Eg: If the rule was one peak every 2 km, and 100m, one might consider deleting a peak that was only 1 km from a higher peak, and less than 50m prominence. But in practice, deletions are few.
Cases:
Sky Pilot subpeaks
 There are several low prominence rock towers such as Tombstone tower which were converted to Mountain notes on the Sky Pilot mountain page.
This was to make the Gmap readable.
Mount Fee North Peak.
 This is a case of getting rid of an unnamed north peak that is too close to the main peak. The distance from the main peak was less than 1/3 km, although the prominence is 63m. This was a marginal delete because the prominence is more than 50m. It messed up the default map display, but when you zoom in on the t4 display (20m) the peak is distinct.
6. Case Studies
This chapter examines sample clusters of peaks in various areas, to test the reasonableness of the rules outlined earlier. In each area, my goal is to derive an appropriate "spacing" and "Prominence limit". Eg: Peaks every 3 km, or anything over P300.

Too many peaks on a ridge (Mirror Peak)
 Greg Jones put in long chains of peaks, but they are also in David P Jones page 371

  TRIM  Jones  Biv         Latlong
 Height Height Name      
-------------------------------------------------------
  2723   2723  Riverside  50.463,-115.008  match
  2810   2805  EA72       50.477,-115.021  5 instead of 10
  2845   2845  Cultus     50.486,-115.032  match (Spot height)
  2810   2801  Mirror     50.492,-115.040  1 instead of 10
  2830   2841  Grizzly    50.497,-115.045  Extra 11?
  2810   2809  Spoon      50.504,-115.053  Fudged down 1 
  2850   2858  Knife  	  50.508,-115.057  up 8?	
  2930   2930  Platter 	  50.519,-115.076  match	
  2978   2978  Aosta      50.529,-115.095  match

The saddle heights are all off by 10 or 15m, do not match TRIM.
There is a duplicate name FA05.
But there is a trip report by Allan Schierman for Cultus NW1 (Peak 2841).
In Bivouac the trip report track log shows he climbed what we now call EA94
which was 2841, but Glenn corrected it to 2840 but it should be interpolated to 2830.
Option 1: Only essential peaks + P300
 Delete all low prom peaks except EA94 (Grizzly), Cultus, and Riverside. Then fix all the heights of saddles. Tell Glenn and Greg.
As a general principle on such a long chain of peaks, only put in the peaks mentioned in the trip report, and put in a prominence walk. So FA17, 
 Only peaks > P300 unless named.
Reason: Because it is too hard to maintain such a list of peaks.
Option 2: Only P200 peaks + peak in report
This would delete 3 peaks: mirror and the rogue FA05 and EA72.
If in future somebody climbs another, then put it in.
 
Powell Divide Area
(British Columbia traverse area)
 This is an area where there are detailed trip reports and route reports, and tricky route finding. Therefore, we chart peaks all along the main ridge about every kilometer, even though their prominence is often less than 100m. The peaks are not objectives in themselves, but are important milestones on the traverse. The peaks were assigned two letter codes starting with "PD" (Powell Divide) from north to south:

 Peak               Prominence
------------------------------------
 PD2                100m
 Crossroads (PD3)   180m
 Edlinton           159m
 PD4                 38m  (for spacing, more than 1 km from anything)
 PD5                256m
 PD6                 88m
 Danelaw            334m
 Princess            63m
 PD7                118m
 PD8                 88m
 PD9                 65m
 PD10                48m  two km from previous
 PD11                85m
 PD12                38m  key corner in route

 All these peaks are valid. The general plan is to name a peak every 1 km along the traverse, as they are all milestones. In some cases as low prominence as 38m (PD12). It is worth mentioning that the existing "guidebook" map of this area made by Western Forest Products also charted the peaks to the same density. They followed the old method of using the height as an identifier, but of course, the flaw in this naming plan is that their map no longer matches the heights on the TRIM maps, so the "PD" numbers are much more convenient.
Washington State
 Target: (peaks above treeline)
  - Every peak 300m prominence 
  - Every 200m and 5 km separation
  Marginal:
  - 200 and 2 km
  Delete
   - anything less than 200m prom and 2 km separation. Eg: 107m and 1.5 km
Working Peaks: Sometimes peaks get put in that look like they meet requirements until you work out the prominence. It's worth keeping these, just so someone isn't tempted to add it in the future.
Deletions: 
  Must be at least 200 prominence and less than 2 km separation
I deleted anything with less than 2 km separation less than 150m prominence.
Trafalgar Peak Area
 (a British Columbia guidebook area)
See True Blue Mountain
 I investigated a few peaks in the database for British Columbia that were low prominence. In this area True Blue peak was only 43m in prominence, so I was wondering if such a peak should even be in the database. But I soon discovered that this area is close to Kaslo and has trip reports that specifically refer to True Blue and other peaks.
At first glance, I thought that perhaps I had gone too far and added too many peaks in this area several years ago, but when I reviewed the situation, I saw that they are all useful for a route description of the trip report Sandra had written. Therefore it is valid to have charted so many unnamed peaks. The derived density was to chart peaks every 2 or 3 km, if over 100m prominence. 
 - The "true summit" rule means Josephine Peak had to be entered, in order to provide the parent.
 - Put in spacer peaks, (to bring density up to density of official names, which means peaks every 3 km.
Halifax Hills in Nova Scotia
 There are a bunch of very minor hills charted in Halifax, which were put in to do the prominence walk from an officially named hill. Have a look at:
Southdale Hill 40m
 Shearwater Hill 20m
 Millar Mountain (official)
But although "miller Mountain" is an official name, I don't think it is necessary, particularly if it causes us to chart numerous other peaks just to do the prominence walk. These are not mountaineering destinations, they are just areas in Halifax like Little Mountain in Vancouver. They would not be in any guidebook, and there would never be a trip report. They are not alpine.
Colorado
 I examined several areas in Colorado. The general rule for Colorado is to have the officially named peaks, with spacing at least 3 km. And then within that spacing, it is reasonable to put in other higher prominence peaks, if over P300.

  Peak    Height  Prominence
-----------------------------
 Bx35447  3979m,    181m
 Bx35448  3981m     257m

 These have spot heights, and is 3 km away from its parent Eureka Mountain. So it fits in with the average density of official names in the area. Would be useful to tie in Gibson Peak, which is not yet in the database. 38.073129,-105.712466
Colorado (Adams area)
 There are two Adams SE1 peaks put in by Mike Cleven:

  ID      Name        Prominence
------------------------------------
 #25451  Adams SE1     110m
 #25452  Adams SE1      91m

 These were put in by Mike Cleven in 2005, but now I think they could be removed. The density of peaks in this area is too high and the map is cluttered. Spacing should be 5 km unless over P300. I wouldn't even bother with Little Baldy, (an official name) since it is less than 100m prominence.
Kitlope Meander
 (British Columbia Remote Trip Area)
 The Kitlope area is a remote coastal icecap that has had several trips over the years. It is a huge area, with very few official names.
So my question was: what density of peaks should we chart in this area? For example, should the database chart any of the peaks along Dave Williams 100 km trip report called "A Kitlope Meander"?
Previous to the report, the area only had P300 documented, and there is not a single milestone peak on their route.
My first conclusion was that it would be good to name peaks every 10 km along the route. So I charted 3 peaks along their route, and two of them turned out to be P500 peaks which should have been in the database already:

                Prominence
---------------------------
   #35509  Kt2    763m
   Blue Fork      540m
   Kt3            479m

But then I started looking at the alpine area around this traverse, and came to the conclusion that the coverage should be one peak every 10 km square, as long as they are over 250m prominence. (One peak every 100 square km). This resulted in putting in 20 peaks. I just put them in from the 1:50K map, and then Glenn Woodsworth figured out the proper prominences using TRIM maps. In this process we discovered at least 4 or 5 P500 peaks, so it was certainly worthwhile to do the coverage. 10 km square is a good coverage target, because you can get the whole surrounding area visible on a 1:50K map, and be reasonably certain you've got the highest point in that area.
Mount Marion Area (Goat Range)
 Dan Richardson asked when it is appropriate to delete peaks. He gave three examples of potential deletes in the alpine area around Mount Marion.

  ID     Name      Prom  Nearest Peak
-------------------------------------
  13733  Mari-13   161     3 km
  15696  Mari-3    120     2 km
  15739  Mari-7    113     1 km
The area is west of Duncan Lake. There is one trip report up Meadow Mtn by Sandra, and Dan Richardson has investigated some of the roads.
So I'd say this area is a "Potential Local Exploration Area". If I lived close, I'd go and investigate that area. Therefore if I had put in the peaks in this area, I may well have put Mari-13 and Mari-3 because both are more than 2 km from any other. I might not have put in Mari-7. Although it meets the prominence criteria, there is a higher peak within 1 km. Would I delete it? Probably not. If it was less than 100m prominence, I'd be more tempted to delete it.
South Mamquam area
 This is an example of a "Local Exploration Area", where we want peaks every 1 km distance, as long as they have 80m prominence.
Sky Pilot Area
 I removed Ledgling, Nai, and Tombstone tower to reduce map clutter. They are less than 50m prominence, and less than 1/2 km spacing. What I did was put them as "Mountain Notes" on the Sky Pilot record.
I categorize them as "rock tower features" on a given peak, not as peaks themselves. Note that they don't come close to qualifying as peaks, as they are only 300m apart.

 Feature       Prominence  Spacing
-------------------------------------
 The Nai         25m         500m from Ledge
 Ledgling        25m         200m from Ledge
 Tombstone Tower 30m         200m from Ledge
Valhallas -Devil's Range
 In this are there are lots of little bumps. Eg; Satan Peak is less than 0.4 km from Diablo, but it's prominence is 88 meters. This is a high interest area, and in Canada. For this area, the rule is 50m prominence, and .5 km. Even with that, they are a mess on any map.
Boston Peak - Horseshoe basin trail
 See Boston Peak
 This is a high interest area, so the minimum cutoff would be peaks at least 1 km apart and 50m prominence. So True Horseshoe would not qualify. 
Ray Borbon has suggested that the peak at 48.500688,-121.041579 which he calls Shark Fin should be included. But it has very little prominence so I think any info on it should be included withBoston Peak. Similarly, I'm thinking that True Horseshoe should not be in the database, but should be a comment on Horseshoe Peak.
7. Peaks Not to Put in
Although in theory all you need are a list of rules as to which peaks "Qualify", another way to express things is to list what peaks NOT to put in.
Low Prominence peaks near larger peak
 Unnamed peak less than 50m prominence and less than 2 or 3 km from a larger peak
Peaks too close
 In general peaks should be spaced out 5 km apart. However, there are often ridges where there are two peaks only 2 km apart. However such peaks should be reasonably prominent (200m). No point in putting in a bunch of peaks only P50, and less than 5 km apart. (Unless the ridge is a specific traverse, and each little peak is discussed, like in Powell Divide.
Non alpine peaks
 Don't put in little non-alpine peaks like Little Mountain in Vancouver. Reason is because it would just clutter the map and necessitate a bunch more bumps just to do the prominence. A peak like Mont Royal in Montreal (prominence 233m) can be entered, but not some 50m prominence hills.
Peaks less than 300m
8. Techniques to Find Peaks
The technique you use depends on the province, because the maps are different in different provinces. So below are some notes for BC and for the Yukon.
British Columbia

First stage is to find the peaks, then when they are all in, second stage is to link them together. It is often easier to spot peaks on the 1:50K map. Typically, for a remote alpine area in BC, I look at the 1:50 map, and pick what appears to be the highest point every 5 or 10 km or so. I initially let the system generate a name, such as FF17. I often put in the height in feet. This seems easier to find the high points rather than doing it from the Trim.
I just look for peaks with at least one or two of the dark 500' major contour lines close by.
Periodically I zoom out to the 250K map, just to make sure I've got coverage of the highest thing in every 10 km square. (Only Alpine squares)

   Title Status: Temporary
   Full Title: Kt20
   Abbrev name: Kt20
   Peak Height: 6550 feet
   Province   BC
   Country    Canada
Next stage is to refine all the newly inserted peaks on the trim map.
Third stage is I assign names to any P500 that may have been found, and run the naming generator, such that the minor peaks are numbered according to which P500 they belong to.
Yukon Technique

At this time, there are vast areas of the Yukon where we have not charted a single peak. What we would like is to plot at least the highest peak in every 10 km square of alpine area. But it is not easy to pick out the highest peak from the maps. So the technique is to go into each 10 km square, and plot what looks like the highest. That peak becomes the representative for that square. At this point, I'm not doing prominences, but only trying to get the peaks.
Ideally, there would be a single map such that we could display each 10 km area on the screen, and then scan around with our eyes and pick out the highest one. But there is no such simple map. Sometimes you find them with Topo Canada, and sometimes with the 1:50K.
I tried to work out a system for finding the peaks.
Often, it is best to start with the 1:50K map, at a 1 km scale, and just investigate likely looking areas. The difficulty with the Topo Canada map is it only shows spot heights when you zoom in to 200m. Furthermore the contour positions seem to vary when you zoom in.
Here are some notes that show myself putting in a typical sequence of peaks:
I start by putting in a peak I called Tulugaq which was 1458m. I observed that 1458m is high for that area, so anything over 1200 is probably worth charting. So I charted 4 more peaks nearby, 1239m 1358m, 1297, 1190. They are about 10 km apart.
Then I started just going into every 10 km square, and looking for the highest. So I found YT1 (which had a spot height), and then YT2 south of there with no spot height.
It's hard to spot the high points until you chart them. Eg: on the 1:50, I could see there was nothing in that area, but when I zoomed in, I saw 1374m. The 1:50 seems to be better than Topo Canada if there is a spot height, because the spot height will be visible even at 1 km scale, whereas the spots don't show up till 200m on the Topo Canada.
So then I found a few more, just by cruising the 1:50K map. Just set scale to 1km, and if there is no peak charted, look for the highest point. Eg: I can see that Bear is 1297, and above 1000m contour.
But then I was cruising Topo Canada at 500m scale, and I see a 1300m. When I zoom in, I suddenly see a 1440 m contour, and just to the west a 1634 spot height!!  And then a 1520 m peak. So at this point, I am just cruising, and picking off high peaks.
Then I cruise east, and I see a 1399 spot height on the 1:50K. So I chart that as YT12. At this point, my method of finding the high points is hit and miss. If there was a higher point not marked by spot height, I wouldn't find it on the first pass. The different maps and scales all reveal certain peaks at different scales. The only high points that appear at all scales are the ones I plot. So in some cases there might be 2 or 3 peaks in a 10 km area, as I find the highest.
9. Inclusion Rules for "Ridge End" Peaks
2015: I've written elsewhere about the inclusion rule which says if you've got a given peak, you also need any peak of higher prominence going up the prominence walk. But this chapter raises some other issues which relate more to inclusion. It documents the issues I've run into while doing an area of mountaineering interest such as Nirvana or the Telkwa range around Mount Forster.
I've noticed while doing the Telkwa range that it is desirable to include "ridge end" peaks, even though they are low prominence. Especially if they have a big drop into the valley on one side such that they are a landmark. Eg: the last peak on a long ridge arm.
The advantage of having such peaks is so we can refer to them in trip reports. It makes it easy to refer to the ridge. Another term for these peaks is "outlier" peaks. The rule is that if such a peak is a long way from any other peak then it gets extra "points".
Now, the question is: given that you put in an "outlier", how many of the other bumps on the ridge do you need? I think the old rule was that you should include any peak that is higher prominence than the outlier. Classic case is Denys Peak in the Telkwa range. I wanted some way to refer to the ridge between Denys and Sunset Creeks. The furthest peak out I called Denys, so we'd have a name for the ridge. It could also be the Forster SW ridge, since there is also a long NW ridge.
In any event, I "marked out" the three ridges in the area by putting in the peaks, and in each case, assigned a creek name to the westernmost peak. as Denys, Sunset and Atlantis (Glacis).
It is desirable to "mark out" significant ridges by putting in the peaks on them. A peak is significant if:
- it has high absolute prominence
 - it is a high point of an area (eg: highest thing in 5 km)
 - it is the end of a ridge we want to discuss
 - it has a big drop on at least one side, so as to make it significant looking from the valley below
 - it is a key point on a ridge traverse
SW Ridge
  Denys       118m
  Forster SW3 160m
  Forster W2  240m
NW Ridges
  Sunsets      190m
  Forster NW2  181m
Atlantis     120m
  Forster NW4  272m
  Forster NW2  181m
NE Ridges
  Melissen      60m
  Triangle     120m
Dockrill NE3   169m
  Dockrill NE1   175m
  Dockrill       243m
East Ridge
  Emerson        427m
10. Short Rules
Here is an attempt to summarize: Just the same rules again:
How can a peak qualify?

Any over P500, regardless of spacing
Any highest peak within 5 km
Any over P200 and 2 km from any higher peak.
Any spaced 1 km on a traverse route
Any Officially Named peak
Any Intermediate peak
Any "standing name" peak (in guidebook or map)
 
Just because a peak qualifies doesn't necessarily mean we've found all such peaks. Below is the "coverage plan"
  All peaks over P500 in Canada
  At least one peak every 5 km (coverage) in alpine areas of BC
  All peaks over P200 in any area with trip report
  All Officially named peaks (unless closer than 1 km)
Existing Names:
 A class 1 assigned name is less than 8 chars and pronouncable.
 In general, if we don't already have a name, we adopt guidebook or map names
 
  - use guidebook name if less than 8 characters
  - use geographic name (creek, etc)
  - assign provisional name - less than 8 chars, pronouncable, not duplicated within 200 km.
In general, the closer the spacing, the more prominent is the threshold. Eg: a peak that was more than 5 km away but only P100 might be entered, but not a whole chain of P100 peaks only 1 km apart on an obscure, non travelled ridge.
Introduction to Mountain Naming Policy
This Encyclopedia has very strict standards regarding the adoption or creation of mountain names. The standards are published on this website. Our goal is to promote useful names for maps and articles. Our criteria for picking among possible names is the most comprehensive I have seen. The practice of naming unnamed peaks is common with many notable guidebooks, as a necessity for orderly discussion of the peaks. This encyclopedia has continued that process, but this time, we have also documented the process. For example, we publish a set of Mountain Names Cases for the naming principles.
 
Every name adopted in Bivouac has one of the following "Title Statuses" as described in Title Status Dictionary, In general, what we want are short, easy to use names, good for maps.
ISSUES
 The title status and primary name of peaks can not be directly edited. They can only be changed by sending an email to R Tivy. Any editor can add name information to the "name notes" field, but the main "MtnTitle" field can only be changed via email request.
Co-ordination of Names
 Considerable effort has gone into standardizing names with other sources. This includes the government, guidebooks, third party maps, and other websites. We are in constant communication with many guidebook authors, and other list makers. We sometimes have had to reverse names previously adopted by Bivouac, if older established names become known. The general principle is to standardize our names with whatever is out there, even if the other name has some shortfalls.
See also Mountain Names Cases. The test cases refer to the principles, and in some cases, established the principles.
Any dispute concerning names should refer to the naming principles documents. 
See Properties of a Good Name/
Changing Names:
 We make every effort to use local names. Any local name should at least be reflected in the "Alternate Names" field, so people can find it when searching.
In some cases where a Bivouac name is not well established, I will actually change the primary name to correspond to the local name, and put the old primary as a secondary. However, I have to use considerable caution in this practice, because there may be various references to the original Bivouac name.
KML Generator Tutorial
1. Preface
This is about the Bivouac KML generator, which is the KMLForm link on every mountain page. The tutorials get you to generate simple KML files and then open the same file in both Google Earth and a text editor. For each example, we open the generated file with Notepad and discuss it's contents. We then open the same file on Google Earth or Backcountry Navigator to see what it does.
This document is for people trying to debug the Bivouac generated KML files for different devices. It starts by discussing the simplest KML file that can be generated with the Bivouac KML Generator, and then works up to more complex KML files.
See also Gpx Tutorial
2. Simplest KML, no Styles
In this tutorial, we will use Bivouac to generate the simplest KML file, and then view it in both Notepad and Google Earth. (If you aren't familiar with how to look at KML files with a text editor, see the later chapter). We can then run the same file on both Google Earth, and any phone based App such as Backcountry Navigator. The file contains no style information, so what you will see when you import it is whatever defaults that program has. For example, when displayed on Google Earth, you see the familiar yellow push pins for mountains. 
In Bivouac, go to Mount Steele, and click KML Form. When the form comes up, set the radius to 1 km, and turn everything else off except mountains. The result will be a KML file that contains only two mountains. Below are the key fields in the KML Form:

   GPSType:   OtherGps
   Radius: 1 km
   Mountains  Yes
   (Everything else)  No
In the above, we set the GPS Type to "OtherGPS". The effect of this is a simple KML file that relies entirely on the defaults of your viewer to set the style of the icons. (there will be no <style> section in the KML file.
Now generate the file. It will go to your downloads folder. Open it with Notepad. On my Windows 10 machine, Firefox asks me what I want to do with the file (either open with Google earth or open with Notepad). 
You should see the following file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
<Document>
<name>Steele.kml</name>
<description>Kml file generated by Bivouac.com</description>
// MOUNTAINS SECTION //
<Placemark>
  <name>Steele</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.60500,49.60500,1659</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
<Placemark>
  <name>Raven</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.59889,49.60778,1647</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
</Document></kml>
The above file has only two sections: First are 5 lines that are standard preamble, and second are two "<placemark> sections, one for each mountain. The <coordinates> section gives LONGITUDE first, then latitude, then elevation in meters. For some reason, the KML spec expects Longitude first!!  And colors are backwards: instead of Red green blue, they are blue green red..
In general, KML files are case sensitive, and there are lots of little tricky things that cause them not to work. Google Earth will sometimes generate error messages, but other errors it just silently fails. Or worse still, just skips a few items it doesn't like. And things that work in Google earth often will fail silently in other Apps like Backcountry Navigator.
One thing that tricked me was a report of campgrounds where there were a few that had "null" for elevation. Google Earth worked fine, no error messages and displayed them anyway. But Backcountry Navigator just silently skipped the few that had problems. So in testing it all seemed to work except a few were missing. But then I converted all Nulls to 0 and they all showed up.
So when debugging files, you often need to fall back to a working file, just to find which part of your file is causing the problems. 
Furthermore, the various KML displayer programs will often ignore much of the syntax. 
3. KML with Styles (Google Earth)
The difference between this tutorial and the previous is that this file will contain <style> sections. The effect of these styles depends on your KML viewer. In this tutorial, we are going to set the GPSType to Google Earth, just so you can see how styles work. We will look at the same file in Backcountry Navigator.
Here are the important settings:

   GPSType:   GoogleEarth
   Radius: 1 km
   Mountains  Yes
   (Everything else)  No
Here is the KML File:
-------------------------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
<Document>
<name>Steele.kml</name>
<description>Kml file generated by Bivouac.com</description>
// GPSType = GoogleEarth
// MOUNTAINS SECTION //
<Style id="Mtn">
  <LabelStyle>
    <color>ffddddff</color>
    <scale>0.7</scale>
  </LabelStyle>
  <IconStyle>
    <scale>0.5</scale>
    <Icon><href>https://bivouac.com/icons/Triangle_Red11x12.png</href></Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>
<Placemark>
  <styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>
  <name>Steele</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.60500,49.60500,1659</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
<Placemark>
  <styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>
  <name>Raven</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.59889,49.60778,1647</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
</Document></kml>
Let's discuss the structure of the above file: It has the following sections:
  1. KML Preamble (always the same, just ignore this)
  2. One <LabelStyle> section
  3. Two <Placemark> sections
Each Placemark sections correspond to a two mountains. Each one starts by specifying what styleUrl to use. Eg: the style is #Mtn. refers to the StyleId defined at the top of the Mtn section.
Now go to the phone and generate a file with GPSType=GoogleEarth. When you load it, it still works, even though the GPSType in Bivouac was wrong. What happens is Backcountry Navigator just ignores all the style info.
4. KML with GpsType=BCN
"BCN" is an abbreviation for "Backcountry Navigator", which is the GPS app I often use. In this example, we set the GPSType=BackcountryNavigator. The difference is that the IconStyle will be symbols that exist within BCN rather than .png files.
The various KML viewers like Google Earth or the ones in phone apps like Backcountry Navigator will often ignore styles. In this example, we'll specify LabelStyle and IconStyle.
We'll set GPSType to Google Earth. The same KML file would work in Backcountry Navigator, but it will just ignore the Google icons and default to it's own icons.
Here's the same KML, except with GPSType=Backcountry Navigator.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
<Document>
<name>Steele.kml</name>
<description>Kml file generated by Bivouac.com</description>
// GPSType = BackcountryNavigator
// MOUNTAINS SECTION //
<Style id="Mtn">
  <IconStyle>
    <Icon><href>triangle_red</href></Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>
<Placemark>
  <styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>
  <name>Steele</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.60500,49.60500,1659</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
<Placemark>
  <styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>
  <name>Raven</name>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.59889,49.60778,1647</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
</Document></kml>
Note that in the above, the <style> section only specifies IconStyle but not LabelStyle. That is because BCN ignores LabelStyle. The file could contain LabelStyle, but it would be ignored. In general, the design principle of the Bivouac generator is to not include stuff we know will be ignored.
5. Descriptions
<Placemark> sections can contain <Description> tags. These descriptions are then visible by clicking on the point or line in Google Earth. In Backcountry Navigator they are also visible. The Description tag comes right after the <name> tag. To see an actual file go to Mount Steele, set radius to 1 km with descriptions on.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
<Document>
<name>Steele.kml</name>
<description>Kml file generated by Bivouac.com</description>
// GPSType = GoogleEarth
// MOUNTAINS SECTION //
<Style id="Mtn">
  <LabelStyle>
    <color>ff0000ff</color>
    <scale>0.7</scale>
  </LabelStyle>
  <IconStyle>
     <scale>0.5</scale>
     <Icon><href>https://bivouac.com/icons/Triangle_Red11x12.png</href></Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>
<Placemark>
<styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>  <name>Raven Dance Peak 1647m</name>  <description>Raven Dance Peak  1647m  
Prominence: 22m  
Located northeast of Mount Steele This peak is a short ski from the peak of Mount Steele, and features a great view down into Thornhill Creek.
A local name, corresponding to the pairs of ravens that have been seen dancing.
  </description>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.59889,49.60778,1647</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
<Placemark>
<styleUrl>#Mtn</styleUrl>  <name>Mount Steele 1659m</name>  <description>Mount Steele  1659m  
Prominence: 422m  
Mount Steele is the highest peak on the Tetrahedron plateau. The term "Tetrahedron plateau" can be somewhat confusing, since the peak named Tetrahedron Peak is not on the Tetrahedron plateau, but is several km east of Mount Steele, and is accessed by a totally different route. 
  </description>
  <Point>
    <coordinates> -123.60500,49.60500,1659</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
 
// FEATURE SECTION FOR Building_Hut //
<Style id="Building_Hut">
  <LabelStyle>
    <color>ff00d7ff</color>
    <scale>0.7</scale>
  </LabelStyle>
  <IconStyle>
     <scale>0.5</scale>
     <Icon><href>https://bivouac.com/icons/House_Brown11x11.png</href></Icon>
  </IconStyle>
</Style>
 
 // PLACEMARKS SECTION 
 //<Placemark>
<styleUrl>#Building_Hut</styleUrl>  <name> Steele Cabin</name>
  <description>Steele Cabin
This cabin is run by the Tetrahedron Ski Club. Wood stove and outhouse.
The Mount Steele hut is the highest of the 4 huts in this area and makes a good destination for an overnight trip. Takes about 5 hours to hike into it. The cabin itself is a substantial prefab log cabin with good foam insulation/calking between the logs and the two bright windows.
  </description>
  <Point>
    <coordinates>
      -123.60884,49.60907,1500
    </coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
</Document></kml>
6. Radius=5
In this tutorial, we will see some of the other feature types such as parking lot, huts, campgrounds.
In mount Steele, set all the settings to "Auto"
Now generate a KML file for Google Earth.
7. Debugging speed
To quickly debug files, I quickly open them in Google earth and then the same file in Notepad. (Or TextEdit on the Macbook Pro). When I push "Generate", Firefox gives me the option to "open" the file directly in Google Earth. Then if I want to look at the file, I just regenerate it again, but this time open in Notepad.
On the phone, I generate directly from Bivouac on the phone. It dumps the file into your downloads folder and Android lets you directly "open" the file in Backcountry Navigator. Once in BCN, you just push "Import" wait a few seconds, and inspect the map. 
One possible confusion when flipping back and forth between BCN and Google Earth is if you make a change to the settings on the computer, this will not change the settings on the computer, unless you reload the form. And of course on the phone you want to set GPSType to "Backcountry Navigator".
8. How to Open KML files 
(Teach your computer). The key to understanding what the KML generator is doing is to be able to open the KML files in a text editor. Everything I am going to tell you here is just generic knowledge about operating systems and phones. But if you are like me, you may have forgotten some of it. What we want is to be able to open kml files in either Google Earth or a text editor. By looking into the kml file with a text editor, we can understand what is going on. To teach your computer to give you the choice of Google Earth or Notepad, we have to review the basics. So I'm going to remind you of the key facts regarding text editors, downloads folder, file types, file associations, etc.

Notepad Text Editor (and Macbook TextEdit)
 All Windows operating systems for the past 20 years have a built in text editor called "Notepad.exe". Start it up on your machine. It is the editor I use when I want to see what is inside any text file." The equivalent on Apple Macbook is called "TextEdit".
Downloads Folder
 All operating systems (Windows, Mac, Android) have a special folder called "downloads". It is an agreed place where downloaded files are put. And the standard place where Apps look to import files if you save them when you download. So when you download a kml from Bivouac, it goes to the downloads folder. With browsers that give the option of open or save (like Firefox), opening it directly won't save the file.
Import and Open
 On a phone, the word "import" is often used to mean opening a file with an app. For example, Backcountry Navigator has a function called "Import Tracks or Waypoints". In Google Earth, it is under File..Open.
One way to import downloaded files into apps is to start up the App, then "open" the file. File..open and browse to the file.
So if you want to look at a given kml file using Google Earth, you can always start up Google Earth, then "open" the file. Similarly, if you want to inspect any given text file, you can start up Notepad, then open the file with notepad. (Later, we'll talk about "direct open", but first, we need to talk about File Types and associations.)
File Types 
 All operating systems have a concept of "file types", indicated by the file extension. A .kml file is one type of file intended for programs like google earth. A .doc file is intended for Microsoft Word. 
File associations 
 All operating systems can learn to associate file extensions with programs. These are called "file associations". For example, below are some file associations.

    .kml    Google earth
    .kml    Notepad
    .txt    Notepad
    .pdf    Adobe
Initially, your Operating system probably has no file associations for a .kml file. But as soon as you download Google Earth, the install program also puts in a file association between .kml and Google Earth. So when you double click on a kml, it will automatically start up google earth.
In above table, one of the associations is the "default". If you double click on the file it will open the file using the default program. So a correct representation of the "associations" mechanism also needs to show that one of associations is the default.

 Default  Extension  Program
-------------------------------
  [x]     .kml    Google earth
  [ ]     .kml    Notepad
  [ ]     .txt    Notepad
  [ ]     .pdf    Adobe
 

So now every time you click on a .kml file, it can use Google Earth to display it. In order to also have the choice of opening it with notepad, we have to insert a file association for kml-Notepad. In Windows 10, you can always create a new file association by going into the file manager, right click on a .kml file, "Open With". On my computer, this gives me three choices:

  Google Earth
  Notepad
  Choose Another App

 
The idea is that once the program knows a given program can open a given file type, it knows what to do when you click on the file.
Default App
 There is a concept in Windows 10 of a "Default app". 
 https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsinternals/2017/10/25/windows-10-how-to-configure-file-associations-for-it-pros/
It has a notification that comes up. They say the following:
 - on the first launch of a file extension, if multiple programs hare registered for handling that file extension.
Each time an application registers a file extension, except if the "Always use this app to open .xxx files is checked.
From the above, we can see the following terms:
  "first launch of a file extension"
Direct Open
 Once you have file associations, most browsers have a mechanism where they directly open a downloaded file with a certain program. This "direct open" saves you the step of manually starting up the program and then importing the file. How exactly it works varies with different browsers. With Firefox on Windows 10, when you hit the Bivouac "download" button, Firefox gives you a choice of "Opening" the file with Google Earth or with Notepad. But in Chrome, when you hit "download", the file appears at the bottom of the screen as a tab. When you click the tab, it opens the file with Google Earth.
Different Browsers: 
 Different browsers have different ways to display downloaded files. The browser I understand best on Windows 10 is Firefox. When I hit the download button in Bivouac, it pops up with a choice of Google Earth or Notepad. 
You have chosen to open:
  Steel.kml
What should Firefox do with this file?
  [x] Open With [Notepad (default)
  [ ] Save file
  [ ] Do this automatically form now on

Beside the "Open With" is a drop down that allows me to choose between Notepad and Google Earth.
Google Chrome works differently. It displays downloaded files as tabs along the bottom of the browser and then you have to click on them and decide what to do. For example, if you download a .kml file called "Steele.kml", that name will appear along the bottom of the browser. When you click on it, it may open the file directly with Google Earth. This is because when you downloaded Google earth, it put in a "file association" between .kml and Google Earth.
To adjust the file associations, right click on the tab. This takes you to the file manager. Then right click on the file. Now you see "Open With". Click that, and you have the following options:

   Google earth
   Notepad
   Search the Store
   Choose Another App
"Choose another App" is the way you initially create the associations with Google Earth and Notepad.
Line Parent Definition And Database Stability
1. Line Parent and Database Rules
 I assume you have already been introduced to Mountain Prominence - Definition, and know that every mountain has exactly one "key saddle" joining it to higher terrain. The line parent is just the first peak you come to on that "higher terrain". A loose definition of a "line parent" is that it is the first higher peak you come to after the key saddle. In other words, you go down to the "key saddle" of the peak, and then follow the ridge upwards till you come to a higher peak.
But the above definition obviously depends on what bumps a given database designates as "peaks". You might start out with one peak being the line parent, but if you add an intermediate peak later, then you might want to update the line parent. For example, suppose you've got two peaks, Peak A is 3000m and its parent is Peak C which is 3200m. But later on, you also decide to insert Peak B which is 3100m into the database, and lies on the same ridge between A and C. Is your original line parent for A now "wrong", just because your database now includes the bump "B"? We say no. Your database is not wrong because it still designates C as the parent of A. You could revise it, but the original is not wrong, because there could be other databases that don't contain B.
However the "Greater Peak" (prominence parent) should agree, if you accept the rule that any greater peak in a prominence walk should always be in both databases. 
The only way a bunch of databases could completely agree on a certain line parent for every peak is if they all agreed on a prominence threshold. Eg: You only consider peaks with 300m prominence as potential line parents. But having a single prominence threshold is not appropriate for all of North America, so this is not typically done in any database. What to do? This is the discussion of this document.
CONCLUSION:
As of March 2012, it is now clear that when trying to reconcile two databases, there is no point in trying to make the line parents agree, unless both databases also define a prominence threshold. "Line Parent" is just a convenient method to prove the prominence. It is generally the nearest higher peak at the time the prominence was determined. For peaks with distant parents, it is usually a significant named peak, not a lesser unnamed peak.
The only thing that is definitive about a peak is its height and its prominence, and its key saddle. But not its line parent.
For example, suppose that at the time the prominence was figured out, a given database had Peak C as the parent of A. If at a later time, an intermediate peak B is inserted into the database, and it is also higher than A. It is still acceptable to have that C is the line parent of A. It is not regarded as a database mistake.
When reconciling two databases, there is no point in trying to make the line parent info agree.
Another case where the "line parent" on file can vary is when a peak has a distant parent, we typically "skip over" a less significant peak as you approach a better known peak. For example, in the Canadian Rockies, the parent of Mount Joffre can be said to be Assiniboine. Assiniboine is about 50 km from Joffre. If you start traversing the ridge from Joffre toward Assiniboine, you don't come to higher ground until you start going up the final south ridge of Assiniboine. But less than 1 km before the summit of Assiniboine, you encounter a bump called Lunette Peak, which itself has only 28 m of prominence. Should Lunette be the "line parent" of Assiniboine? No, because it is a low prominence subpeak of Assiniboine.
The reason Lunette is skipped is because it is "almost" to Assniboine. If had been only half way to Assiniboine then it would be the proper "line parent" of Joffre. 
2. Examples and Test Cases

Assiniboine and Lunette Peak
 The distance from Mount Joffre to Assiniboine is 49 km. Lunette Peak is 48 km. Since 48/49 is more than 90%, we skip Lunette.
Mount Seymour
 Near Vancouver is a popular area around Mount Seymour, where every little bump is named. Brockton Point -> Pump Peak -> Second Peak -> Mount Seymour. In this case, we put Pump Peak as the parent of Brockton despite its low prominence of only 45m, because it is not 90% of the distance to Seymour. And then from Pump to second, the same rule applies. The result is that all the low prominence subpeaks are linked to their "technical" line parent, and no peaks are skipped. This example works perfectly with our rule.
Ulysses and Fairweather Example
 This is the case of several unnamed peaks between a given peak and a distant well known peak. Ulysses is about 800km away from Fairweather, and between them is Mount Root and also three nnamed subpeaks, all higher than Ulysses:

   Ulysses      3024   2289
   Root N7      3049    414
   Root N6      3237    452
   Root N2      3770    465
   Root         3928    918
   Fairweather  4671   3956 
So one temptation is to just put Fairweather as the parent of Ulysses. Or at least Root. The way it is on the database as of 5.102 is that the line parent chain shows every peak above P300, regardless of distance. (the rule is never to ignore P300 peaks).
If this proves to be REALLY undesirable, then I suppose we could raise the threshold from P300 to P500 if the distance is more than 100 km. (Or a ratio, like if distance is 800 km, then threshold is 800m, if distance is 600 km, then threshold is 600m. (With this rule, Ulysses could be "wired" directly to Root (P918), and we could jump over the obscure Root N7, Root N6, etc.
But of course once someone has done the more detailed work, no-one should "undo" that work unless there was some other bug or confusion and you were redoing the whole thing.
Murray Peak, Mull Peak

   Mull Peak    2153  463
   Murray Peak  2147   80
   Murray S2    1933  110  Murray

Initially the database had Murray S2 linked directly to Mull. By the ratio rules, this is clearly a mistake, because Murray is too close. Therefore the line parent was changed to Murray Peak.
3. When to Add Peaks
We sometimes add unnamed peaks to the database in order to make it quicker to check key saddles and line parents. When is it good to add an unnamed peak to the database? To answer that question, we go back to the purpose of the "line Parent" concept. The purpose of designating a "line parent" is to simplify the prominence proof for any given peak. You could have a database that only gave the prominence of each peak, and the lat-long of the key saddle. But to make that data easier to check, it is convenient to be able to name the "higher ground" beyond the saddle. So we pick the first significant higher peak beyond the saddle, and call that the "line parent". This allows somebody to say a statement like: "The Key saddle of Peak 1 is just to the south, and just beyond the saddle is it's parent, Peak 2." You don't want a situation where somebody says: The key saddle of peak 1 is just to the south, but the line parent is 50 km away, with a dozen other higher saddles along the way. The reason the second database is hard to check is because you'd have to re-check those dozen saddles just to make sure the key saddle was indeed the lowest. So in many cases, we add intermediate peaks to the database, which simplify the proofs.
Apart from convenience, there are two absolute "rules" that dictate that an intermediate peak MUST be added:
 
 Saddle beyond:[/i
 There cannot be a lower saddle beyond first high ground.
 High Prom point:[/i
 There cannot be a higher prominence point between subject and Line Parent
Rule 1 explanation: The database is incomplete if there is a saddle, then higher ground, and then a lower saddle beyond and then the parent. In this case, the first higher ground must be put in as a peak, because it is the only one that can be the Line Parent. We can't use the distant peak beyond the second saddle as the parent because that would imply that the low saddle is the key saddle, which is false. Line Parent is a convenient shorthand for the "higher ground". The key saddle must always be the lowest point between a peak and its parent.
Consider the cases below. The subject peak is Peak 1. Beyond it are peak 2 and Peak 3. For our examples, Peak 2 is an unnamed peak, not yet in the database. The question is: when do we need to add Peak 2 to the database?

Case 1 - Lower Col beyond Peak 2
 (Rule 1 - Saddle Beyond) There is a lower col beyond the first high point you come to after the saddle:

   Peak 1    6000
   Col 1-2   5500  <-- Key saddle of Peak 1
   Peak 2    6500  (is this necessary? - yes
   Col 2-3   5400  (lower saddle, but not key saddle of peak 1
   Peak 3    7500

 In this case, it is essential to put Peak 2 into the database, because there is a lower saddle beyond peak 2. In the above, if we don't put Bump 2 in the database as Peak 2 then we might try to designate Peak 3 as the parent. But it can't be the parent, because the 2-3 col is lower. The key saddle is always the lowest point between a peak and its line parent. So we must insert peak 2 for the database to be self consistent. Col 2-3 is the key saddle of Peak 2, not peak 1.
Case 2 - No higher col, but Peak 2 is higher prom
(Rule 2 - High Prom point)

   Peak 1    6000  P500
   Col 1-2   5500       <-- Key saddle of Peak 1, as before
   Peak 2    6500  P800 Higher prom point in center
   Col 2-3   5700       <-- not lower than saddle 1-2
   Peak 3    7500     

In this case, there is no "saddle beyond" the first high point. So Rule 1 is satisfied. However, since the prominence of Peak 2 is 800 which is greater than Peak 1 at 500 I'd put it in to satisfy rule 2. You can draw a diagram of this ridge with peaks 1,2, and 3.
Case 3 - Peak 2 is just bump on Ridge

  Peak 1    5000 P500
  Col 1-2   4500       key saddle of Peak 1
  Peak 2    5500 P200  possible parent of Peak 1
  Col 2-3   5300       //key saddle of Peak 2 saddle higher
  Peak 3    5600

 In this case, Peak 2 is not necessary. It is lower prominence than Peak 1. It can be regarded as a "bump on the ridge" going up to Peak 3. The database below (without Peak 2) is sufficient to satisfy all the rules:
 

  Peak 1    5000 P500
  Col 1-2   4500       key saddle of Peak 1
  Peak 3    5600       parent of Peak 1
ACTUAL EXAMPLES
 Below are examples that you can see on the GMap display:
Conical Peak

Below is a sketch map for the situation around Conical peak, in Alberta. Originally the "convenience" peak SV1 was not in the database and the parent of Conical was put down as Noyes. But adding SV1 makes the parent of Conical much quicker to check because all you need to do is trace to Peak SV1. You don't need to check the ridges beyond which going to Noyes or Quill, whereas without SV1, you'd have to check the low point on both those ridges to verify that Noyes was the line parent.
This case is like case two above - there is no lower saddle that would confuse someone, as long as Noyes was the parent. So it isn't like case 1. However, just to make it simpler I inserted the 9750' peak as "Sv1". This will save future editors the trouble of examining the piece of ridge between it and Noyes. If there was a deeper slot there, then Noyes would not be the parent.
I call this a "case 2" convenience peak, as opposed to a more essential "case 1" peak. In general, in complex areas we often insert peaks every 7 or 8 km along a ridge, just to make things more convenient. That makes it quick to verify line parent information without redoing a detailed prominence sketch map with dozens of saddles to consider.
[photo]Conical_Prominence.jpg[caption]Quick sketch of ridges leading from Conical to Noyes Peak[/photo]
Naming Principles - Reference Dictionary
There is also a Properties of a Good Name document, which indicates the importance of various factors.
See Master List of Peak Name Documents
1. Plural Names are Areas
We regard any plural name to be the name of an area, not a point. For example, we regard "Serra Peaks" to be a name that refers to a number of peaks, not just to the highest point. Similarly "Dogs Ear Peaks". We are especially strict on the word "Peak", but in theory other plurals such as "Spires" can also cause trouble.
1. If the area in question contains more than one peak which we want to discuss, then we enter a single area record, and multiple peak records. For example, we have an area record for Serra Peaks, and then each of the five peaks has its own peak record.
2. If the area in question really only contains one peak of interest, we take a shortcut, and just put in a peak record for the highest point, and give it a singular name, with the plural name as an alternate name. For example, we represent the area "Dogs Ear Peaks" with a single peak record called "Dogs Ear Peak", with the alternate name "Dogs Ear Peaks". However, if we ever get a reason to want more than one peak in that group, we would have to create a new name for the highest point. (Perhaps Dog Ear 1, Dog Ear 2, as with the Serra Peaks.
3. Spires, Towers, etc. We regard "Spires" to be a name that refers to an area and not a single point. Therefore, it should be handled the same way as "Peaks", and the highest point should be given a singular name. For example, Nesakwatch Spires is two distinct towers. Of course it could be handled as an area and then two peaks, but that is perhaps too much work. Another way to handle it would be to call the highest point "Nesakwatch Peak", with the alternate name Nesakwatch Spires. However, if the name is official, then such a name is messy, so as long as it doesn't cause trouble, we don't bother to fix it. The bivouac primary name is left as plural for some official names. We ignore the error. However, we do not intend to adopt unofficial plural names for peaks, any plural name is just trouble waiting to happen.
2. Spot Height Names are Alternate
Spot height names, such as "Peak 8431" are good alternate names, because you can find them on the map. The 1:50,000 maps contain spot heights, usually to the nearest foot, unless the map is metric, in which case to the nearest meter. These heights are really handy when looking at maps, because your eye can quickly spot the number. Eg: If somebody says "We went up peak 8431, you can easily see which peak they meant. Therefore if the peak has an exact spot height, we use it as an alternate name for the peak.
Eg: "Peak 8431"
However this policy does not extent to making up "height" names for peaks that do not have a spot height. In other words, we do not use Peak 8500 as an alternate name. On any given map, there might be a dozen Peak 8500's. Also there was confusion as to whether or not they should be translated into metric. So we go back to first principles - the only spot heights we use as names are ones that are actually printed on the map.
Some people have suggested that the spot heights should be used as the PRIMARY name for peaks. The problems with this are that the means of identifying the peak changes every time there is a new survey. Eg: Some of the USA trip reports in Alaska are now very difficult to figure out because the author referred to Peak 8721, but the latest maps are metric and also the height was almost 100 feet different.
These names work really well when both people in the conversation are looking at the same map. But they don't work if one person is referring to "Peak 2307" and somebody else tries to look it up on a 1:50,000 which is in feet.
Metric Spot Height Names: Spot height names are normally based on feet, simply because the 1:50,000 maps are still in feet. However, if the latest edition of the 1:50,000 is in meters, then we use a metric spot height. Eg; the peaks around Jasper all have metric spot heights. Peak 2341. At some point there may be two maps in widespread circulation, in which case a peak may have both a metric and an imperial spot height name.
3. Confusing Names not Adopted
1. If a name is associated with contraversy and confusion, we avoid that name altogether. For example a name "Kunzleman Peak" was proposed for a peak, but there was two contradictory notes regarding its location, and so it is better to just use a different name that is clearly defined to be in a single location.
2. If someone puts forth a name with unsuitable semantics, such as a plural name, and does not agree with correcting the semantics, then we avoid using the name. Eg: When "Rune Ridges" was put forth as a name for a peak, it was tempting to use "Rune Peak" as the peak. However, since the "old climbers map" upon which the name was based called it "Rune Ridges", it is more sensible to just avoid the name entirely, and save future argument.
3. If there are two variations of the name, we avoid it.
4. Ridges Are Areas, Not Peaks
The Bivouac database has two distinct types of records: areas and mountains (peaks). A peak is a point feature, and has a single lat-long. An area is a polygon and has a boundary. This conforms with the government database, where ridges are a different type of feature from mountains. We regard anything named "ridge" to be the name of an area, not a point. For example, we regard "Nine Mile Ridge" as an area.
This conforms with the way most of them are labelled on maps - the printing for a ridge name is usually spread out over the area of the ridge, whereas the label for a point is usually horizontal, and beside the point being labelled.
1. Some ridges already have distinct names for the highest point. For example, the highest point on Mission ridge is Mount McLean.
2. Unfortunately, many ridges do not have a distinct name for the highest peak on the ridge. Therefore we have to assign one. If possible, we use the same name as the ridge. For example, we call the highest point on Hibachi Ridge "Hibachi Peak". We are NOT renaming the ridge, we are naming the previously unnamed high point.
The "title status" should be geographic. (not official).
3. In some cases, the ridge is too small to warrant a separate area record. For example, Panorama Ridge only has one peak worth discussing. In these cases we take a shortcut, and just put in a record for Panorama Peak, and give it the alternate name "Panorama Ridge". That way if anyone searches for Panorama Ridge, they find the highest point. Note again that we are NOT renaming the ridge. We still regard the ridge to be called "Panorama Ridge", but we haven't bothered to put in an area record for it. Other examples are Playsoo Peak, (Playsoo Ridge).
4. In some cases, the name of the ridge is not a suitable base name for its highest point, because it is inherently confusing. For example, the name "Nine Mile Peak" is not suitable for the highest point on "Nine Mile Ridge" because the base name of the ridge is inherently an area name. Therefore in these cases we have to select a distinct name for the peak. The name for this point is currently Roderick Peak, named after the creek. It is also referred to sometimes as Servitude Peak. The title status in this case should be "Suggested", not geographic. This will show up as "unofficial".
Summary: The distinction betweeen area features and point features is not a new Bivouac invention. We have already mentioned that most of the officially named ridges are labelled as if they were areas, in that the name is spread across the area, and usually with a different font, whereas a peak name is of a uniform size. The second indicator is to look up a given ridge in the government database (BCGNIS). They are usually registered as a separate type of feature from a peak.
Some Classic Examples:
 - Endless Chain Ridge.
 - Rune Ridges
 - Nine Mile Ridge
 - Hibatchi Ridge
 - Fountain Ridge
5. Self Referential Names are avoided
We avoid names that refer to the person or party doing the naming. Eg: Ride-In peak or Rhyddin Peak.
6. Organization Names not favored
We avoid names of organizations, and especially acronymns as becoming primary names of peaks or areas. For example, we avoid "PPCLi Ridges" which refers to "Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry." Our policy is to avoid acronymns.
In many cases, organization names are just one step removed from naming peaks after ones self, or ones friends. The biggest offenders are various military groups naming peaks and ridges after themselves. Eg: RCAF peak is not a good name, even if it is an official.
7. Correction Prefixes
Avoid "correction prefixes" like "True" and "False".
If the higher peak is more than 1 km away, and is unnamed, assign it a new name. Eg: 
Road Bulletin Reference
1. How to Insert a Road Bulletin
To insert a road (or trail) bulletin, go to the road (or trail) page, then scroll down till you see a heading called "Bulletins". Beside that heading, you will see a small brown link called "Insert". Click that link, and a form comes up to allow you to insert a road bulletin.
If you are a paid member, the best way to find roads and trails is to use the GMap link on any mountain page. That way you can find the correct road even if you don't know it's name.
Updates: Once you insert a bulletin, you can go back and update it at any time. The bulletin stores your user id, so it knows who can edit it. Just push the small brown "upd" link beside the bulletin.
2. Linking Bulletins to Trip Reports
There is a field in the road bulletin called "Trip Report Id". This allows you to link a road bulletin to a trip report. Filling in the field causes 2 things: (1) a link appears on the bulletin to the trip report and (2) A link appears on the trip report to the road page.
As you can imagine, these links are quite useful. If somebody is looking at a trip report, they can immediately get the most up to date info on the roads and trails that you used. If somebody is looking at the bulletin, they can read the report and see what you were doing.
3. Road Bulletins as Audit Trail
All major facts on the road page should be backed up by a road bulletin. This makes sure that there is a specific author, with a specific date as the source of all information.
These "audit" bulletins can then be referred to by future editors revising the summary.
For example, if the main description says that you can only drive as far as a certain bridge, there should also be a bulletin from a specific author with that fact.
Bulletins are not only used for eye witness reports, but also for the information put in by editors (from maps, old guide books, etc.)
In theory, the summary is just an accumulation of the road bulletins, and you could rewrite the summary by studying the road bulletins.
In practice, its difficult to have back up all the summary information with bulletins, but any important fact should be contained there.
Example 1 - Blackwater Trail
I was trying to revise the description of the "Historic Blackwater Trail". The road record said it started from just before the bridge over Common Johnny Creek. But when I was out in the field, I searched for it, and couldn't find the trail, so I was tempted to simply erase the whole description. Because there was no "audit trail" back to a specific eye witness, I wasn't sure if the original author of the summary had actually located the trail, or it was just second hand information from somewhere else.
Example 2 - Waypoint source
Whenever any editor does a major revision of the waypoints, they should enter a bulletin that says where they got the info from.
4. When Is a Bulletin Needed
 - every time you find some new information about a road
- Even if you don't have any new information, if there hasn't been a bulletin for 6 months, insert one. That's the only way people know the information is current. Just put "Hiked to the end" or whatever.
- When the road is initially inserted, the editor should put in the source of info
- Every time an editor overhauls the description, or waypoints, they should put in a bulletin.
Road Editor's Manual
1. Preface
This document is the starting point for editors who want to work on the road infrastructure. It is a subsection of the general Editor's Manual. The chapters are in the order of level of expertise. So it starts with notes about editing the information fields such as "Condition" and "How to Find". Then we move to editing the title of the road, and then how to edit individual road waypoints, and finally, some discussion of digitizing new roads and trails from GMap, LMap or GPS Track logs. 
See also Road Waypoints Syntax which is a quick reference to support the waypoints field help link.
See also under road plans the documents such as Road Naming Standards and Cases.
2. How to Edit Information Fields
The "road information fields" are the ones like "Condition", "How To Find", as opposed to the Waypoints field. For any given field, go to the update form, then hover your mouse over the field label (or click on it). This displays the "Field Help" which has the definition. Periodically review the help notes, they are often updated.
Here are the fields to check:

  Condition
  General Route
  How to Find
  Description
  HowLabelled
3. Insert a new Road
The following link will bring up a form to allow inserting a new road:
Insert Road
This link is also available in the Index, under "insert". 
Once you have the insert form for a new road, you'll need to get the waypoints. The typical way I get waypoints is to use GMap "Draw and Save". (Or the LMap Draw_On) mode. I switch to the satellite hybrid view, zoom way in, and then start tracing the road. See separate chapter below on getting waypoints from GMap. 
4. Get Waypoints using LMap
The roadx record has a waypoints field. When it is filled in, those points will display as a line on Lmap or GMap. Mostly roads are entered by myself (R Tivy), so I can get all the connections correct. But there are a couple of editors like Greg Jones that have added vast numbers of roads. 
I would assume you already know how to trace a line on LMap to get waypoints.
A few experienced editors create new roads To get these waypoints in the first place, use the LMap "Draw" function or the GMap "Draw and Save" function. 
For details, see Get Trip Waypoints from GMap - Basic.
The 1:50K NTS map rarely shows new roads. What you want is to switch GMap to the satellite view and then zoom in to 100m on the scale bar.
 - start up LMap
 - change to satellite view
 - zoom in to 100m 
 - choose "Draw and Save" from the menu
 - "click..click..click" the points. 
 - when done, right click on any one of the points. This pops up a menu, the last choice is "Bivouac Display Waypoint Choice" 
 - click the above, and copy and paste to the waypoints field in the Road Record.
In some cases, you can digitize from other base maps in Gmap such as OSM or the "t4" Caltopo maps.
 
Label Junctions
 When digitizing, all junctions should be labelled with a "Jct" code and a number. Eg: Jct 33. The "33" is just the 2nd digits of Lat and long. Eg: 49.53698,-120.93534 becomes "33". These junction codes will cause LMap or GMap to display the mileage at these points. This makes it easy to describe the road.
In road bulletins, don't use the Jct codes to describe the location, use the full lat-long. The 2 digit codes are mainly to located yourself when doing future edits of the waypoints, 
Duplicate distances
 Sometimes two junctions are so close together that the 2nd decimal place of lat-long is not unique. In this case supplement the code with a slash / and the third decimal places. Eg: Jct 14/69 
Every Junction
 You should put a jct code for every Jct, even ones where you don't intend to digitize the spur. 
Don't label every point
 When the system will display the road or trail in future, it will attempt to display a little green icon in the first available space each kilometer. If you put any comment or text on a waypoint, it causes the system to display a brown clickable square. Such waypoints are then not available for the green road icons. Therefore when you are putting in points for a road, make sure you leave numerous unlabelled waypoints (these waypoints will just have the "=cp". 
How many Points?
 Roads visible on satellite should have enough waypoints so that the resulting line is within 20 meters of the road. The 20 meters is called the "tolerance". You want the minimum number of points, because excess points cause performance problems in both GMap and the polygon operations.
A line with a 20m tolerance will usually be within 2% of the actual distance and only change by 1% by putting in more points. In other words, a fork at 10 km should only change to something like 9.8 km no matter how many points you put in. I've found that the 1:50 map is often off by more than 20m. And I've found that my GPS track logs are often off by 20m when I come back down the same road. So 20m is as good as you can get.
Waypoint Change Record
 Once you have saved the new Roadx record, go to the new road page, and put in a "Waypoint Changes Record". (The insert link is below the bulletins). These can often just be 3 or for words such as "Digitized from satellite". The main thing is to have a permanent record of where the waypoints came from and when they were changed. So a typical road might have one waypoint change record on the date it was created, which says that the waypoints were created from Gmap satellite, and then two years later, another change record that says part of it was redigitized from GPS.
 If you have actually been to the road, you should also put in a road bulletin. The road bulletin discusses the condition of the road, as opposed to digitizing issues. Don't be afraid to duplicate the description of the road that you put into the road record itself, because later some other editor might overwrite your original description in the road record, but it will still be preserved in your bulletin.
5. Road Plans
I maintain a "road plan" for most groups of roads, especially mainlines. See the road page for Sq_1.3 Ashlu Main and find the link to it's road plan.
There are several types of "road plan" -
  (1) Mainlines (Spur Naming Plans)
  (2) highways
  (3) Trail networks
  (4) Umbrella

Mainline Spur Naming Plans
 See Spur Naming Guide.
Trail Networks
 Trail networks usually don't follow a "branch topology", so the "Road Plan" for groups of trails does not use any sort of distance based naming. For example the trails around Tetrahedron Plateau are named according to their destinations, etc. See Tetrahedron Trail Plan.
Highway Routes
 Highways are a special problem because a given segment of road may be shared by two or more highway routes. For example, the section of the upper levels highway in Vancouver is part of both Highway 1 and Highway 99. The purpose of the Highway plans in Bivouac is just to put all the segments of a given route in order, so it is easy to check that the whole highway is done. A given Roadx record can be part of multiple plans. See the next chapter for these.
Umbrella Plans
 These just group together a number of plans into a geographic area.
Here is a list of all the different road plans in the system Road Plan Lister.
6. Spur Names
As of 2023.08.26, see Spur Naming Guide for more detail.
7. Editing Road Names
If you want to edit the name of a road, be sure to look at the road plan.
 However, certain naming principles are common to all road plans. I call these "Road Plan Standards" These are documented in Road Naming Standards and Cases.
8. Use Junction Codes
When digitizing roads, the standard is now to mark all junctions with a "Jct" keyword in the waypoint description. (Right click and put the Jct code into the waypoint description). The junction code is made up of the 2nd decimal plase of the latitude and longitude. Eg: 

   49.123-100.456=Jct 25.

When the waypoints are displayed to the normal user, the "Jct" keyword causes a brown rectangle to appear on GMap, along with the km distance from the start of the road. See Junction Codes. The jct codes make it easier to fix certain sections of the road. For example, you might redigitize all the points between Jct 26 and Jct 34. 
The "Jct" keywords in the waypoints field causes the GMap to display the km distance on the map. These distances allow anybody writing road bulletins to easily refer to the point.
In addition to the junction code, a waypoint usually also has a bit of description. For example, the name of the branch that goes off. Eg: "Jct 71 Salal branch"
9. Waypoint Keywords
As you know, each waypoint in the waypoints field can contain a description. In some cases these descriptions contain special "keywords" that cause the system to display certain icons on the maps. For example, "BRIDGE_OUT" causes a large red "X" to appear on the map. 
There are several groups of keywords such as BRIDGE_IN, BRIDGE_OUT, GATE_LOCKED, KP, etc. These should be updated by a road editor according to information in bulletins. For example, if you see that somebody has put in a bulletin that the bridge at km 14.3 is washed out, you can go into the waypoints field, and change BRIDGE_IN to BRIDGE_OUT. Or put in "BRIDGE_OUT" for the first time on an existing unlabelled waypoint.
This chapter is only an introduction to waypoint keywords, to see a complete list of the keywords and icons, see Road Waypoint Keywords Reference. Also see Test Road with bridges and gates and push the "GMap" link to see all the icons on an actual road. 
Now we can discuss general guidelines. Our main concern is to end up with good looking maps, that do not have multiple icons overlapping. It is useful to tell you a bit about how the road display program works. The road display program opens each road record, then loops through the waypoints, looking for certain keywords. For example, when it sees Bridge_Out, it tells GMap to put out a bridge_Out icon, and it labels it with the km distance from the beginning of the road. Thus the reader can refer to "the bridge at +5.6. km".
Not all icons are directly caused by keywords. In particular, the green "road title" markers are program generated. The program keeps internal distance counters and tries to put out a title marker every km. It tries to put them out on the first free waypoint in each new km.
10. Digitizing from GPS Track Log
If you have a GPS track log of a road or trail, here is how to get Bivouac waypoints. The basic idea is to upload your gpx file to Bivouac using the gpx link on the front page. You can then see it on GMap and digitize as in previous chapter. 
11. Quote Distance and LatLong in Road Bulletins
(This chapter is about road bulletins, not the acutal roadx record). When putting in bulletins, it is desirable to specify exactly where various objects are located. For example, "Washout at km 5.6 (49.223,-123.567)". You can get the distances from GMap or Lmap by looking for the distance labels (sometimes hard to see on dark maps). People putting in road bulletins should refer to at least these distance numbers in bulletins. Should also give the lat-long, so that the bulletin info is permanently useful even if the road layout is revised.
If you, the road editor, see a road bulletin that is hard to figure out because the author has forgotten to put in a distance and lat-long, please email that author and ask for the distance and latlong. You can email any bivouac user by searching for their author page, then clicking the "Send email to ..." link.
As a road editor knows, the distance numbers are generated by certain keywords such as "Jct" in the waypoints. 
Road bulletins should quote the km distance, but should also quote the lat-long in brackets. Eg: km 24 (50.123,123.444)
Here is an example:

The road is smooth for approximately the first 19 km (49.7348,-121.6228) and then the road becomes rougher and has a few rocky sections where low clearance vehicles would suffer. Eventually you get to the fork at Km 24 (49.7391,-121.6873). At this fork, the left fork is the Spuzzum Southside rd. The right fork is the continuation of the Spuzzum road, but it is deactivated beyond that.
12. Highway Plans
Highway plans are a type of "Road Plan" which link together all the segments of a given highway. (as opposed to linking a cluster of trails into a plan). Eg: BC-16 Highway Plan. The purpose of the highway plan is to manage all the segments of the highway, such that you can see them listed in order from start to finish. Each "segment" of the highway has a start and end point. Eg: "Prince Rupert to Terrace". By inspecting the highway plan you can make sure there are no missing pieces. You can also inspect the accuracy field for each segment. As of 2016 November, most BC and Alberta highway segments are now digitized to an accuracy of within 100m.
Organizing highways has typically been done by R Tivy and is somewhat of a specialized job. It can be quite tricky because several highway routes can overlap the same segment of road. See Highway Plans
13. Avoid Long Waypoint Comments
Waypoint comments should just be short names for the points, not multiline descriptions. The limit should be 80 characters. If you want more complete descriptions of waypoints, write a chronological description of the road in the main description field, and include the special "point of interest" paragraph at the proper place, along with it's LatLong. The paragraph should refer to the feature by a name which the reader can find in the actual waypoints. 
Reasons:
 - to make it easier to redigitize
 - make computer waypoint list more concise and readable
 - make GPS display more readable
Early in Bivouac history, editor Mike Cleven experimented with extensive paragraphs for some waypoints. Some of them were "tour guide" type comments, pointing out every little driveway. Occasionally he'd have a useful comment. But all these comments make it very difficult to redigitize the waypoints. To preserve the descriptions, a few of these paragraphs have been moved to the main description. 
See Hayward Lake Railway Trail
14. Finding Bad Waypoints
Occasionally GMap will display an error message regarding bad waypoints.
There is a utility called "Bad Waypoint Search" in your Authors Menu that allows you to find which road record contains the waypoint causing the trouble.
BadWpSrch.asp
The basic idea is to search for the waypoint latitude that causes the trouble. The utility searches all waypoint records, and reports the one with the bad latitude.
Sometimes the search finds the same latitude in multiple road records. If you want to do a more exact search, include the longitude. However, to do this, you need to replace the underscore "_" in the error message with a comma. 
Normally you can see what is wrong with a waypoint. For example, missing comma, two decimal places, etc. However sometimes you can't find any problem. This is often caused by hidden characters in the waypoints field. The best way to fix it is to retype the line that is causing the trouble. Or if necessary, copy the entire waypoint field to some other location to keep it, then divide the waypoint field up into sections and test each section.
The error messages are sometimes mixed up. 
CASE STUDY: 
Juliet Creek Road
 When you brought up the GMap for Guanaco Peak, you got a "bad waypoint" message. So I used the Bad Waypoint Search, inputtingjust the latitude. This matched 4 road records. So I did a second search, this time putting in both the latitude and longitude. This matched only Juliet Creek Road.
But when I examined the waypoints and found the exact lat-long, I still couldn't see any problem. 
Furthermore, the error messages seemed to be mixed up, and had different waypoint descriptions than the problem lat-long. However, when I retyped the lat-long line exactly, the problem disappeared. And from then on I couldn't duplicate the problem, even when I cut and pasted the original waypoints field back in place. So somehow my cutting and pasting must have gotten rid of a hidden character. 
Below are the original garbled error messages from GMap.
1. There is a problem in row 2553 of the file that
Gmap4 is trying to display. Here are the contents of that row:
49.73628_-121.06178; Bridge
2. There is a problem in row 2554 of the file that
Gmap4 is trying to display. Here are the contents of that row:
49.73628_-121.06178; InfoPointIcon; nolabel; 

But the original waypoint description was totally different:
49.73628,-121.06178=Jct 36 roadx4660-North July Creek Road @1100m
Rules for Clusters
1. Preface
This document has a list of the rules for clusters. It also has a chapter on techniques.
2. Introduction
Clusters are like mountain ranges, but with stricter rules, and more complete. The purpose of clusters is to divide up the mountains on a map. Clusters are like prominence cells but not completely dictated by the definition. 
In summary the following exist:

  Ranges      Official ranges on maps, may not follow rules
  Groups      Commonly discussed "groups" from guidebooks
  Clusters    Systematic set of ranges which follow rules
  TripAreas   Hierarchy of Areas to be discussed. 
  Regions     a prominence project in 2004 that was too strict
 

Twenty years ago (2004) we had a huge project to define "Regions". These were exhaustive prominence based areas that followed strict rules. The problem was that when you followed the rules, the regions were different sizes, and covered a lot of non mountainous terrain. Clusters only talk about groups of mountains. Although a cluster boundary may include some non alpine fringe area, they do not extend way out into flatlands. Clusters are somewhat subjective. Although the boundaries are key saddles and rivers, we decide which of those boundaries we are going to use to make the most useful map. 
3. Rules
Clusters are like ranges, but with stricter prominence based definition. And always named according to the highest peak. These are general rules which already defined clusters must follow.
One Master Peak
 Every cluster has only one Master Peak. I have a program that checks clusters to ensure that every peak within the cluster goes to the highest peak in the cluster, which is the namesake. Whereas when I was creating new "groups" I had concepts that allowed two master peaks.
Uniform size
 I attempt to make clusters a uniform size in any given area. Some high use area such as Vancouver/Squamish, the size might be quite small, like 100 sq km, whereas in the Rockies north of Jasper is around 500 square km. In a few cases where there are scattered peaks, they might be 1500 sq km. A cluster that was 20 km by 20 km would be 400 sq km. Examples: 
 Brunswick Cluster 170 km2 30 peaks
Number of peaks
 Clusters normally have 20-30 peaks, such that if it was a guidebook section.
Eg: Brunswick 30 peaks
Borders Indented
 The borders should be indented from the actual rivers, often about 1km. Thus every cluster has it's own complete border which never overlaps an adjacent cluster. This rule ensures the borders are easy to revise and ensures you can see the rivers. Also the borders should be crude straight line segments, not a detailed digitization of the river. Often there is only one point every 3-5 km so the entire border of a 20 x 20 cluster would be perhaps 20 points. Often the borders have to be redrawn 3 or 4 times to contain the correct peaks, so it helps if they are simple. Borders should never cross the boundary river even for a small section. If the boundary river has a big indent, the border must ensure it stays onside.
Boundaries are rivers
 Clusters are similar to prominence cells in that their boundaries are normally based on rivers and key saddles.
Tree covered areas
 Clusters are primarily for describing alpine areas. However, we use the rivers and creeks for boundaries. So they sometimes include low lying tree covered areas.
When does a cluster include a low lying area? Usually when the cluster is adjacent to other alpine areas. The times we don't include the low areas are "front range" situations, where we want to cut off the flat area. 
4. Techniques
The process of defining clusters combines some subjective decisions, along with strict rules. What we want to end up with is to break down a region into parts that are easy to discuss.
Prominence data (Key saddles, line parents)
 Clusters are created using the prominence data. Every mountain record has the key saddle and the line parent. These can be displayed on LMapForm. Every peak in a cluster has to prominence toward the master peak. After the creation of every cluster, I immediately run "CheckCluster" which is a link on the cluster page. It will immediately report any peak within the boundary that does not prominence toward the master. In the process of creating the clusters, I've found many prominence mistakes that have been lurking for years.
LmapForm
 To define clusters, start with a center point like Squamish, set the radius to say 100km, set the MinProm=300 turn on rivers and clusters. Usually there will be about 300 mountains. As you work you may adjust these, set the radius down to 70, set minProm to 200, etc.
Process of defining clusters
 To define the first cluster in an area, pick a high peak (usually a P1000) and see what boundaries would be. Some clusters may have 2 or 3 P1000 peaks and others may have just a P500 as the boundary. The boundaries are always river valleys and 2 or 3 important saddles. Only exception are "edge clusters" like Front Ranges. There can sometimes be 3 or 4 saddles on a boundary. Boundaries always cross ridges at saddles. The peaks on one side go to master "A" and the peaks on the other side to master "B". 
There is a concept of "slicing off" clusters from a high prominence cluster. You look for adjacent high prominence peaks that have the potential to define their own cluster, and thus reduce the size of the center cluster. For example, a high prominence peak like Farnham the process is to look for potential master peaks for the adjacent clusters.
Rivers
 When planning clusters, being able to clearly see the rivers while zoomed out is essential. Unfortunately the basemaps currently available in LMapForm such as CalTopo are very hard to read the rivers when zoomed out. So I was really pleased to use the Shorex feature of LMapForm to display the rivers. 
Clockwise
 The boundary is always digitized and described in a clockwise direction. If the master saddle is on the border, the border always starts at the master saddle. Otherwise it starts at the most important saddle. Eg: Sometimes a cluster has two or three saddles on it's border. Some may be "incoming" saddles (saddles of clusters that prominence to the current master. The highest saddle is the most important?
Start with the Boundaries
 I typically start with a crude outline, just to see if I've got the right peaks.
The hardest clusters are ones where you are subjectively deciding where to draw the boundaries so as to capture the right number of peaks and areas, and still follow the prominence rules.
Turn on BasePlus
 In LMapForm you can cause certain information like Line Parent Name to be visible on the label. (MountainName: = BasePlus)
I've experimented with different things here: just LineParent, Lineparent plus Prominence parent, and LineParent LatLong. The LatLong helps sometimes in unfamiliar areas to find low prominence line parents.
5. Glossary
Edge cluster
 A front range cluster, where one of the borders is not a river, but just an arbitary line.
Inbound Saddle
 A saddle on the border thru which some adjacent cluster connects. The prominence walk that goes thru may be connecting with the master peak within the subject cluster, or it may be "transiting" the subject cluster and going out thru some other cluster.
 
Incoming and outgoing saddles
 Saddles are either "outgoing" or "incoming". Outgoing means the saddle connects the cluster to a neighbouring saddle. If the master peak saddle is on the border, it is an outgoing saddle. "Exit" saddles are outgoing. The exit saddle can either be the master saddle, or a transit saddle.
Master Saddle not on the border
 Some clusters the master saddle is not on the border. This is usually the case with high prominence peaks such as Edith Cavell, or Columbia. In these cases, the prom walk may transit thru one or more intermediate clusters.
 
Master peak
 The master peak is the highest peak in the area. 
Master Saddle
 A master saddle is the saddle of a master peak. The master saddle can be right on the boundary of the subject cluster, or it may be "remote" on some other saddle. Eg:Edith Cavell But it is never internal - every master saddle is on a border of some cluster..
6. Questions
Here are some frequently encountered questions.
Can a master saddle be interior?
 No the master saddle must always be on some border. Not necessarily the current border, but some border.
For example, when trying to make an area for Cloudburst, the saddle is just north. But I want to slice off a bigger area. That is OK because Cloudburst is not going to be the master peak, Cayley and Callaghan are higher.
Is the highest prominence peak the master?
 No sometimes there is a higher peak which has less prominence. Eg: Callaghan is higher than Cloudburst, but Cloudburst has more prominence. The high prominence chunk just hangs onto the ramp to higher stuff. Example: The Callaghan cluster has Callaghan as the master, even though both Rainbow and Cloudburst are higher prominence. Calaghan is broken off from Overseer.
Can two clusters connect thru the same saddle?
 Not sure.  Example is Good Hope and Moore. If Good Hope is a separate area, it's connection is at the Good Hope saddle, and it connects to Moore, which then connects via the Moore saddle to Queen Bess. So the line to the Good Hope Line parent goes thru the Moore saddle, same as Moore, but the key saddle for Good hope is before that. The alternatives? Can't just lump Good Hope and Moore, because Moore doesn't go to Good Hope.
I would need a massive Queen Bess cluster to include the whole mess. 
Should all the perimeter saddles be P500?
 Normally yes. If you try to cross at a lesser saddle, it is probable that that peak should be included in your area. In an region with P1000 peaks, it is the  P500 peaks that have to decide who they report to. Once they decide, all their sub peaks go with them.
When can you cross a creek?
 Unlike prominence walks, cluster boundaries often cross creeks while following bigger creeks. Also they often leave a major creek to go up an obscure side peak to get over the lowest saddle.
 
Lowest Saddle
 Cluster boundaries always go over a ridge at the lowest saddle. The lower the saddle the tighter the cluster is.
Cluster Prominence
 The "cluster prominence" is the difference between the master peak height and the highest saddle out of the cluster. It is the same as the master peak prominence if the highest saddle is on the current border. But with high prominence peaks with a remote saddle, the exit saddle might be higher, if an adjacent high cluster was broken off. 
Example is Edith Cavell. A low prominence cluster is barely broken off from some adjacent saddle.
Cluster base height
 The height of the lowest saddle, or the height of the lowest river confluence or ocean.
Setup and Operating Costs for bivouac.com
Revised 2011.04.01. This page explains the financial history and costs of running the Bivouac website, so you know where your money is going. I've always found that an "open books" policy is good, because there is a HUGE amount of volunteer effort that goes into Bivouac, and people feel a lot better if they know the basic facts. I've been doing it for 15 years now, so here's the story.
To run Bivouac, I initially considered setting up a non-profit society. But non-profit is the wrong model if somebody personally has to come up with a lot of money. The Non-profit model is good if the startup capital is coming from a government grant. So I set up a simple company I called "Bluesoft". Its main purpose is to create and run the Bivouac website - it doesn't do much else.
I then poured a big chunk of my own money into the company. This enabled the company to buy all the equipment, and sign a lease on the office space.
I must admit I looked into various government grants/loans, looking for free money. But what I found out was that to get government money, you needed all sorts of bogus "business plans". (We used to do them for companies when I was getting my MBA.) The pattern that is all too common: you make up a glorious pro-forma statement, showing ever increasing revenues, and promising to pay back the government loan at a high rate of interest. If you actually were successful, it would be a really expensive loan, because the interest rate was high.
However, the way the game is played is that once you get the big start up capital, you pay yourself a good salary, and everything looks great for a couple of years. But once you've spent the initial capital, unless you get more government money, you go out of business. But its still worth it for the entrepreneur because he got a salary even though the company went under. That's OK, you just get involved in another "entrepreneur venture", and do it all again.
Government grants are a bad deal if all you have is a modest plan, and you really intend to stay in business for many years. Which is what I wanted to do.
So I used my own life's savings. And its been worth it, because its the most important and successful thing I've been involved in for my whole working career. It is difficult to imagine I'll ever get the initial money I put into this thing back. My goal for the last few years has been to hold the line, and not lose any more money. This ensures that if something happened to me, at least someone else could take over the website knowing it pays for itself. As you probably know, anything that has no hope of ever paying for itself will eventually be shut down once the "grant" runs out.
So here are the numbers you can write down on the back of an envelope as you do your analysis. For the years 1995-2010, Bluesoft owned its own servers and rented an office. In those years, Telus used to charge me $1100/month for a T1 line (internet connection). The office was 2500/month, and my share (for Bivouac) was $1000/month, which provided room for several key volunteers like Fred Touche, Mike Cleven and others to work on-site for years. During those years, Bluesoft spent a lot of money to get Bivouac going, gather all the data, and reach critical mass. Below are the typical expenses during those years:
                             Per Year
     Office Rent                  12000
     Internet connection          13200
     Backup power, network eqpt     500
     2 Servers     (Depr)          6000
     4 Workstations (Depr)         2000
     Reimbursements                4000
     Maps and supplies             1000
                               ---------
                                 37,000                     
   

Those 37,000/year expenses were not a dead loss, because from year 2001 on, Bivouac was a pay website, and there was revenue from subscribers and even a few advertisers. But we still lost money every year, but it kept getting bigger and better. That was the expansion stage.
I was always looking for ways to cut costs. I always knew I was paying too much for the T1 Internet connection. I had started with an ISDN line, which was only $700/month, but then a customer had forced me to upgrade to the T1, at $1100. Every time I phoned Telus, they told me nothing else was available, if I was running the servers). But eventually, after numerous studies, cheaper methods appeared and we got out of the Telus contract. So then the internet line costs went down to $300/month by using a different internet company.
But the big change was last year when we closed the office. At that time I switched to a different business model: let someone else manage our server at a remote data center. (It needs to be on its own server due to all the specialized code, and due to the special RAID configuration on the hardware, extra disk drives, and backup server.) It's still pretty expensive, when you add in the costs of having data backup to a standby servers, etc. (Unlike the nuclear power plants in Japan, I actually have all sorts of backup systems and standby equipment, and disaster analysis.) I always thought it would be a horrible disaster if somehow we lost all the work people have done over the years.
And disasters do happen. It is quite common for companies to think they have backup, only to find out it doesn't really work when the crunch comes.
I have made the same discovery myself. Anyway, now that the site is at a data center, it is much cheaper than it was for the years we had an office.
So below is the current summary of the expenses budget:
Expenses
   Home Office                       1200
   Server and backup at Data Center  3600
   Home ADSL Connection, phone        600   //some offsite backup          
   Machine repair and upgrade        4000   //always testing new stuff
   Projects and supplies             5000
   Reimbursements                    2000
   Other                             1500
                                   -------
So why did it all cost so much for so many years? Why couldn't I have just run the whole thing out of my basement the whole time? Why was the office essential? The payoff from the office was that we had a common workplace for all the people working on the project. There were other technology companies sharing the office, and a lot of the key technology for Bivouac was learned from others in the office. Its a lot harder to do this from home.
Back in 1995, all the services that exist nowdays did not exist. We ran our own mail servers, our own DNS server, and had two backup servers for the main server. And all these machines needed CRT monitors, many of which cost $2100 each. I just can't believe it that we bought all that stuff. Even the office phone system (which we scrapped last year) cost 10,000. I guess we should have had a government grant.
Spur Naming Guide
1. Preface
(This document is a sub-division of the overall Road Editor's Manual. 
On any "single entry" or hierarchial road system, we prefix the spur names with a code for the mainline, plus the distance from the start of the mainline. For example "Elh 6.3 Maude Fricket Road (E300)". In that example "Elh" stands for Elaho main, 6.3 is the distance from the start of Elaho main, Maude Fricket is a historical name, and E300 was a logging company name.
2. Introduction
The standard as of 2023 is that all mainlines will have a two, three or four letter code. All spurs going off that main will be prefixed with that code and the distance from the start.

   Soo_4.9 Branch 3 Tour de Soo
   Soo_4.9 (Branch 3)
   Soo_8.4 (Branch 5)
   Soo10.0 (Branch 9)
   Soo14.8 (Branch 17)

In the above, the "Soo" stands for "Soo River" and the decimal numbers are the distance up the mainline where the spur road branches off. 
For a second example, here is a link to Mamquam Mainline Road Plan (Mam)
In the Mamquam main, we use a 3 letter code for the mainline ("Mam"), then the distance, and then a geographic name.

  Mam21.8 Knothole Lake trail
  Mam22.9 Acorn Spur
  Mam26.6 Pollen Line

 
The spur called "Mam22.9 Acorn Spur" branches off the Mamquam mainline at 22.9 km from the start. "Acorn" is a geographical name, derived from
a nearby mountain. At one time, this spur may have also had a logging company code, but these days it is unknown. If the logging company code is known and still in use, then it is attached to the end of the name. For example "Sq20.3 Squamish Br700". The "Br700" is the old logging company name. The "700" does not tell you the distance, their system was to name the spurs sequentially: Br500, Br600, Br700. There are a variety of systems used by logging companies, see  Spur Numbering Systems In General,  but the rest of this document only describes the Bivouac system. 
3. Parts of a Spur Name
A spur name can have up to 3 parts: The prefix code, a geo name, and a logging name. 
Three Segments
 the full name of a mainline spur may have up to four segments:

  Prefix code  Sq43.7 or Mam13.4 
  Geographic Name  Shovelnose Spur
  Logging Name     Br700

These 3 segments make up the full Bivouac title of the road.
  "Sq20.3 Shovelnose Spur Br700"
Many roads do not have all 4 segments. For example, if we don't have a convenient Geographic name for a spur, it is left out.
Segment 1 - Prefix Code
 As of 2023.09.04, our standard is to give every mainline a short code that can be used to prefix the spurs. For example:
  Sq    Squamish
  HF    High Falls
  Mam   Mamquam
  Bush  Bush mainline
  Sulv  Sullivan
  DOW   Downton Creek
The number of letters is sometimes extended to 4 characters if that results in a significantly more recognizable code. Eg: "Bush" is better than "Bsh"
  
One purpose is to make bulletins recognizable in What's New. Eg: A reader may not be familiar with "Acorn Spur" but he probably knows "Mam26.9 Acorn Spur"
Following the mainline code is the distance. The distance number matches exactly the distance numbers you see on the GMap or LMap. Eg: Mam13.2 is 13.2 km from the start of Mamquam Main, and on the map you see 13.2 where it branches off. 
Segment 2 - Geographic Name
 Ideally, every spur would have a geographic name as well as it's "distance" name or logging name. Eg; "Sq36.5 Dipper Creek". This is often the destination of the spur or use. If there is not a convenient geographic name, then make up a name with a simple word. Eg: Pigeon Spur. I call these "handles". It is an easy way for someone to refer to the spur on the phone. 
Segment 3 - Logging Road Names
 If there is an established logging road naming scheme, such as up the Squamish main, then the logging company code will also appear at the end. Eg: "S200" appears at the end of "Sq21.7 Squamish S200". This allows people to search for the road either by it's distance prefix, or by it's logging company code.
4. Sub-Mains
A sub-main is a  road that branches off a mainline and itself has spurs. For example, High Falls Creek road is a sub-main of Squamish Main. A classic sub-main goes up a named valley, such as Ashlu Main. But in some cases, sub-mains are really just spur roads with multiple branches. Eg: The "parallel main" off Squamish main.
Submains are catalogued in both parent and child plans
 Any sub-main will be part of two different road plans - parent and child. Eg: Elaho Main (Elh) is a child of the Squamish Main (Sq). Both the parent and the child have a plan. 
Submains have parent prefix
 A submain such as Elaho Main will be named starting with the prefix of it's parent. Eg: "Sq27.5 Elaho Main", rather than just "Elaho Main". That allows the submain to sort correctly in the parent plan.
Designating mainlines
 In some cases we designate certain roads or combos of roads as the "main" for bivouac purposes. Eg: If there is a continuous road going up a named valley, we will designate that as a single mainline, even if some logging company calls it two pieces. That is the River Valley Principle.
In some cases we need to designate which is the main and which is the branch. At any junction, the ideal road to designate as the "main" is the straightest, most used one that stays in the river valley. The ideal mainline runs close to a named river, and is the best maintained. And from the junction is the one straight ahead as opposed to a turnoff. And has historically always been the "main". However sometimes these properties conflict.
Our rule is to designate the main as the branch that stays closest to the named creek. Eg: We designate the road going up Carnival Creek as "Carnival Main", even though the upper part is rough and was only extended in 2019. 
Dual Level Distances versus separate plan
 If a subroad has only one branch, then the branch should have a two level distance code, rather than having to set up a separate plan.
Eg: If road AAA has a branch at km 5.0 called Pig, which in turn has a branch at Km 3.0, the name of the final spur should be "AAA5.0/3.0 Elephant Spur" 
And Elephant spur can be in the plan for AAA since it will sort correctly.
This is simpler than designating the branch at 5.0 as "Pig" main and then naming the elephant spur as "Pig3.0"
However, if Pig has more than one sub-branch, then it is worth giving it it's own plan.
Multilevel example
 Mainlines can have submains and those submains can have sub-submains and so on. There is no limit on how many levels. For example, Squamish main has a submain Elaho Main, which has a submain Sims Main. The main at each sublevel retains the prefix from it's parent level. Eg: the full name of Ehaho main is "Sq27.5 Elaho main". All the branches off Squamish Main have the prefix "Sq" including Elaho Main, which is itself a main. Then all the branches off Elaho have the prefix "Elh" including Sims main. The name of Sims main is "Elh_9.5 Sims Main". Notice it no longer has the prefix from it's grandfather road Squamish main.

   Sq
      Elh
         Sim
Notice that each submain retains the prefix of its parent but not grandparent. Eg: The full name of Sims main is just "Elh9.5 Sims Main", not "Sql27.5/Elh9.5 Sims Main". 
Notice that each of the sub mainlines are in both plans. Eg: Elh Sims main is in the Elaho plan and also the Sims plan.
One other thing is that in a few cases where a potential main has only one subspur, rather than designating it as yet another submain, I simply use a two level prefix for the spur. 
5. Example Road Plans
 Below are some road plans that use the "distance prefix" system.
High Falls Road Plan (HF)
 Converted to standard distance prefixes. 
Soo Main Plan (Soo)
 Standard Distance Prefix, no issues. Many spurs have only the distance name, with no geographic name. The various old names assigned by various logging companies are in the Alternate names field.
Mamquam Mainline Road Plan (Mam)
 In this, the distance codes are prefixed onto the front of each name. Most roads also have a geographic name. The distances are not padded in the actual road name, but are padded with zero in the PlanLink record. There is one example of a subspur "M26.6a Elephant Spur". The word "Elephant" is just created as part of an animal theme for any names we need to create, where there is not a convenient geo name.
Sims Creek Mainline (SIM)
 The word "Sims" is no longer tacked onto the front of each distance code, instead we use the letter "G". Eg: G12.5 Outrigger. Most spurs here have a logging company name like G510 and also a geographic name like "Outrigger Spur". 
Ashlu Mainline Plan (Ash)
 Ashlu main branches off Squamish main, thus Squamish Main is the "parent".
Comox Road Plan
 This plan uses standard distance prefixes, but is tricky because some of the spurs are "connectors" to Ash Main. This plan is interesting because Island Timberlands (Steve Mjaaland) use a hundred meter system. Thus many of the "official" names are very close to the Bivouac prefixes. Eg: Comox90 is C_8.9 in Bivouac.
Squamish Main Plan (Sq)
 The spurs on this plan have two letter prefixes. Because Squamish main is so long, the spur codes need to be padded with underscores so they sort correctly. Eg: "Sq_3.0" sorts ahead of Sq40.6
6. Issues
This section has a bunch of separate notes for specific issues.
Every Mainline has a Plan
 Every mainline has a code and a plan. Eg: Squamish Main has the code "Sq" and has a plan that lists all of the roads branching off it, including sub-mains.
Two Level Distances (HF2.1/4.3)
 Major spurs that themselves have sub spurs have their own plan. eg: High Falls Creek. But if a spur has only one sub spur, we don't want to have to create a separate road plan just to give it a distance prefix. Instead I use a two level distance code Eg:" HF2.1/4.3 South Sawchuk Spur". 
As of 2023.08.21 a forward slash "/" makes a better separator than a dash. Eg:
  "Gry10.4/4.1 Gray Lakes Spur" looks better than "Gry10.4-4.1 Gray Lakes Spur"
The disadvantage of the two level distances is that if the first level distance is revised due to subsequent re digitizing, then all of the child road names must also be changed. 
Padding with Underscores
 If the mainline is more than 10 km long, it is necessary to pad the distances less than 10 so they sort correctly. Therefore the distance prefix is padded with an underscore for the distances less than 10 km. Eg: Sq_8.9 will sort ahead of Sq20.3, whereas Sq8.3 would not.

  Sq_1.3 Ashlu Main
  Sq_3.0 Cloudburst West Spur
  Sq_8.9 Squamish Br300
  Sq20.3 Squamish Br700
  Sq27.5 Elaho Main

Even a short main (less than 10 km) can use underscores if that makes the code easier to read. Eg: Some mainline codes end with inconvenient letters like the letter "l" which looks too much like the number "1".
Submain in Both Plans
 The sub main will appear in both road plans: The parent and child. Eg: Elaho main will appear in both Squamish and Elaho plans. 
As of 2023.08.21, the submain will still be prefixed with it's parent name. Eg:
"Sq27.5 Elaho Main", not just "Elaho Main". 
Trails also in Plans
 Trails that branch off a main will also be prefixed the same as a spur.
Eg: Sq_4.5 High Falls Creek Trail
Road Code in Gpx files
 The road code shown on Gpx files is often just the text up to the first space. Thus if the spur is named with a distance prefix, the track list in the phone will show just that. Eg: Sq18.6. Very convenient for sorting.
Number of Characters
 It is ideal if mainline codes are enough characters to be recognizable by an experience reader. This mostly means 2, 3 and 4 letter codes. One reason for three letter codes is it gives the ability for all the spurs to sort correctly when they are downloaded as part of a gpx or kml file for a GPS mapping app.
Road up Valley Not the mainline
 (Conflicting mainline designation Rules) Sometimes there is a conflict between the desire to designate the mainline as the one that goes most straight up a creek valley, and the desire to designate the mainline as the one most heavily used.
For example, in the upper Mamquam at 26.9 km there is a road which runs at the lowest level up the north side of what is labelled as Mamquam River on the map. It has just been fixed up so it is a Spur1. At 0.2 km another 2WD road branches off and climbs the hill to give access to Seed Peak and Gillespie. 
Which one should be the main?
 Initially the lower one was overgrown, and so the main road is the one that goes up the hill, and the lower one was designated as a Spur (Sd0.2). But now that the lower one is fixed up it might seem more natural that the lower one be the mainline, and the other be the spur. 
At 49.64574,-122.91486 is a major fork in the Mamquam River, a west fork and east fork. BC Basemap labels the east fork to be "Mamquam River" and the west fork to be unnamed. 
So one might even designate the road going along the east as Mamquam main, since it goes the furthest, and is closest to the creek. However, historically it was overgrown. Another way to handle it is to demote both the branches of the road above the key fork to be branch roads. And then the Seed line would be a branch off that.
Changeover - Carnival Main
 From the junction at km 1.3, we changed which road was designated as Carnival main. The "main" is now the lowest, most used, straight ahead branch that goes up Carnival Creek, and the old end is now "Car 1.3 Fringe Spur"
To implement this change involved moving and rewriting several bulletins to conform to the new organization.
TRIM Maps in Avenza
1. Preface
This document supports the specific article about Avenza in the framework table Standard GPS - Expert 2024. That "document" is organized as a table. The specific "cell" of the table that the current document supports is the discussion of "Manage Basemaps - Avenza".  
The above cell talks about both the NTS 1:50,000 maps and the BC Government 1:20,000 TRIM maps. This document is specifically about acquiring and using the 1:20,000 Trim maps in Avenza.
2. Introduction
The BC Goverment complete set of BC Government TRIM maps are available online for free. In order to use them in Avenza, you must pick the correct mapsheet (eg: 092G085), and in the correct format (.tif). To load a single mapsheet into Avenza you can do the whole operation on the phone. However if your trip covers multiple TRIM mapsheets and you want to load adjacent maps onto your phone,  you either need to manage them as a Avenza "collection" folder or stitch them together using some third party app. Both of these alternatives are explained in a later chapter.
In order to understand the different alternatives, later chapters explain some general concepts like Georeferenced files. I then give simple instructions to load a single mapsheet into Avenza on your phone. But if you want to stitch together multiple, then what I intend to do is download my own set of tif files, then stitch them together using a third party app, such that I will import the entire stitched file as a single piece into Avenza.
This is described in a later chapter.
3. Georeferenced Files
"Georeferenced" means a "Geographically Referenced image file". This means knowing the lat-long of the 4 corners of the image file. The image file may be several formats such as .tif, png, or jpg. The latlong info is in a separate .txt file, since the image file itself does not have this info. The format of the latlong file depends on the format. 
Zip Files: The image file and the associated txt file(s) for a mapsheet are usually packaged together as a .zip file. There are different formats of image file that can be georeferenced - most common are .png files and .tif files. .Tif files are The BC government distributes .Tif (TIFF) files.
Each Georeferenced mapsheet always comes as a set of two or three files. These files are usually zipped together. For example the 1:20,000 mapsheet for 092G085 (Garibaldi) from BC Government is distributed as a single zip file: 092G085.zip. Inside that zip file are three files.
Formats: Each format of georeferenced file has a different structure. Programs like Global Mapper can convert these formats. Avenza will handle png format and also tiff format. 
Avenza just handles the whole zip file as a unit. In other words, you can import a TIFF format .zip file directly into Avenza and it takes care of unpacking the .zip. So to the user, it just understands the zip directly. If you want to see the separate files, you can unzip it yourself. The separate files will be put into subfolders.
Glossary
  Georeferenced
  mapsheet
  Package
  Zip file
  Format
GIS Programs to stitch several mapsheets together will only handle certain formats. For example, Memory-Map will handle .png but not .tif.  Some GIS programs like Global mapper will convert formats. 
4. Loading Single TRIM Mapsheets into Avenza
This chapter tells you how to load a single TRIM 1:20,000 mapsheet into the Avenza App. You can do the whole operation on your smart phone. Download the zip file from the BC Government website using your browser, then import the entire zip into the Avenza App. Avenza will automatically handle the .zip file without you having to unzip it.
STEP BY STEP:
5. Downloading
As of 2024.07.24 all of the 1:20K Trim maps are available at 
 
Step by Step
Go to BC Govt website
 
Up comes a long page titled "Topographic maps". Scroll down to "Get Topographic Maps"
Click "1:20,000 Topographic maps"
 This expands the big document.
Click "Topographic Base Maps Data Portal"
 Below is a direct link Topographic Base Maps Data Portal
 This pops up a page titled "Index of /datasets/177864". In that index are three formats:
    pdf/
 -->tif/
    ecw/
Click "tif/"
 This goes to a directory with the following:
    Parent Directory
    bcalb/
 -> utm10
    utm11
    utm09
    ...
Click utm10/
 This pops up a big list of mapsheet names
To sort the names alphabetically, click on the column heading "Name"

    092b/
    092c/
    092f/
 -->092g/
    ...
Click 092g/
 This brings up a long list of 100 different .zip files that make up 092g
The TRIM map numbers start in lower left corner and go across:

  21  22  23 ..
  11  12  13 ..
  01  02  03 ..

 For any given mountain in BC, you can look in Bivouac and see the TRIM map number.
Eg: Mount Garibaldi is on 092 g 085, so if you wanted the mapsheet to the east, it would be ..086.
Click on 085
 This downloads the file to your downloads folder. If on the phone, you can now import it into Avenza. If building up your own folder of files on your own machine, you can now move it from downloads to your own folder.
 
6. Stitching
"Stitching" means taking two adjacent mapsheets and putting them together as a single mapsheet. For example in the Mount Garibaldi area, you might want to stitch together 092g085 and 092g086.
The reason for stitching the maps together using a third party app is that Avenza does not have this ability. Avenza has a concept of "collections" whereby you can "jump" to an adjacent map, but they are never stitched together. You only see one at a time.
Furthermore, their concept of collections is limited to 3 maps at a time, and you are forced to delete previous "active" maps in order to load new ones.
For this reason, what I want is to have my own folder of tif maps, and the ability to stitch together adjacent maps and only then upload them to Avenza.
Getting the Stitching Program: 
 First I tried Memory Map. It can stitch .png files, but cannot stitch .tif files. So next we tried Global Mapper. But the free version won't handle tif files. So my latest idea is to try QGIS (Quantum GIS).
7. Managing Your own  Set of Maps
The basic idea is to download my own "collection" of of .tif files, such that I can then stitch them together in advance on my PC and then transfer them to the phone, and finally import the whole file into the Avenza app. I previously had a problem transferring the .zip file to the phone, but I will try that again. 
Here's how to build up a directory containing a set of the maps. I think for a given three or four day exploration trip, the most you would stitch together would be 4 maps. So a trip around mount Garibaldi you might want to pre-stitch: 085 and 086.
Here are the maps around Vancouver:

 034, 035, 036 
 024, 025, 026
 014, 015, 016
 - get the first map 092 G 034: (Bowen Island)
 - click the link
 - Get Topographic maps
 - 1:20,000 Topo maps
 - Topographic Base Maps Data Portal
 - pdf
 - 092G, 
 - 092G034
 - click "Save" icon in upper right corner
 - adjust the folder to 092G_Vancouver
 - click Save
 - push "back" arrow in upper left corner (back to directory)
 - click on 035
 - click download folder Icon in upper right
 - click save
 - Back (upper left)
 ...
Inspect the folder:
  E:\Local/TRIM_Maps
 - Now build a combined map with a third party app, and title it "025 and surroundings"
Road Trips: I have done several multi week road trips, where we do 3 or 4 separate unplanned trips in succession. For example, going from Vancouver to East Kootenays with only a general idea of what you might do. What is desirable is to be able to prepare any given map "on the fly" in a coffee shop with wi-fi. You might have prepared a number of possible combined maps before leaving Vancouver, but if you come up with some new idea, then you'd also need a laptop with the stitching software.  Of course you can always download single mapsheets directly on the phone. And even switch them in the field for adjacent maps.
On such trips, I'm more likely to be using a different App like Gaia or Backcountry Navigator. I only need the superior 1:20000 contour maps for particular objectives.
8. Avenza Collections
Avenza has a special type of folder called a "collection" which allows you to navigate a set of adjacent mapsheets. Once you have the maps in one of these "collection" folders, the way you view an adjacent map is to move into the margin area of the previous map and this will cause the adjacent map to pop up. But it is not stitched, the original map will no longer be visible.
 The free version of Avenza will only handle a "collection" folder of 3 active maps at a time. Although you can have dozens of non collection maps in Avenza at any given time in different folders, once you make a map active, Avenza has no means of making them inactive other than to delete the mapsheet from Avenza. Bad design. And also Avenza does not "stitch" together adjacent maps. So if you want to use only Avenza, you would first delete all the other maps from Avenza, then upload only the 3 you want into a "collection".
Of course you could still have a larger collection "offline" on your phone, and then delete a given active set out of Avenza to replace it with another.
If you had the paid version of Avenza ($45/year) you could have 20 maps at a time. But you'd still have the same problem if you wanted a different 20 maps active.
What You Get For Your Money
Although there is a lot of information on Bivouac for free, such as all the mountain pages, there is a lot more if you pay. Below are some of the things:

Human support
 If you can't figure anything out, call me at 604 734-3644 in Vancouver or send me email by clicking the "Contact Us" link on the front page. I've learned with other products that this type of support really helps me, and so it's worth doing the same for Bivouac users. I spend hundreds of hours replying to emails and answering phone calls.
Trouble Ticket System
 Bivouac has a really good trouble ticket system. Anything broken or that you can't figure out, insert a trouble ticket. The link is right on the home page, and also shows any other trouble tickets. All trouble tickets are visible to all users, so you can verify that we really fix stuff. Also you can see if someone else has reported the same issue.
Roads and Trails
 There are over 4000 backroads in bivouac, each one digitized so you can see it on the built in topomaps. And 3000 trails. Both roads and trails have dated bulletins describing the exact condition of the road, bridge condition, water bars, etc. And you can download a .gpx file for each of them.
Trip Reports
 Over 1500 high quality trip reports, each indexed with lat-long waypoints which you can download as a .gpx track log. The waypoints also allow the system to draw the trip on a topo map. The trip reports are not just casual postings, most are the same quality as in a guidebook. I have spent hundreds of hours working with the authors of the bivouac reports, and they are the highest quality anywhere.
LMap Overlay
 Bivouac has a customized topomap system called LMap. Paid users see a link to a topo map system on every mountain or trip page. The map overlays all the Bivouac roads, trails, and peaks within 20 km radius on the map. This is one of the most useful features of the website. When you are planning any trip, you immediately see the relevant roads and trails.
Support for GPS (Upload and download Gpx files)
 You can download a gpx file centered on any mountain which contains all the surrounding trails, roads, cabins, campsites and mountains. I have written very systematic instructions on how to use most models of GPS. In particular, how to download .gpx files for whole sets of roads, trails and peaks. I support both Garmin GPS units and smartphone GPS Apps. If you have any problems loading bivouac roads and trails onto your GPS just contact me.
Photo Essays (Feature Photos)
 Over 10,000 photo essays. Every photo has the vantage point, and quality description. The vantage points can be displayed on topo maps. In addition, the system has a "photomap" function link shows all the vantages around a given peak.
Equipment Reviews.
 These reviews follow a common structure, and are based on real experience from other members. You can easily email any member to ask more questions about the review. And you can see exactly what their level of experience is by reading their trip reports. Thus you have some assurance the person has REAL EXPERIENCE.
Reference Articles
 With well researched articles on subjects relating to navigation, digital maps, photography, etc.
Ability to contact any other member via blind email. Addresses are verified regularly. This is done via a "Blind email" scheme, whereby the system sends a message on your behalf.

Feel Good about yourself! Paid subscriptions are the main thing that keeps the website running and pays for the costs of running the servers. Most newspapers charge 19.95/month for subscriptions which is $240/year. Bivouac is only $25/year which is $2.08 per month. And even less if you take the 3 year deal.
Capabilities
Below are specific 'How To' instructions.
General Website
Test Page
This is a test page
TESTING:
 See the mountain called Mount Garibaldi.
 Here is another link Road Lister
   //remove this completely
 
How to Login (as member)
How to login, assuming you already have a login record.

From the front page, click the "Login" link in the upper left corner. This brings up a page titled "User Login Page".
Type your EMAIL ADDRESS and password into the form. Check the box titled "Autologin next time", so in future when you go to the site, you will be automatically logged in.
Click the Login Button. You will be logged on, and returned to the front page. In the page header, you will see your login code in green at the top of the page. You will see that on every page.
Signup (Insert free member record)
How do I signup (create a free membership)?
All memberships start out as free members, which you can convert at any time to a paid one. Creating either a free membership or a paid membership involves the same steps. The basic idea is to insert a member record for yourself. (called signup) If you later want to be a paid member, you can convert that Free member record to a paid member.
STEP BY STEP
Click the "Signup" link on home page
 From the home page, click on the link labelled "Signup". This brings up a page titled "Sign Up".
Click "Insert a Login Record"
 Click on the link that says "Insert a Login Record". This brings up a data input form.
Fill out the form
 Fill out the form, and then click the "Insert" button at the top left. This displays a screen titled "Bivouac.com Validation Instruction". 
Find the validation email
 When you insert a new login record, the system sends you an email. The email contains a link to a page called ConfirmUsr.asp. Click this link. The confirm link will be something like below:
https://bivouac.com/ConfirmUsr.asp?ConfirmCode=12345678
Email Address Confirmation Page
  When you click the link described in the previous point, the system will display a page titled: "Email Address Confirmation Page". It will thank you for confirming, and display a link back to the home page. click the Home Page link.
Login
 From the home page, you will now see a login link at the top of the page. Click that link. This brings up the login form. Put in your previous Email address and password, and click "LOGIN". This sends you to the home page. A green message at the top says You were just logged in. Also note that your email address is displayed in green at the top of every page. This shows you are logged in. If for some reason you don't see your email address when you go to a new page, you are no longer logged in. This problem happens when for some reason, your browser is not remembering the session cookies. See System Forgets I am Already Logged in.
Click your email address
 Any time you are logged in, you can change your email address or password by clicking on your green email address on any page.
See also Create a Free Login
How to Become a Paid Member
How to create free membership, then convert to Paid
The first step is to create a "free" member record. To do this, click on "login" link on the front page. Then create a free membership by inserting a member record. When you insert the member record you will be returned to the front page, and you should see your email address in green at the top. The free membership allows you to access all the mountain pages, but not trip reports or feature photos.
To covert your membership from "free" to "paid", login using your free member record. This will return you to the Bivouac home page. Then again click the "Login" link, and click on "Convert to Paid member", and follow instructions.
It costs $25/year Canadian dollars, or $50 for 3 years. You can pay via credit card, or send me a check, or other methods. The credit card processing is done via PayPal, but you don't need a paypal account. 
Forgot your password
If you forgot your password, go to the login page and click "Forgot My Password".
To login requires that you know two things:
 - email address on file
 - your password
You can always login if you know both of these, even if your email address on file is an old one you no longer use. However once you are logged in, you should correct your email address.
However, if you cannot remember either the email you used or your password, here's what to do. Go to the home page and click "Login" link, and click "Forgot My Password". Next job is to find your login record.
It will ask you for part of your name. Eg: "Doug Brown" or just "Doug". This will display all the member records whose name field contains that exact string. If you can't find your record, email me using the Contact Us and I'll help.
Assuming you DO find your member record, you have two choices:
 1. Email yourself your password (this only works if your email on file still works)
 2. Remember your password from your "password reminder" 
 
Below is a table assuming you have found your member record using {forgot my password] link:
      Know      Email     Know 
      Email     Works     Password      Action
      On file
------------------------------------------------------------------------
      yes         -        yes          Login, it doesn't matter if email works
      yes         no        no          *1 contact me
       no        yes        -           mail yourself your email on file & password
       no         no        -           *1 contact me
  
*1 Contact Me - means use the "Contact" link on the home page.
 This is the case where the email on file is an old one you have forgotten. You can find your name, but when you try to email yourself your password, you don't receive an email message. The email on file must be expired. So you'll need to use the "contact" link on the front page to contact me, and I'll see what I can do. See  
 
INSTANCES WHERE THESE INSTRUCTIONS TESTED
2021.08.06 Tested for Peter Chig
 - I went to home page.
 - click "Login"
 - click "forgot my password"
 - typed my name "Robin Tivy"
 - clicked "Email Yourself Your Password"
 - I went into my gmail account and I see the system sent me the info
 
Update member record (Change Password or email)
Update your email address or change your password
Your password is stored in your member record. Therefore, to update your password you just update your member record. The link that allows you to update your member record is on your "Member Settings" page. Here's how to find your "member settings" page and thus update your member record:
Related Help Notes:
 Any other fields in your member record can also be updated in the same way, such as your phone number. However, if you want to update your email address it is a bit different because you have to validate your new email message. Therefore I describe this in separate help notes titled Update email address.
STEP BY STEP

Log into the system using the old email address on file. You will now see your email address in green at the top of every page. (This will start out being your old address. It is one of the things you can fix in your member record).
Click your green email address. This brings up a page titled "Member Settings".
Click the link called "Update Your Member Record". This will display an input form containing all your member information.
Change the field you want to change. Eg: email address, password, phone, Town or City.
Push the "Update" button in the upper left corner. This will return you to your "member settings" page.
If you changed your email address, the system will then send you a confirmation message with a link which you must click to change the status of your email address to "Good".
Renew Paid membership
How to renew your membership or pay first time.
The basic idea is to login to your existing member record (either free or previously paid), then once logged in, click the "Login" link again and renew. Although the payment links take you to paypal, you don't need a paypal account, use the option to just pay using any credit card. Here are step by step instructions:

Go to the home page of Bivouac. You should see a "login" link (previously called "Login/Subscribe".
Click the "Login" link. You should see a page titled "User Login Page".
Log into the website. This will return you to the home page. You can verify that you are truly logged in by looking for your Email address in green at the top of the page.
Again click the "Login" link on the home page. This returns you to the "User Login Page" which you were at previously.
This time, click the "Subscribe/Renew". This brings up a page titled "How to Pay Using Credit card". On this page are numerous "Paypal Payments" icons.
Click the icon corresponding to your choice, either 1 or 3 years, and click the "Paypal payments" link. This takes you to the "PayPal" website.
Paypal changes the layout of their page from time to time. As of 2016.03.02, it brings up a page with "Bluesoft Internet Databases Inc" in the upper left corner, and on the right it has "Choose a way to Pay", and under that, two sections:
 "Pay with my Paypal Account"
  "Don't Have a Paypal Account?" 
  
To pay directly with your credit card, fill in the credit card info in the second section: Country, Card Number, Expiration Date, CSC, etc. Then click the "Pay" button at the bottom of the page.
When you are done, you will get a receipt from Paypal, and also a receipt from Bivouac
Update email address
How to login using your old email, and update your email address.
Your email address is one of the fields contained in your member record. The general idea is to update your email address, then send yourself a validation message to prove that it works. These instructions are very similar to Self-Verify your email address.
Here's how:
Step by Step:

On the home page, click "Login/Subscribe". This brings up the login form.
Log onto Bivouac using your old email address as the login code. If you are successful, you will be returned to the home page, and you'll see your old email address on the top of the screen, in green.
If you can't remember your old email address, see instructions for Forgot my password.
Click on your email address. This brings up "member Settings" page.
Click "Update Your Member Record". This brings up an update form.
Fill in the new address, and click "Update". This will return you to your "Member Settings" page. Note that at the bottom of your member settings page there is a heading called "Email Validation", and under that it tells you your address is "unconfirmed".
Click the link titled "Send Yourself a Validation Message".
This sends you a validation email.
Go into your email "In Box" and look for a message with the title "Bivouac Self Email Validation". Go into the message, and click on the link in the message. This should set the status of your new email address to "Good". Everything is now ready to go. If you went to your Member settings Page again, you will see that you are confirmed.
Self-Verify your email address
How to change your email status from "Unverified" or "No Reply" to "Good"
Summary: The procedure below tells you how to re-validate your email address. Eg: If it has the status "NoReply". I'm assuming the address actually works, if you need to first update your email address see Update email address.
To change the status of your email address, you can use the system to send yourself a "test probe" as described below. When you find the test message and click on the link in the message, your status will change to "Good". I re-check them about once a year.
If you are curious, here is a List of Email Statuses and what they mean. Below is how you fix your Email Status
 

First, log onto the system. As usual, you will now see your EMAIL ADDRESS in green at the top of every page.
Click the green email address. This brings up your "Member Settings" page.
If your email address is out of date, update your member record. You will be returned to the same "Member Settings" page.
Now click the 'click here' link at the bottom of the page to send yourself a validation email).
Now go to your email inbox. You should see an email message titled "Bivouac Email Self Validation". If you don't find the message, look in your spam folder.
Click the link in the email message. Your address should now be validated.
How the Login System Works
How does the login system work? How does Autologin work? 
This help message tells you how the login system actually works, which is often the key to troubleshooting. Most common problem is users who accidentally set the privacy settings in their browser so it no longer returns cookies.
First of all, a review of how it works from the user's viewpoint. The most basic login system just has two links: login and logout. Many systems like banks log you out automatically after 15 minutes if you have not been active. With typical newspaper systems like Globe and Mail, once you login, you stay logged in. If you come back to the website in a few days, you are still logged in. This saves you the trouble of logging in each time you come to the site.
Bivouac also has a way to stay logged in permanently. Just choose "auto login next time" when you login. Once you do that, anytime you revisit the website, you will already be logged in. If you close your browser, and reopen it in a week, you'll already be logged in. It is as if you never logged off. The way it actually works is the system logs you back in, using two cookies it stored when you said you wanted "auto Login next time."
If you are using a public machine, use the "logoff" link. It logs you off and erases the cookies.
If you don't select "autologin next time", then your session will stay logged in, but only for 4 hours. After that, your session will expire. If you immediately close your browser, and then reopen it, you'll still be part of the same session. And still be logged in. The server has no way of knowing you closed your browser.
There are five states:

  N1 Browser closed, no cookies
  N2 Browser closed, with cookies
  N3 Browser open, not logged in
  L1 Logged in
  L2 Logged in with cookies

You can draw a diagram with bubbles for each of the 5 states. Then join the bubbles with lines. For example on a fresh machine, you go from N1 to N3 by opening the browser, then N3 to L1 by using the login form.  If you want to get from N3 to L2, you check the [x] Autologin
box. If you are at L2 and close the browser, you go to N2.
In general, nothing works without at least a session cookie.
The default setting for all Browsers is to remember cookies. But if you go into your browser settings and turn off all cookies (not recommended), the Bivouac site and a lot of others won't work. If you are having problems, adjust the "Privacy" settings on your browser. Go into Tools..Internet Options..Privacy, and make sure it is set to "Medium".
NOTE: If you are using a public computer, always log off explicitly. Otherwise, the other person will keep logging on as yourself, and your login code will end up on the "suspect login" list.
Logoff

You can logoff from any page by clicking the green login code at the top of the page. This takes you to your member settings page, and at the top there is a logoff link. Alternately, you can go to the regular logon screen, and click the "Logoff" link at the bottom.
If you are having trouble, see also System forces me to login each new visit.
Insert Trouble Ticket
Do you know how to enter a trouble ticket?
To find the trouble ticket system, use the Index on the front page. You must be logged in to use the trouble ticket system. You can be logged in either as a free member or a paid member.
Find the trouble ticket system in the index
Click "Trouble Tickets"
 This brings up a list of recent trouble tickets. You can check to make sure someone else hasn't also reported the same problem.
Click the small brown "Insert" link
 At the top of the trouble ticket list beside the title "Trouble Tickets" is a small brown "insert" link.
Fill in the trouble ticket form
Push the "Insert" button at the top left of the form
 This will insert your trouble ticket into the database, and immediately send an email to the admin.
Options
How to change which links show up on the home page or mountain pages.
The system allows you to customize certain pages by means of "options". (Numerous display fields are normally turned off by default, but you can turn them on or off.) You can find a link to the options manager in the index, or on every mountain page. It shows list of options. For example, if you want your mountain pages to show "Height Sources" then turn on the option called "Height Sources".
The links to certain advanced functions such as the JavaMaps are hidden by default. You can turn them back "On" by clicking the "Advanced" link on the mountain page. The idea is to simplify the main pages for most users.
When you click "Advanced", you see which options are turned "On" and "Off". If you specifically turned something "On" it will show as green. If it is "Off" it will be red. If you haven't specified, the default setting will be in gray.
To turn an option "On", click the "Turn On" link. The page will immediately change. When you are done adjusting your options, click the "Back" link at the top of the page. This takes you back to the page you came from, and you can see the results.
Some options such as JavaMap affect multiple pages.
View help messages on forms
Do you know about "Field Help" on update forms?
The data input forms in Bivouac have help messages for each field on the form. For example, if you are trying to insert a road bulletin, note that all the data fields are links. Click the link for the field called "InfoDate". What happens is a pink screen pops up with "Field Help for InfoDate".
When you have read the message, push the back arrow on your browser to get back to your input form.
NOTE: If you want to be absolutely sure to not lose your partially complete input, bring up the help page in a separate window by right clicking on the link. Then close the window when you've read the help.
Every field in the system has a similar help message. It is important to read these the first time you insert a new type of record, such as a photo essay or trip report.
How to Log on as Advertiser Logon as Advertiser
How to login as an advertiser
 - From front page, push "Login" link
 - click "Advertiser Login"
 - type in your email address and password.
 
Then you can update each of your ads. For example, a map advertiser would do the following:
 - Click the brown "Update" link beside each map title. This brings ukp a form.
 - change whatever fields are necessary
 - click the "Update" button in upper left corner of the form.
Testing:
Options
GPS - Download to GPS
An Introduction to GPS Data transfer AA Transfer Intro
Read this first!! It is the master document for all .gpx downloads and uploads.
The term "GPS Data Transfer" means transferring GPS track logs from Bivouac to your Gps and vice versa. Before getting into this document, there are two things you have to do. First, make sure you have breezed through Introduction to Bivouac. I now assume you know how to find your way around Bivouac and know how to work your GPS. (If you are uncertain how to do certain things with your GPS, I have prepared a reference table called Standard GPS Operations. The second thing is to go outside and made a waypoint and track log. It's hard to do this while sitting in a room. I prepared a separate tutorial for this, see Introduction to GPS - Make Waypoints and Tracks. 
Now we assume you know the basics of Bivouac and of your GPS, we are ready to talk about transferring track logs and waypoints between Bivouac and your GPS. You should also know the Difference Between Bivouac Waypoints and GPS Waypoints.
The basic method of transferring data back and forth between GPS and Bivouac is .gpx files. The things you are transferring are track logs and waypoints. For example, when you click the "download gpx" link on any Bivouac trip page, the trip waypoints are converted to a .gpx file. You then import that gpx file into your GPS and it becomes a track log, just as if you had created the track log on your GPS. Note: most track logs in .gpx files that come from Bivouac have considerably less track points than the "raw" track logs you would collect with your GPS. In many cases, the Bivouac "track" was created by clicking points on a topo map or satellite view. You can tell how accurate it is by looking at in on the map. 
Going the other way, from GPS to Bivouac, your track is converted to a .gpx file. Then when you plug your GPS into your computer, you see your GPS as if it were a disk drive. You then drag the .gpx file onto your computer. Once on your computer, you can browse to it using a link called "Upload Raw Gpx" on your trip report or working file.
Now that we know the theory we can do it:
DOWNLOAD (from Bivouac to GPS

Download to a smart Phone:
 On a smart phone, you can do the entire download operation on the phone, without ever using your computer. On your phone, browse to any Bivouac.com mountain page and click the "gpx20" link (or KML20 link). This puts the file into your phones "download" folder. Then import the .gpx into your GPS app. Eg: Import into Backcountry Navigator. The app usually knows the location of the download folder. See Download to Smartphone GPS
Download to a Garmin:
 Click the "Download GPX link in Bivouac on your computer. It goes to your downloads folder. Then connect the Garmin to your computer. Your Garmin now appears in your file manager. Find the file and drag it into the Garmin/gpx folder. Once it is imported, it is like any other track log. The Track Log manager on your Garmin allows you to change the color, or hide or show individual tracks. See Download to Garmin GPS.
UPLOAD (Up from GPS to a bivouac waypoints field)

Upload from a Garmin:
 First make sure you have saved your track log. It's not automatic like on a phone app. Once you save a track, it will be immediately visible as a .gpx file when you connect to your computer. On a Garmin GPS, there is no "export" step, the translation is already done. Plug in the unit. Now on your computer, go to your trip report and click "Upload Raw Gpx".
See Upload from a Garmin
Upload from a smart Phone:
 Go to your Track Manager and find the track you want to upload. The first step is to "export" the track to an "Out" folder on your phone. "Export" means translate from the internal data format to a .gpx file. The "Out" folder will be where you pick up the gpx file when the phone is plugged into your computer. You will pick it up with the "Upload Raw gpx" choice in your trip report.
Upload from a Smart Phone
Regardless of what type of GPS you have, once you have uploaded the .gpx file into a trip report or Waypoint Working File, a new link appears, called "View Raw GPX". The link is right beside the "Upload Raw Gpx" link. Click that link and you'll see your raw GPX on GMap. Now you need to trace it using GMap "Draw and Save" to turn it into Bivouac trip Waypoints. See GMap Draw and Save.
Download Bivouac Gpx Overlay into Smartphone GPS Download 
Download all roads, trails and peaks within 20 km of a point to your GPS program. Eg: Backcountry Navigator
Prerequisites: An Introduction to GPS Data transfer.
General Overview: The basic idea is to have a offline map on your smartphone with all the bivouac data for 20 km radius. Eg: As you are hiking, you can see all the bivouac trails on your smartphone map.
You will need a GPS App on your smartphone. The basic map is something that you download with your GPS App, it does not come from Bivouac. However it looks identical. 
The way to download is to generate a .gpx file using Bivouac while your computer or phone has a wi-fi connection. You then need to end up with the gpx file in your App. This causes your GPS App to overlay the trails and peaks from Bivouac onto your basemap.
 The bivouac data is in the Gpx file, and then you import it into your GPS App on your phone. 
The same idea works with either a smartphone GPS App or with a Garmin GPS. But the resulting map is most useful on the phone because it has a much higher resolution screen than any Garmin device.
On my Android phones I use an app called Backcountry Navigator. But there are others. A "gpx" or "kml" file is a standard format all GPS devices understand.
STEP BY STEP

Browse to Bivouac on your phone
 Using the browser on your phone, go to https://bivouac.com. Then look up a mountain around which you want a map overlay. Eg: Mount Garibaldi
Find Gpx20 download link
 On the Mount Garibaldi page, find the 
 This link will generate a .gpx file with everything within a 20 km radius. The .gpx file will contain all roads, trails and peaks. Go to a mountain page. You should see a link called "GPX20" near the TOP of that page. (If you don't see it, make sure you have the "GPXLinks" option turned on).
Click "Gpx20" link (or KML20 link)
 This will immediately put a gpx or KML file into your "downloads" folder on your phone. The file will contain all roads, trails and peaks. (On some phones, the gpx file may be saved in your downloads folder.)
Import the gpx file
 Start up your GPS App on your phone and import the gpx or KML file. All the tracks are also visible in the "track manager" of your GPS App. Your Track Manager will probably automatically know to default to the Downloads" folder, such that you immediately see one or more .gpx files. (On my phone there are several dozen .gpx files to pick from, that I have downloaded in the past.
KML Files
 Also, both Backcountry Navigator and Gaia support KML files. The tracks should immediately be visible on your map (in full color with the KML file). .
See Standard GPS Operations under "Import Gpx file".
Download one road to your Garmin GPS Download Bivouac Waypoints
How can I download a track log for a trail onto my GPS?
I assume you already know An Introduction to GPS Data transfer. The procedure is different for a Garmin GPS versus a smartphone GPS. On the smartphone, you do the whole download operation on the phone.
(Put road or trail on GPS)
You can export road and trail waypoints from Bivouac as a gpx file. You can then put this GPX file onto your GPS. The roads and trails will become track logs. You can then use the normal track manager on your GPS to see the track log.
For example, on Sigurd-Pokosha Horseshoe -Bike and Hike (with Sigurd Lake) I loaded the Pokosha Spur onto my GPS, and then we navigated to it when trying to find the trail.
DETAILS

In Bivouac, go to the road/trail page for "Garibaldi Lake, and click "Download GPX File. (As of 2012, the link is at the bottom of the page, below the waypoints). This will get the file onto your computer. Make sure the file extension is .gpx
Plug in the Garmin GPS, and go to "mass storage mode". It should be recognized as E: drive.
Drag the GPX file into the directory E:\garmin\gpx
(This puts the file onto your GPS.)
Disconnect the GPS from the computer.
Start up the GPS in stand-alone mode
Go to the Track Manager on your GPS
 You should see a track called "Garibaldi Lake Trail". Click on it, and "View Map". You now see the trail on the map. Note that you also see 8 waypoint flags. These correspond to the bivouac waypoints that had descriptions, such as "Jct with Taylor Meadows Trail". In the waypoint manager, they show up with names like 2.6 or 5.2,which are the names assigned by bivouac corresponding to mileages.
Download to Smartphone using Radius Guide (Obsolete) Download Multiple Roads
How to overlay bivouac trails on smartphone topo maps.
OBSOLETE. The "Radius Guide" was a type of online guidebook, and it had a method of downloading data onto your GPS. But nowdays (2023) the way to download gps data onto your phone is via the Gpx10 or "GpxForm" links.
(How to import trails into GPS apps.)
As of October 2015, the easiest way to import a set of trails and peaks into your gps is to use the "gpx10" link on the mountain page. (assuming you've got the .gpx option turned on in your options.) But first, read An Introduction to GPS Data transfer. Then read Download to Smartphone GPS.
Prior to the gpx10 link, the longer way to download trails to your GPS was to use the gpx link in the online guidebooks. The simplest online guidebook is the radius guide.
The GPS App I've got loaded on my Android phone is called Backcountry Navigator (BCN). It allows me to cache the necessary 1:50K maps for any given trip. Once I've got the maps, I start up the browser on my phone and go to the "Radius Guide" under "Online Guidebooks".
See "Import GPX File" in my Standard GPS Operations" document.]
Here are the instructions to import the .gpx file from Online Guidebooks. I do the whole procedure on my smart phone browser, so I don't need a computer.
On your smartphone browser, find the Online Guidebooks menu in the Bivouac Index.
Click Radius Guide
 It defaults the center to Banff.
Change value of "center" field
 Change the "Center" field from the default "Banff" to correspond to the area you want to hike. If there is a unique mountain name, you can use that as the center. However, if there are multiple mountain names, you must specify the Lat-long instead of a name. For example, when trying to download the trails around rainbow mountain, I looked up the correct Rainbow mountain and then copied in the lat-long of  50.179, -123.053.
Download from Bivouac to your phone
 On the "Online Guide" page above, click "Download GPX File". [On my Android phone, the GPX file ends up automatically in a folder called "Download"].
Import into your GPS App
 Now that you have the gpx file on your browser somewhere, the job is to import it into your App. With Backcountry Navigator, I click on the Folder icon, and chose "Import Tracks or Waypoints" and it displays the list of .gpx files.
Import the .gpx file
 Click on the filename you just saved in the previous step. It should say "Import Successful" and you should now see the trails on your map.
With other phones and other GPS Apps, the procedure may be slightly different, but the principle is the same. For exmaple in View Ranger, the imported track logs do not show up automatically, and you have to turn on the ones you want to see.
List of Gpx Links in Bivouac Download .gpx
Types of .gpx file that are available in Bivouac
I assume you know that a .gpx file is the means of transferring bivouac roads, trails and peaks to your GPS. Bivouac has several different places where you can download a gpx file, and each is different. The gpx files are actually produced "on the fly" from the database when you click the link. Typically you click the link, then the file is put into your downloads folder, and from there you can import it into your GPS.
Gpx link on Road page
 On every road and trail page is a link titled "Download gpx file". The link is located in the Waypoints section. The gpx file will contain ALL waypoints for the road, not just the labelled ones. This is the simplest link since it only downloads a single road. If you want all the roads in an area, use the gpx20 link described below.
"Gpx Form" link On Mountain page
 This link allows you to create and download gpx files
Kml links
 The mountain page also has a link such as "Kml Form". This produces a .kml file rather than a .gpx file.
Gpx File on Area Page
 A control form allows you to specify what will be in the gpx file. Eg: All the car campgrounds, or all the huts.
Road Plans
 There is a link on every road plan page. This allows you to avoid clutter by downloading just one set of trails. The example is Windy Joe trails. If you download a radius, you might get 50 trails, but if your main interest is the Windy Joe trails, there are only 4 trails. Much better for Garmin users since you don't have to hunt thru a huge list and turn on every trail.
Gpx Link on front page
 This allows you to store gpx files so you can see them on GMap. Or to look at gpx files someone else has made.
Download multiple roads to GPS Download Multiple Roads
Rather than downloading one road or trail at a time, download a whole set.
(Export multiple track logs as gpx file)
You can export all the roads and trails in an area as a gpx file, and then drag that file onto your GPS. The roads and trails will become track logs on your GPS.
There are several ways to do this. The easiest is to go to any mountain page and click the "Gpx20" link. That will download all the roads, trails and also peaks within 20 km. You can also download a bunch of roads and trails by using the Radius Guide, but I seldom do that nowdays (2016), because the Gpx20 link is simpler. A third way to download a set of trails is to go to the "road plan" and download just the trails that are in that plan. But this depends on how complete the road plan is for those trails.
STEP BY STEP
Find one of the gpx links
 Go to any mountain page and find the Gpx20 link.
Click the Gpx20 link
 This will put the gpx20 file onto your computer.
If you are doing this on smartphone, go to separate instructions to load gpx file into phone. If doing it with a Garmin Gpx continue.
Plug in GPS
 Plug in the GPS and flip to "Mass Storage Mode". After a few seconds, your computer should recognize the GPS as a drive letter. (Usually E: on my computer)
Using "My Computer", browse to the Garmin folder on the GPS.
  E:/Garmin/gpx
Drag the Gpx file to that folder.
Unplug the GPS and then use it's Track Manager. You should see a list of the roads and trails from that gpx. A single gpx can contain multiple roads and trails.
Turn the trails on, one by one.
To see all areas that have such area guides Area Guide List
Download to Garmin GPS Download Road
Download a road, trail or trip to your GPS
Prerequisites: An Introduction to GPS Data transfer.
These instructions are also duplicated in the reference table Standard GPS Operations under "Import Gpx File" and Garmin Oregon.
Downloading to a Garmin GPS is one of the sections introduced in the above document. In Bivouac, there are several types of gpx file. Some contain only a single track log, others contain multiple tracks and waypoints. But for all files, the basic method is to click the .gpx link in Bivouac, then plug in your Garmin GPS and move the file into the Garmin/gpx folder. Here are step by step instructions:

Browse to Bivouac website on your computer to desired page. Eg: Mount Garibaldi Page or some trip report page.
Find Gpx download link
 Mtn Page: There is now a link on the mountain page that will download a combined .gpx file, with both roads and peaks. Go to a mountain page. You should see a link called "GPX20" near the TOP of that page. (If you don't see it, make sure you have the "GPXLinks" option turned on).
 Trip Page: Trip reports are downloaded from the Trip page. The link is at the BOTTOM of the page, next to the waypoints title. See also instructions Downloading Trip Waypoints from Bivouac.
Click the Gpx link
 The gpx file will end up in your downloads folder on your computer. Gpx20 will contain all roads, trails and peaks.
Plug in your GPS.
 Connect your GPS to your computer with a USB cable. Put the GPS into "mass storage" mode. You will now see the Garmin device as a drive on your computer.
Copy file to Garmin/Gpx
 On your computer, start up your file manager. In your file manager you will be able to see your download folder, and also the /Garmin/Gpx folder. Copy the file from the "Downloads" folder on your computer into E:/Garmin/gpx. (E: is the "drive letter" that represents the GPS on my computer, it may be different on yours). This is how you "import" a file into a Garmin GPS.
Unplug the GPS
Make tracks appear on your GPS map
 By default, uploaded tracks do not show up on your Garmin map. You need to turn them on, one by one.
Downloading Trip Waypoints from Bivouac
Download waypoints for someone else's trip report.
These instructions tell you how to download the trip waypoints for someone else's trip report., as opposed to road and trail or mountain waypoints.
You can download the finished waypoints as a .gpx file. This includes both labelled waypoints and the hidden control points. These are the waypoints that the author put into the waypoints field, NOT the raw track log. (On some trip reports there may also be a "raw" track log from a GPS. )
A GPX file is just a text file. Inside the file are various "tags" which contain the data. A .gpx file is just a type of .xml file.
If you want to know more, read about "gpx" in Wikipedia.
GPX files can be imported into almost every GPS and Digital map program. I have successfully imported Bivouac GPX files into Google Earth (last done on 2013.10.09). I also upload GPX files regularly into my Garmin GPS units. (Oregon 450T, Montana 650, and Etrex). Most recently, I import these .gpx files into the Backcountry Navigator App on my Samsung Galaxy S4 smart phone. See the reference table Standard GPS Operations.
Once you've got the .gpx file loaded into a given device, each device or program displays it differently. Eg: Each one will use a different symbol for mountains. Some will display waypoint labels automatically, but others do not. See How Bivouac GPX Files Are Displayed in Various Programs/Devices.
STEP BY STEP
Go to the trip report
 Go to the trip report page for the trip you want waypoints for. For example "Overland to Golden Hinde"
Find Gpx link
 Scroll down to bottom of the trip report to the waypoints section. Just above the waypoints you should see a link "Download Gpx File"
Click the Gpx Link
 This will put the gpx file into your downloads folder. (Either on your computer, or on your smartphone.
Transfer gpx file to your device
 If you are using a Garmin Gpx, you need to transfer your gpx file to your Garmin. If using a smartphone, you can directly import the gpx.
Download all roads in 50 km radius to Google Earth
Use KMLForm to upload all the roads and trails within 50 km radius to Google Earth
Overview: You can import data into Google Earth using either KML files or GPX files. There is a link on every mountain page called "KMLForm" to generate these files. You specify what you want in the file, then you open it in Google Earth.
For example, you can generate a KML file for all the roads and trails within a 50 km radius of Mount Forbes.
For example:

  Radius:     50 km
  Mountains:  no
  Roads:      yes
Once you generate the KML file, you can "open" it with Google Earth. As of 2020 I just tested this on my Windows 10 machine and a Macbook Pro. When I generated the KML file, my computer directly allowed me to "open" it with Google earth. 
The radius is limited by the amount of data. The limit is 200 roads and 300 peaks. It will tell you if you are over the limit, in which case reduce the radius.

Mount Forbes 50 Km - Roads and trails.
 On my Windows 10 machine I browsed to the Mount Forbes page, then clicked "KML Form". At first I tried 100km radius but it told me that was over the limit of 200 roads. So I reduced the radius. I also turned off the Mountain layer.
Forbes 300 km radius, 1000m Peaks
All the peaks that have a prominence over 1000 meters. I turned off roads and trails.
 
Wedge Mountain - 20 km Roads and Trails
 In this case, I had to reduce the radius because 50 km was too much data.
Smithers 150 km radius
 Roads, trails and campgrounds
I used this on my last trip to Smithers. I just put the kml file onto my phone, so when we were approaching Smithers, I had all the campgrounds and information at my fingertips. 
 


 
GPS - Upload to Bivouac
Get trip waypoints from Raw Gpx file Waypoints from raw gpx
Get waypoints in Bivouac format from raw gpx file
These instructions tell you how to turn a "raw" gpx file into Bivouac waypoints. You upload the gpx then trace the waypoints on the map. At the same time, label significant points. Once you have the waypoints you can cut and paste them into a trip report.
The trip report page has it's own link to a gpx.
DETAILS
Create a trip report
Upload gpx file to Bivouac trip report
 At the top of the trip report page, just below the title is small print that says "Upload Raw Gpx, Kmz, KML". Click the Gpx link, and follow instructions to upload. This copies your raw gpx file onto the bivouac server. A link to it now appears at the top of your trip report.
Display it in Lmap
 Once you have uploaded a raw gpx, a link appears at the top of your trip report that says "View in Lmap". Push that link and a LMap comes up.
Trace your route
 In LMap, note the menu in upper right corner. Click Menu, and then "Draw and Save". Now start clicking points along your route. You may need to slightly adjust their position by dragging each point so it is right on the line. 
You can also "right click" on any point, then click "Edit this Point" and put a label into the comment field. 
See waypoints in Bivouac format
 To see the waypoints, right click on any one of the red circles. This causes a menu to come up. At the bottom is "Bivouac display waypoint text". Click that. Now you see the waypoints in bivouac format, as shown below:
50.661815,-115.534526=Start of trail
50.669649,-115.524312=cp
50.672369,-115.516931=waterfall.
50.677047,-115.500881=End of trail
Copy and paste to report
 Normally the waypoints are already selected (show a blue background). Copy them (Ctrl-C) into the "clipboard".
Open Trip report update form and paste the waypoints into your trip report. Now save the trip.
Translate Track Log to a gpx file
Do you know how to translate a Track Log into a gpx file?
The internal data format of a GPS track log is not necessarily in .gpx format. To get a track log into .gpx format varies between Garmin GPS units and the smart phone programs.
Smart Phones: With most smart phone programs such as Backcountry Navigator, you must use their "export" function. "Export" means "translate". Translate the track log into .gpx format. The export function causes the .gpx file to be placed into a folder on your phone. For example, with Backcountry Navigator, the folder is called bcnav/out.
Garmin: On a Garmin GPS, you must first "save" the current track log. Once you've done that, no translation step is necessary. Saved Track logs are immediately visible as gpx files as soon as you plug in the gps.
Once you have the .gpx file ready on your GPS, you can then copy it onto your computer.
The reference table Standard GPS Operations describes exporting track logs for various types of GPS and phone.
Insert new Road from Gpx file
Upload raw gpx using link on front page
There is no direct method to turn a gpx file into a road record. Instead, you have to upload your gpx to a separate gpx database, then display it on the map and trace the waypoints. And then copy them into a new road record. Normally I just trace the road right from the LMap satellite basemap. I would only use the gpx method if the road was so new it did not show up on the satellite map or BC Basemap, or Open Cycle map links in LMap.
The link to upload a stand-alone gpx file is on the home page. The road page itself does not have a link to upload a raw gpx file.
STEP BY STEP
On the home page, click "Gpx" link
 This causes a list of previously uploaded gpx files to pop up.
Click "Insert"
 This causes an Insert form to pop up
Put in a brief title.
 Eg: my new road
Click the "Upload File" link
 And browse to the file on your computer, etc.
Click "View in LMap"
 Now you see your new file on the Lmap.
Click "Draw_ON"
  Now click..click..click your way along the road, labelling any junctions. When done, do the next step.
Click on any point
 This causes a drop down menu with "Display Waypoints" 
Click Display waypoints
 Now you see the bivouac waypoints. 
Insert new road record
 In a separate window, insert a new road record. 
Copy and paste waypoints into road record
Upload from a Smart Phone
Upload a gpx file from a smart phone GPS app to a bivouac waypoints field 
 Go to your "Track Manager" on the phone, and find the track you want to upload. The first step is to "export" the track. "Export" means translate from internal format to .gpx format. In Backcountry Navigator, "export" is a menu choice. The resulting .gpx file is put into a folder called "BCNav/out" on your phone. This will be where you find the gpx file when you use "Upload Raw gpx" on your trip report page.
For any given GPS program, such as "Backcountry Navigator", see the instructions under Standard GPS Operations. The exact instructions will be in the table under "Export Gpx File".
Find the track to upload
 On your smart phone GPS program (Eg: Backcountry Navigator), go into the track manager and find the track to upload. For example in Backcountry Navigator, the Folder Icon is the track manager. To "find the track to upload" could be a problem because it is mixed in with any roads and trail tracks you may have uploaded. My solution to this problem is always to leave the name of the track as the default date-time number, and then it sorts at the top of the list.
Click the Export function
 (This will vary according to what app you are using. It should put the file somewhere on the phone. eg: in Backcountry navigator, the file ends up in a folder called bcnav/out. I call this the "Out" folder.
Plug phone into PC
 Plug the phone into the PC using the USB cable. The phone should then show up as a drive letter in your File Manager on the computer. Find the gpx file that you made in the previous step.
Upload Raw Gpx
 On your computer, go to the target trip report and click "Upload raw gpx". This will allow you to browse to the drive letter representing your phone, and then go to the "out" folder and upload a copy of the file.
Upload from a Garmin
Upload a track log from a Garmin and translate to Bivouac waypoints format.
(Upload a track log from Garmin GPS to a Bivouac Trip report)
The general idea is to plug in the GPS, then go to the trip report and "upload raw Gpx". The upload raw gpx link does the whole thing in one step. Otherwise, you would move the .gpx file onto your computer, and run the bivouac utility to parse Gpx files into bivouac waypoints format.
See also Standard GPS Operations under Export Gpx File.
Save the track log
 On the GPS, make sure you have saved your track log. It's not automatic like on a phone app.
Connect the GPS
 Connect the GPS with the USB cable. Once you connect the GPS
Click "Upload Raw Gpx"
 Go to the trip report. Click "Upload raw gpx". This will allow you to browse to the .gpx file. When it is uploaded, you can see it on GMap.
Trace the track using GMap
 To get your track log into Bivouac waypoints, you need to trace it.
See GMap Draw and Save
Upload Raw Gpx
Upload a Gpx track log to Waypoint Working File
You have a Gpx file on your computer, and you want to share it. You can either upload it to the Raw Gpx Database or you can upload it to a trip report. 
In both cases, once you have uploaded the .gpx, a link appears which allows you to view it in GMap. If you need Bivouac format waypoints, you can then use the GMap "Draw and Save" function to trace the line to get Bivouac waypoints. See GMap Draw and Save
Roads: Note that the road record has no link to "Upload Raw Gpx". Instead, you would upload a raw gpx, and trace it to get Bivouac waypoints for an actual road record.
STEP BY STEP
(to upload file to Raw Gpx Database)
Copy Gpx file off your GPS to your computer
 Obviously in order to display a gpx file in GMap, you first of all need to load it off your GPS or smart phone onto your computer. These GPS Upload instructions are elsewhere, such as Upload from a Smart Phone.
Go to Authors menu
 You can always get to your authors menu by clicking on your email address, which always appears as a green link when you are logged in. So start by going to the Bivouac home page and clicking on your email address. This brings up a screen titled "Member Settings". Click on Author's menu.
Click on "Raw Gpx Files"
 At the top of the list is an "Insert" link.
Insert a Raw Gpx record
 Click the "Insert" link described above. This brings up a form. Fill in a title. Then click the Insert button on the form. This will insert a record for your gpx and return you to the list. You will now see the title of your newly created raw gpx record.
Click on the title
 This takes you to the Raw Gpx page, which has a link to upload your gpx.
Click "Upload" Link
 Clicking the link will ask you for "Full filename on your disk". It has a "Browse" button. Browse to the folder of the gpx file on your computer, select it, and then "Upload File". Now it is on your computer and you can view it on GMap. 
View the raw gpx on GMap
 Once you've uploaded your gpx file, a small brown link "View in GMap" will appear at the top of your trip report page.
Get Bivouac waypoints from Gpx file
Get Bivouac waypoints from a gpx file already on your computer
A gpx file can contain a "track log" but you can't just paste it into the Bivouac "waypoints" field because it is a different format than Bivouac waypoints. So it has to be translated somehow. We have a track parsing program that does this but it can have problems for large gpx files. See Raw Gpx Database, then display the raw gpx on GMap, and trace the line with GMap "Draw And Save". This allows you to label key points as you go along. It also ensures people don't upload gpx files with hundreds or thousands of unnecessary points. It also avoids problems we used to have with the parsing program.
STEP BY STEP
Create a minimal trip report
 You first must insert a minimal trip report record so you can see a link called "Upload Raw Gpx".
Click Upload raw Gpx
 Click the link and follow instructions. When the file is uploaded, a new link titled "View Raw Gpx" will appear
Click "View Raw Gpx"
 (Note: "View Raw Gpx" is a different link than the standard GMap link!!) The regular GMap link will not display the raw Gpx file. But when you click on "View Raw Gpx" you should now see a GMap with your track on it.
Click "Draw and Save" in GMap
 In the upper right corner of every GMap there is a drop down titled "Menu". Click that and choose "Draw and Save".
Click a starting point
 Click a starting point near the start of your trip. This should make a black circle with a red crosshair in the center. You can then click and drag the circle to exactly where you want it.
click..click..click other points
 You can add comments to any point by right clicking.
Right click to save as bivouac waypoints
 When you are done your whole line, right click on ANY of those points you created. You will see a menu and the bottom choice is "Bivouac Display Waypoint Text". Click that, and you see the waypoints in bivouac format.
Paste the waypoints into your Bivouac Waypoints field
Insert Waypoint Working File
How to insert a waypoint working file.
A "waypoint working file" is just a stripped down trip report, with only a title and a waypoints field. Most common use is to store possible routes you created using GMap "Draw and Save" so others can see it. The basic idea is to mark out the route using "Draw and Save", then cut and paste your waypoints into the Waypoint Working File.
On your Authors Menu, find "Waypoint Working Files"
 Click the link.
Click "Insert link"
 Up comes a form. Fill in a title. 
GMap Draw and Save to click..click..click your waypoints on the map. When done, right click on any of the waypoints, and cut and paste the waypoints in bivouac format into your waypoint working file.
Click the "Insert" Button on form
 Now you have a waypoint working file. It should show up in the list of files. If you want others to see it, click 
Click on the title of your newly inserted waypoint file.
This should bring up the Wpw Page, showing the rough sketch map of the route. Note also the GMap1 link on the Wpw page.
Click GMap1 link on the Waypoint Working file. You should now see a GMap showing your route in purple. Any points with comments should show with small brown rectangles
 
LMap
LMap Tutorial
General tutorial introducing LMap (and old GMap)
Here is a link to a tutorial on LMap. It will quickly walk you through an example, and point out the main features of LMap. All subsequent help articles will assume you know these basic things.
Introductory GMap/LMap Tutorial
Get Single Latlong from LMap
How to get the lat-long coordinates of a single point
This is how you get a lat-long from the Bivouac Lmap. (Leaflet Map). There is a link to LMap on every mountain page and Trip Page. Click on the LMap link, then scroll the mouse around. Notice that the Cursor Position is displayed in the lower right corner as you move. 
 - Right click at the point of interest. Note that a red cross appears on the Map at that point. Note in the lower right corner there are now two Lat-long lines: 

    Cursor:   51.82458,-116.87125
    Clicked:  51.84313,-116.87794 

 - Note that the Cursor position keeps changing, whereas the "Clicked" lat-long stays static at the point you clicked.
 - To click on a different point, just go to that point and again Right Click.
Find a Road using LMap
How to find a road record using LMap link. (Roads and Trails)
Bivouac has several thousand road/trail records. The map systems display these roads on topo maps.
I'm assuming you can spot the correct road or trail if you saw it on a map. So we're going to use the LMap link. There are LMap links on every mountain and town page. So we search for a nearby mountain or town, and then click "LMap". Once we have the map, we can click on the road or trail, which brings up the road page. Here are the step by step details:

Use the front page search to search for a nearby mountain or town.
On the page for that mountain or town, click "LMap" 
 This will bring up a topo map with the Bivouac roads and trails superimposed on it. 
Click on a line of interest on map
 This brings up a pop up box with the name of that road
Click on the title
 This brings up the road page. The road page has some general info, and then the Road Bulletins. If you don't see a recent bulletin, click the insert link and put one in!
Get single waypoints from Lmap (for trip reports) Digitize Point in Lmap
How to get individual waypoints for trip reports from LMap.
(These instructions were originally for GMap, which has now been replaced with LMap)
This is the method to cut and paste INDIVIDUAL waypoints one by one from LMap. (either for Bivouac trip report or roads). Nowdays, most people don't do waypoints one by one, instead they use the LMap GMap Draw and Save function to click..click..click a whole sequence of points.
However, if you want just a single waypoint, just move the mouse to the desired location, and right click, then cut and paste the lat-long to your destination. I always use two separate windows: one window containing GMap and the other containing the update form for a trip report, or waypoint working file.
On a Macbook pro track pad, right click is a two finger click.
Here is a step by step instructions:
For this tutorial, we'll use two separate windows. (I assume you know how to operate your computer with two browser windows on the screen at once). Window #1 will be the window we display GMap in, and window #2 will be the "destination". The destination most likely is a trip report. However, in this tutorial, you can use a "waypoints working file" for the experiments. (Waypoints working files are on your authors menu).
In window #1, go to a mountain page, for example, Mount Robson. At the top of the Mount Robson page, find the "LMap" link. Click it. This causes the LMap topo map to come up.
In Window #2, go to your Author Menu and click "Waypoint Working Files". Click the brown "insert" link, to bring up an "insert" form for a waypoint working file.
Go back to the topo map in window #1, and move the mouse to to your first waypoint. For example, move the mouse to the "Mist Glacier", about 1 km north of Mount Robson.
Right click on the Mist Glacier. This will cause a cream colored window to pop up containing the lat-long in various formats. The format you want for bivouac reports is now the decimal degree format. Eg: 53.123805,-119.166813
Cut and paste the lat-long into the "WayPts" field in the other window. Then label the field. Eg:

 53.123805,-119.166813=Mist Glacier
Move the mouse to a second point, such as the Berg Glacier, and cut and past that point into your WayPts working file

 53.131839,-119.147415=Berg Glacier

Continue as above, until you have traced your whole route.
Put a title on your route, such as "route North of Robson", and push the "insert" button in the upper left corner of the insert form. Now you see the title of your report in your Waypoint Working files.
Click on the title of your report. This brings up a page with a crude sketch map of your waypoints. Click on the GMap link at the top of that page. You now see a purple line connecting the Mist Glacier with the Berg Glacier.
You can do the same procedure to get waypoints for a trip report.
Now that you know how to get waypoints one by one, I want to tell you that you can also get a whole set of waypoints at once, by using the "Draw and Save" function.
LMap Draw and Save - Details Get Trip Waypoints
How to Click..Click..Click a set of waypoints on the map, then cut and paste the whole set into trip report.
This tutorial shows you how to do certain things that were left out of the introductory tutorials Get Trip Waypoints from GMap - Basic or "Get Road Waypoints From LMap using Draw and Save.
Most important is how to label key waypoints as you go along. It also shows how to adjust the position of points as you go, and how to insert new points between two existing points. They outline some of the details that are left out of 
STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL
 If you walk through these steps, they mention in context how to put labels on points, how to drag points to a new position, etc.
Start up GMap
 Go to any mountain page and RIGHT CLICK the Lmap link. This brings up GMap around Mount Garibaldi, in a separate window. 
Start "Draw and Save"
 In the upper right corner of the Lmap, click "Menu" and then "Draw and Save". You are now in Draw and Save mode. 
Click First point
 Click the mouse on the first point of your line. You will see a black circle with a red cross hair in the center.
Click Second  point
 Move mouse to the next location along your route and click. You will see a second black circle/red cross and a red line connecting from the first to second point. 
Click subsequent points
Click the third, fourth and fifth points as described above.
Drag point to new position
 You can adjust the position of any point by dragging it with the mouse. (Hold down the left mouse button while in the point, and drag. Adjust your third point.
Label a point
 You can label any point by right clicking on it. This pops up a menu with "Edit this Point" at the top. Click "Edit this Point" and fill in the comment field. For example "we parked here" or or "Difficult point on the ridge".
Label a point with visible label
 In a trip report, if you start your waypoint comment with an asterisk, a visible label will appear. This is useful to label positions of camps. Eg: "*Camp1 beside the lake". Note that only the first word will become a visible label on the map. The first space acts as a delimiter. Therefore to number your camps, you need to attach the number without a space. Eg: *Camp1" will appear as "Camp1" but "Camp 1" will just show as "Camp".
Delete and Insert
 Between two of your existing points, insert another point. Just right click on the nearest point to where you want the new point, and "Insert Point Before" or "Insert Point After". Or delete the point. Another thing I often do from this menu is "delete following line points".
Save waypoints in Bivouac format
 When done the route, right click on any one of those points. Up pops the same menu that starts with "Edit this Point" we mentioned before. But this time, scroll down to the bottom of that menu. The last item is "Bivouac Display waypoint Text". Click that. 
This pops up a window labelled "Bivouac Waypoint Text File". Your waypoints are already highlighted in blue.
Cut and paste waypoints into your trip report
 The above walk through assumes that your target trip report is in one of the other tabs in your browser (or a separate window). Copy Therefore once you've "copied" the bivouac waypoints into your "clip board", you need to open up an update form so you can paste them into the waypoints field. Open the form by pushing the "Upd" link.
Copy to your Bivouac waypoints field
 Copy the contents of the above window into your trip report, road page or whatever you are working on. Assuming the points are already highlighted in blue, just click "Edit..Copy" in your browser, then go to the other window where you have your trip report form, and click "edit..Paste".
Display .kml file in GMap Gpx File Transfer
Click on the "Upload Gpx" link at the top of your trip report
A "raw" gpx file is one directly out of your GPS program. You can now directly import either gpx or raw kml files into a trip report or waypoint working file. It is called "Raw Gpx Mechanism". Previously you had to translate them into gpx files.
 - Click on the "Upload Gpx" link at the top of your trip report
 - Browse to your gpx file
 - Upload it
 - look at it on map
Other
Convert KML files Convert GPS
How to convert KMZ files to GPX
You used to need to convert a kmz file to a gpx file to see it in GMap. This is no longer necessary because there are two direct links on trip report pages: to upload either kmz or gpx.
For example on various government websites they allow you to download a kml file. Specifically KML files that contain one or more trails that you want to see on a map.
The basic strategy is to view the trails using the Bivouac GMap function, so you can then trace them using GMap Draw and Save.
There are also external programs such as [GPS Visualizer
Download trip report as a PDF to your Android Phone Download Page to PDF
How to download a trip report as a PDF to your Android Phone
You can download any page in Bivouac to your phone as a PDF file. For example Trip Reports or mountain pages, or Road pages. Or even a whole guidebook.
These instructions are for a Android device (Samsung Galaxy).

On the phones browser, go to the desired trip report
Push triple dot menu icon in upper right corner
Choose Print
 This brings up a "Save as PDF" screen.
Push Yellow PDF button in upper right corner
 You now see a list with "Mount Harvey PDF"
Push "Save"
To view the PDF file

The PDFs are in the downloads folder. From the main "Apps" screen, tap the downloads Icon. The default is "Sort by date". This displays a list of most recent downloads today (and also gpx files)
Tap the icon
 this brings op a panel that has three choices: Drive PDF Viewer, PDF Viewer and Polaris Office 5.
Open with "Drive PDF viewer"
 You see the trip report. Hold the phone sideways to enlarge the print.
 
Insert Feature or Infrastructure Item
Inserting infrastructure records like features
In addition to things like trip reports, photos, road bulletins, etc. that are controlled by each author, there are certain types of "infrastructure" records that are inserted and maintained by experienced Editors. For example, one of the infrastructure type records is the "Ftr" (feature) record, which is used for campgrounds, lakes, parking spots, etc. 
If you are an editor, here is a list of the types of record you can insert. See . 
Javamap
Javamap and zoomMap have been scrapped
As of 2017.07.19 the Javamap and ZoomMap subsystems have been removed from the system. The reason for this was the following:
 1. Due to security concerns, Java applets have become increasingly complex to configure. Nowdays many browsers no longer support them at all.
 2. The javamap code would have needed considerable maintenance to accommodate other changes in the system such as negative longitudes, revised map grids, etc.
Subscribe to an article
How to subscribe, unsubscribe or see list of subscribers.
Whenever someone posts a comment to an article, the comment shows up in What's New. However, in case you don't regularily scan "What's new" every week, you can now "subscribe" to the article. Subscribe means you'll get an email every time someone comments on that article.
You can subscribe to all three types of article: Discussions, Reference articles and Equipment reviews.
At the top of every article page is a link labelled "Subscribe". If you are already a subscriber, you will see a link titled "Unsubscribe". There is also a link showing the list of subscribers. To add yourself to the subscription list, click "Subscribe". Once you click that link, you will only see an "Unsubscribe" link.
When you insert an article, you automatically become a subscriber. Similarly, if you post a comment the system automatically makes you a subscriber.
Upload bivouac waypoints to Google Earth Upload Bivouac Waypoints
How do you import GPX or KML files from Bivouac into Google Earth?
Summary: It is a two step process. First, export the waypoints from bivouac as a .gpx or .kml file, and second, import that file to Google Earth.
Below are older instructions for downloading a single road, trail or trip waypoints. If what you want to do is download all the roads and trails within a radius, see Download all roads in 50 km radius to Google Earth.
 
Every trip report page, road or trail page in Bivouac has a link to allow you to export the waypoints as a .gpx file. The link is near the waypoints display at the bottom of the page. You just click the link and tell it where to store the file. Then start up google Earth and click File..Open and browse to the .gpx file.

In Bivouac, go to any trip report page. Find the link labelled "Download GPX File". It is just below the actual waypoints.
Click the Download link.
 Pay attention to where on your computer it will download the file. I have configured Firefox to always ask me where to store downloaded files, otherwise they go to a "downloads" folder.
Start up Google Earth
 You see a map of the world.
Click File..Open.
 And browse to the folder where you put the above file. In order to see .gpx files you need to change the file type to .gpx.
Adjust parameters. Google earth asks if you want to do the following:
  [x] Create KML Tracks
  [ ] Create KML lineStrings
  [x] Adjust altitudes to ground height.
Turn all the options on, including LineStrings
The google earth globe rotates, and zooms in, and you should now see your waypoints.
Here is an example:

Start up Google Earth.
Click File..Open...gpx. Eg: BrewSki.gpx. It asks me if I want to do the following:
  [x] Create KML Tracks
  [x] Create KML lineStrings
  [x] Adjust altitudes to ground height.
It displays the route on the map.
On a Macintosh:
 2013: It has been reported that the gpx files have an xml extension. There is probably a simple solution to this, but some Mac owners have solved the problem by emailing the file to themselves from a PC.
Fix Area Boundaries
Do you know how to inspect area boundaries? Eg: Inspect the boundaries for Garibaldi Park?
As of 2014, the best way to inspect boundaries is to use GMap. Just go to the Area page, and click "GMap". Then zoom the map out so you can see the boundary. For example, search for Garibaldi Park. You need to zoom out, and then you'll see the boundary in purple.
Photos
How to Normalize Photo Rotation
NO LONGER NECESSARY, Bivouac How to normalize the rotation of a photo that appears sideways in bivouac.
2021.07.13  The problem of sideways photos has been fixed. Sideways photos are automatically rotated.
Original Description:
 The original problem was that cell phones don't truly fix vertical photos correctly, instead they just set a flag so it looks OK, and newer viewing programs read that flag. But unfortunately my Bivouac uploaded doesn't read this flag. So the answer is to truly rotate the photo manually before upload. What I do when I see a sideways photo is right click and download it to my downloads folder, then fix it and reload it. So to ensure your photos always come out with the correct orientation on ANY program, it is best to fix them so they are truly rotated.
The general method to fix it is to bring it up in photo viewer, rotate it, and crop it slightly to cause the .jpg file to be rewritten correctly. I use my downloads folder as temporary storage location for the sideways photo. Give the file temporarily a different name.
If you see one that is sideways, here's step by step:

If already on the server, right click on the photo to save a copy in your downloads folder. (Give it a name like MyPhotoSideways.jpg)
Go into downloads, and double click to display the photo. 
 This causes the photo to be displayed in the Windows "Photo" app. It appears sideways.
Click the rotate icon 
 The rotate icon is a circlular arrow in top row. When you click, you see the photo rotate. It will now appear in correct orientation on the screen, but this doesn't actually rewrite the photo. To get it to actually rewrite the photo, you need to cause the photos program to rewrite the file. In windows I do this by cropping it slightly. That triggers the program to rewrite the actual JPG.
Save the photo
 If you crop the photo, a blue "Save a copy" button appears in bottom right corner. Click this, and change the filename. Also adjust the folder to go back into downloads. Remove the leading Id number such as 9612_Myphoto.jpg -> myphoto.jpg. You can save it right over top of the initial photo.
Upload the copy to your report and delete the original. (Use the regular upload links and browse to Downloads folder.)
Reload your page
(For some reason, even when I uploaded the fixed photos, my browser still showed it sideways.

This causes it to be normalized. Then upload the copy. I have tested this with Windows 10 photo viewer and with Macbook "Preview" photo viewer.
Here's the explanation. When you take a photo vertically on your phone, behind the scenes it is sideways. But it looks OK on the phone because the phone sets a flag to rotate 90 degrees at display time. The latest operating systems like Windows 10 also read that flag, so everything looks ok. But Bivouac, and other older systems don't read that flag, and so the true situation becomes apparent. What you want is to rewrite the photo such that it is normalized and requires zero rotation at display time. This can be done by a variety of programs, but the easiest is to just go into a photo viewer and resize the photo slightly. This causes it to be rewritten and normalized. Note that just using the "rotate" function may not rewrite the actual photo.
See the explanation discussion Photo Orientation Discussion and comment Resize will normalize photos in the photo orientation discussion.
JOURNAL
2020.11.28 Large Photo Problem
 I followed the procedure on 2020.11.28 on one that was marked "Large Photo". When I uploaded the rotated photo, at first it still looked sideways. But that was because the "Large Photo" function had not yet refreshed the smaller copy. As soon as I clicked "Large Photo" I saw it correctly displayed, and then when I went back to the normal view it had rewritten it OK.
2020.12.07 Upload from Scanner
 I scanned some slides from 1985 and they were sideways. I double clicked in Windows 10 to open the photo. I then had to click in upper right corner to see the "save as" link.
2021.06.17 Fix Mount Fable photos
 I followed instructions and uploaded copy. But the copy had the report ID tacked onto the front. So I need to save it without that prefix. Also it initially went to the wrong folder. And when I uploaded it, I had to delete the HTML tag for the extra copy. And even when I had everything fixed, it still looked sideways till I refreshed the page. Here's what I did with the filename:
 - save to downloads, attaching the word "sideways"
 - open sideways file and rotate and crop.
 - remove trip Id prefix, and word "sideways" so you have original filename.
 - upload back to trip report.
 
Alternative - Resize the Photo
 The "Resize" link is hidden behind the triple dot menu icon in upper right corner. When you click it, a 4 choice black window comes up: It tells you the current size. Eg: 1.7MP. 4 blue dots give you the 4 choices: S, M, L, C
Photo Resizing Photo Resizing
Photos can be automatically or manually resized.
The Bivouac upload process automatically resizes photos so they are a maximum size of 700 pixels either dimension. Smaller photos are not adjusted.
Upload Photo - to any type of Article
General instructions for uploading photos
These are general instructions for uploading photos to any type of article: trip reports, equipment reviews, discussions, road bulletins, etc. There may also be individual instructions for some of these article types, such as trip reports.
Assuming you already have the photo on your hard disk, start the upload process by clicking on the "Upload Photo" link on your article. This allows you to browse to your photo on your hard disk. Once it is uploaded, our server resizes it automatically, and puts a link to it at the start of your article. You then have to edit your article to move the link to where you want the photo to appear. 
You can upload large photos directly from your camera and they will be resized. Small photos will not be automatically resized. See How Photo Resizing Works.
Step by Step instructions
Find the article
 You should now be looking at the normal page that displays the article, with the title at the top, and a small brown link just right of the title that says "Upload Photo".
Click small brown "Upload Photo" link
  This brings up a screen called "Screen #1 - Upload and Delete Images". (The screens are numbered so you can follow these instructions). On the Screen #1 page is a small brown link just to the right of the page title that says "Upload Image"
Click "upload Image"
 Click on the "Upload Image" link on Screen #1. This brings up Screen #2. Click "Choose File" or "Browse" depending on your browser. This allows you to navigate to the file on your hard disk. Click on the photo or filename, depending on your OS. Click on the photo. It should now appear beside the "Choose File" button. 
Upload the photo
 Push the "Upload File" button. This will upload the file to our server.  You will then be back at screen #1 again, and you will see the name of the file you uploaded in a yellow panel. 
(Behind the scenes, the server has resized your photo automatically, and inserted a link to the photo at the start of your article).
Go back to "Article" page
 From screen #1, click the link labelled "Update Your [Article type]. This displays your article and you will see the photo.
Adjust the position of your photo
 When you bring up the edit form for your bulletin, you now see a link to your photo at the start of your description field. It looks like below:
[photo]W01.jpg[caption]describe photo here[/photo]
Move the link to the correct place in your article, and update the caption. Then save it.
Upload Photo for Member Page Upload Photo
How to upload one or more photos
Member Pages, Road Bulletins and Trip Reports all use the same photo upload mechanism. The basic idea is to go to the member page and push the "UploadPhoto" link. Follow he instructions on the upload screen, and the photo will be automatically uploaded, sized and will display in your report. You then go into the report and move the link to the desired part of your text, and adjust the caption.
STEP BY STEP
Log Onto the system and go to your Member Page. You can get to your member page by searching for your name, or by clicking the green Email Address link that is at the top of every page.
On your member page, click "Upload Photo".
This brings up Screen #1 - Upload and delete images
Push the "Upload File" button. This will upload the file to our server. You will then be back at screen #1 again, and you will see the name of the file you uploaded in yellow.
Click the "Update Your User Page" link. This displays your user page, and you should see the photo.
Click the brown "Update" link on your member page. You now see a link to your photo at the start of the description field. It looks like below:
[photo]W01.jpg[caption]describe photo here[/photo]
Adjust the caption
 Replace the words "describe photo here" with a description of the photo.
Upload a Feature Photo
How to enter a large stand-alone photo, such as a large photo of a mountain.
A feature photo is also referred to as a "photo essay" or "stand-alone photo", as opposed to a photo that is part of a trip report. The stand alone photos are almost always a photo of a specific subject mountain, from a specific vantage lat-long.  They are normally uploaded from your author menu, not from the mountain page. But once uploaded, the title will appear on the mountain page. Uploading it is a two step process: (1) Inserting a photo record and (2) uploading the image file. The photo record contains the information about the photo such as vantage point. It is normally all one sequence of actions: Once you insert the photo record, a dialog then asks you for the actual .jpg file.
Details:(Step by Step)

Go to the front page of Bivouac.
Click on your login code (email address) in green, at the top of the page.
Click on "Author's Menu" link, then "Feature Photos", then "Insert Photo". A form will appear with fields in which you describe the vantage point, date, and Mountain Id for the photo.
Fill in the form and click the "Insert" button in the upper left corner. (If it is your first photo essay, just put minimal information into the fields, then save the record. You can always come back and update. The only field that is hard to fill in is the vantage lat-long" (the latlong where you took the photo from). Here is an example of some of the fields:

  PhotoTitle:          Golden Hinde from Burman Lake
  Photo Date:          2003.08.03
  Subject Mountain Id: 5               
  Vantage Point:       From viewpoint along Phillips Ridge
  Vantage LatLong:     49.123,-125.411
  Caption:             Golden Hinde with Burman Lake in Foreground
  Description:         I took this photo when approaching to climb
Subject Mountain Id:
 (Bivouac Id:) You can look up the Bivouac mountain Id before inserting the photo record. The ID is displayed on the second line of the mountain page. Eg: Bivouac Id: 5
Push the Insert button (in the upper left corner of the form). This will now redirect you to the Photo Uploader screen.
Follow instructions on the upload screens, and your image file will be uploaded and linked to the data record.
Return to your photo essay and see the photo, and make any subsequent edits to the information.
The title of your photo should now appear on the mountain page, under the heading "Subject Photos". Eg: "Mount Forbes Northwest Face"
NOTES ON PROBLEMS


No image file
 2021: Occasionally people manage to insert a photo record but somehow not upload the image file. If so, you can always upload the image file as a separate step. Here's how: Find the photo title in your author's menu, and click on the small brown "Upload Image" link. Then upload the photo. I tested it on 2021.05.26 when somebody had a photo record without a photo. The photo filename was automatically put in place in the photo record.
I tested it again 2021.07.20.
Large photos:
 The system is now designed to allow you to upload really large photos, and then it will automatically prepare a smaller version of the photo. You can directly upload large photos sometimes as large as 2500 pixels without shrinking them first on your computer. However if the photo is really huge, the system will tell you to shrink it first.
Auto Rotate
 As of 2021.07, the system will now auto rotate photos from cell phones according to the Exif flag.
Replace a photo
 You can replace a wrong photo in a given photo record simply by going back to the photo page for that photo, and again clicking "Upload Image", and first of all delete the previous photo, then upload an new one. Tested on 2021.07.20
Upload photo to Trip Report Upload Photo
How to upload in-line photos to your trip reports.
This procedure is just a special version of the general Upload Photo - to any type of Article. 
What we are talking about here are line[/i photos, not stand alone "Feature Photos" also called "photo essays". 
These instructions assume you have already inserted the trip report itself. 
You can upload large photos directly from your camera and the Bivouac website will resize them. Small photos will not be automatically resized. See How Photo Resizing Works.
Below are step by step instructions for in-line photos:
STEP BY STEP

Go to Trip Report
 Find the trip report into which you are going to load the photos. The author's menu has a list of all your Trip reports.
Click "Upload Photo"
 At the top of the trip report page, you see a small brown link called "Upload Photo". Click it. This brings up a screen called "Screen #1 - Upload and Delete Images".
Browse to photo
 Click on the "Upload Image" link on Screen #1 and click "Browse" to find the file on your hard disk. Select the filename, and click the "Open" button. It should be a .jpg or .png file.
Upload the photo
 Push the "Upload File" button. This will upload the file to our server. You will then be back at screen #1 again, and you will see the name of the file you uploaded in yellow.
Update Trip Report
 From screen #1, click the link labelled "Update Your Trip Report". This displays your trip report, but you still have to edit it.
Update your trip report
 (adjust the position and caption of your photo)
 When you bring up the edit form for your trip report, you now see a link to your photo at the start of your description field. It looks like below:
[photo]W01.jpg[caption]describe photo here[/photo]
Move the link to the correct place in your story, and update the caption. Then save your report.
Cause a photo to display on mountain page
How to cause a photo to appear on a mountain page. Link photo to mountain page.
At one time, the system allowed you to upload a small photo directly to a mountain page, but that's not the way it works now. The way it works now is that the picture on the mountain page is derived from a larger "stand-alone photo". (These were formerly called "photo essays" or "feature photos"). So to get a photo to appear on the mountain page, there must first be a separate "Feature Photo" of that mountain. You then put the Id of that feature photo into the mountain record. This causes the system to automatically prepare a small version of the feature photo which will appear on the mountain page.
For example, suppose you were looking at the mountain page for a peak such as Caboose Peak, which had no photo. In order to get a photo to appear on that page, you would first of all Insert a Feature Photo with a large version of the photo. Then you would put the ID of that photo into the "Feature Photo Id" field of the mountain record. (You must have editor priviledges to do this). That will cause a small version of your photo to be prepared automatically, which will appear on the mountain page.
ADDITIONAL HELP
 If you don't understand the above, here is a simple tutorial whereby you'll learn all about how the mechanism works. We use Mount Garibaldi as an example. When you are looking at the Mount Garibaldi page, if you are an editor, you'll see an "Update" link beside the title. Click that link. Now you are on the Upd form for a mountain. Note that there is a field called "Feature Photo Id". Note that the field contains the photo essay Id #4520, which is a photo essay inserted by Matt Gunn.
If you look at his feature photo, you'll notice it has Mount Garibaldi as its subject. If you want to experiment, you can temporarily put photo Id 8408 into the field, which is a photo by Klaus Haring called "Hops Peak and Mount Garibaldi". When you do this, you will get an error message on the mountain page, telling you the photo essay Id does not have Mount Garibaldi as the subject. That's because the main subject is "Hops Peak".
The basic idea is that both pages must refer to the other. The mountain page refers to the photo via its Feature Photo Id, and the feature photo refers to the mountain via its Subject Mtn Id. 
Find a Trip Report Id
When filling in a photo essay how do I get the Trip report Id?
Background: The "feature photo" (photo essay) database form has a field called "TripId". This field is designed to link that photo to a given trip report. To get the Trip report Id, go to the Trip report page, and copy the ID off the URL.
For example, below is the URL for my trip titled "Overland to Golden Hinde"
TripPg.asp?TripId=5003
The Id is the number on the end of the URL, labelled
tripId=5003. The large feature photos that are linked to that trip would have "5003" in the field called trip id.
In general, every database record has an Id, and these Id's are often requested in other related database records. For example, every mountain has an id, which you would get by going to the mountain page. This would be the id you use in a trip report form.
Road Bulletins
Insert Road Bulletin
Are you familiar with road bulletins? Have you ever entered a road bulletin?
 In this example, I'm going to explain how to enter a road bulletin for the Hurley River Road. These are sometimes referred to as "Trail bulletins, or "trail reports", it's all the same. The general idea is to find the road/trail, push the little insert link beside the "Bulletin" heading, and fill in the form and save it. Here are step by step instructions:
Find the road
 The first step is to find the correct road page. If you know the name, you can search by name on the front page. If you don't know the name, use the LMap link as explained here: Find a Road using LMap.
Find the Insert link (for Bulletin)
 Once you have the road page, scroll down to the Bulletins section. Beside the bold title "Bulletins" is a small brown "Insert" link. It looks like this: ("Insert").
Click the Insert Link
 This brings up an insert form into which you can type your bulletin.
Fill in the form and Insert it
 Fill in the fields on the form and push the "Insert" button in the upper left corner of the form. This will return you to the Road page, where you will see your newly inserted bulletin. The simplest bulletin just needs a title, a RbDate and Description.
Updating your bulletin
 If you want to update a bulletin you have already inserted, just click the small brown "Upd" link beside the title of your bulletin. Similarly you can delete your bulletin. In general, all the data editing in the system has the same idea of the small brown "Insert" links. If you are inserting into a list, the link is always beside the title of the list.
Upload photo to Road Bulletin Upload Photo
How to put pictures into a road or trail bulletin.
Overview: First insert the bulletin without photos. Then click on the title of your newly inserted bulletin and click the "upload photo" link. When you have uploaded the photo, it will immediately display. Then all you need to do is go back into your bulletin and move the link to the correct location.
STEP BY STEP

Go to the road page
 And find the bulletin you already inserted.
Click on title of your bulletin
 this brings up a bulletin page, which should contain a link that says "upload photo".
Click "Upload Photo"
  This brings up a screen called "Screen #1 - Upload and Delete Images".
Browse to photo
 Click on the "Upload Image" link on Screen #1 and click "Browse" to find the file on your hard disk. Select the filename, and click the "Open" button.
Upload the photo
 Push the "Upload File" button. This will upload the file to our server. You will then be back at screen #1 again, and you will see the name of the file you uploaded in yellow.
Go back to Road Bulletin page
 From screen #1, click the link labelled "Update Your Road Bulletin". This displays your road bulletin. You will see the photo.
Click the Update link
 (adjust the position and caption of your photo)
 When you bring up the edit form for your bulletin, you now see a link to your photo at the start of your description field. It looks like below:
[photo]W01.jpg[caption]describe photo here[/photo]
Move the link to the correct place in your bulletin, and update the caption. Then save it.
Roads and Trails
Insert New Road or Trail
How do I insert new roads and trails not in Bivouac database?
The starting point for inserting or editing road records is to read Road Editor's Manual. To keep things organized, we have a "road plan" for each network of roads. The road plan sets the standards for naming, and discusses tricky issues such as where to break the roads, etc.
The road plans are administered by R Tivy. If there are any issues regarding inserting a new road, it is best to email me, and I can insert it. However if all you want to do is insert a road or trail which has no issues, and no cleanup required, then you can insert it directly.
Junction Codes: When digitizing a road from the satellite, the standard is to label all visible junctions with a junction code such as "Jct 45". About Junction Codes.
STEP BY STEP
Insert the road record
 Use this link Insert Road. You can get the same link using the "Index" link on the front page, then search for "Insert Road". Use GMap to make sure the road is not already in the system under some different name. If some cleanup of existing roads is necessary, contact Robin Tivy.
Get Title for road (or trail)
 If there is already a name for the road, you can often find it using GMap "hybrid" view (choice "h") or or t8 Topo World OSM Cycle. If you have to make up a name, the safest thing is to use a creek name. For logging spurs you often need to create a name. There are various spur naming systems such as distance from the start of the mainline, but discussion of these is beyond the scope of this document. 
Fill in condition field, etc
 And whatever other fields you know. Look at the field help for each field.
Get Waypoints
 The two main sources of waypoints are (1) GMap, or (2) a GPX file. Both methods are described in the following links: See Get Road Waypoints From GMap or Get Road Waypoints from a Gpx File.
Put in Waypoint Change record
 After inserting a new road, put in an initial Waypoints change record, so we know where the waypoints came from. Click the "insert" link at the bottom of the road page, and describe where you got the waypoints from, any decisions you made, etc.
Put in the first road bulletin
 Assuming you were actually on the road. Don't be afraid to duplicate the description you may also put in the main road record.
xx2 If you think the road you are adding should be part of an existing road plan, send R Tivy an email.
Get Road Waypoints from a Gpx File
Assuming you've got a .gpx file on your computer, how do you get bivouac road waypoints from it?
Typically when you come back from a trip, you may have a track log of where you went, and certain parts of that track log are useful for road or trail waypoints. The way to get the part you want is to first "export" the track log so it is available as a gpx. Transfer the raw gpx to your computer. I call this a "raw gpx file". and upload the entire track log into a "Waypoint Working File". Then use "View Raw gpx" to display your track on GMap. Then trace the part of your track that is relevant to a given trail segment.
STEP BY STEP
(I assume you've already got the gpx file on your computer.)
Insert a Waypoint Working file (or trip report)
 (So you have somewhere in Bivouac to upload your gpx so you can GMap it). Either a Waypoint Working File (WWF) or a Trip report will allow you to upload a raw gpx file.
Go to your new WWF (or trip report)
 You should see a link beside the title "Upload Raw Gpx".
Click "Upload raw Gpx"
 Click the link and follow instructions. When the file is uploaded, a new link titled "View Raw Gpx" will appear right beside it.
Click "View Raw Gpx"
 (Note: "View Raw Gpx" is a different link than the standard GMap link!!) The regular GMap link will not display the raw Gpx file because it depends on the Waypoints field, which is not filled in. When you click on "View Raw Gpx" you should now see a GMap with your track on it.
Click "Draw and Save" in GMap
 Now you are looking at your raw track in GMap. In the upper right corner of every GMap there is a drop down titled "Menu". Click that and choose "Draw and Save". For details click GMap Draw and Save
Click a starting point
 Click a starting point near the start of your trip. This should make a black circle with a red crosshair in the center. Note that unfortunately you can't click RIGHT ON your track line, you must click a little bit off the line, then drag the point onto the line.
click..click..click other points
 Click each point near the line, then drag it onto the line. You can add comments to any point by right clicking. Thus you can label junctions with the Jct code.
Right click to save as bivouac waypoints
 When you are done your whole line, right click on ANY of those points you created. You will see a menu and the bottom choice is "Bivouac Display Waypoint Text". Click that, and you see the waypoints in bivouac format. They are already highlighted, ready to paste.
Paste the waypoints into your Bivouac Waypoints field
Get Road Waypoints From GMap using Draw and Save
Specialized instructions to get road or trail waypoints from GMap.
 These instructions are superceded by LMap.
These instructions tell you how to digitize roads that are visible on GMap. The road may be visible on satelite view Gmap "h" or on GMap "t8" which is Open Cycle Map (OSM) data. The best satellite display in GMap is called "Aerial Google Hybrid" because it also labels the roads if you zoom in far enough. On the Gmap menu, this is choice "h", the third from the bottom. But in other cases, the road may not be clearly visible on the satellite, but you can see it marked on GMap T4 display which shows the TRIM data in British Columbia. Don't be fooled by the name of T4,  called "CalTopo Hi-res USA". T4 is labelled "CalTopo Hi-res USA", but what the CalTopo server displays varies with each province and state. In British Columbia, what you see is the TRIM data. The TRIM data shows logging roads as dotted lines. Another important "map view", especially for trails, is the "t8 Topo OSM Cycle World" display. It will often show trails not in any other place. Zoom in to see labels.
STEP BY STEP

Open Gmap
 To get a GMap for a given road, go to any nearby mountain, and click the GMap link. This brings up the topo map. You can then pan the map to the location of the road.
Change GMap background display
Investigate what other maps may show the road or trail. In the upper right corner of the topo map, change the change the dropdown from "My Topo" to the other main locations of road data, as listed below:

 - h Arial Google Hybrid (Satellite, zoom in to see labels
 - t4 CalTopo (in BC shows the logging roads, no labels)
 - t8 Topo World OSM Cycle (shows many trails, zoom to see labels
Zoom in
 If using satellite hybrid, you must zoom in to 100m so you see the road labels. Look at the scale bar in the lower left corner, and zoom till it goes from 1 km to 100m. You should then be able to see the road, and any government label on the road.
Draw and Save
 In the top right corner, click the dropdown for "Menu", and click "Draw and Save". Then start clicking along the road.
If you want details see GMap Draw and Save.
Label Junctions
 Every time you come to a junction, insert the point, then right click on it, and choose "Edit This Point". (the top menu choice). Then copy the second digit of the lat-long to make the "junction code". Eg: Jct 74
Use Bridge keywords
 If you come to a critical bridge that you know is passable, put the keyword "BRIDGE_IN" into the label. This causes the bridge icon to appear on the map.
Save Waypoints
 When done digitizing the road, right click on any one of the waypoint circles. This causes the same edit menu to come up. Scroll to the bottom of the menu, and click "Bivouac Display Waypoint Text".
(This was described under Draw and save")
Copy waypoints to road record
 Cut and paste the above waypoints into the input form for the road.
Save the road record
Put in Waypoint Change record
 It is desirable to keep track of where the waypoints came from on a given road. Therefore the road page has a link where you can insert a special "Waypoint Change" record. The link is at the bottom of the road record.
About Junction Codes
How to insert important road and trail junctions into road plans.
When digitizing roads and trails, all significant junctions should be labelled with a "junction code". The junction code looks like "Jct 24". You generate the junction number from the second decimal place of the latitude and longitude. Eg: A junction at 50.0749,-126.1465 would be called Jct 74.
The Jct keyword causes GMap to display the junction as a little brown icon. These are very handy for discussion in road bulletins. Eg: Someone can look at the map and say "There's a new road at Jct 26. The junction labels are also very handy when having to fix up existing waypoints. It makes it easy to replace the waypoints between two junctions without having to pick through the lat-longs on a twisty road.
The junction labels are easy to get when using GMap to digitize: when you right click to edit the point, the lat-long you need is right there. So you label each junction as you go along.
For a more detailed discussion of junction codes see Junction Codes.
Junction Records
 In addition to putting junction codes into the waypoints, as of September 2016, you can insert important junctions into the road plan page. Not all junctions have a junction record, only important ones you want to refer to in numerous places. Eg: You send an email to another editor and you can ask him what he found out about the new fork that goes up from junction 74. Editors can insert junction records from the road plan page. They can be inserted by any editor.
The system generates the junction code automatically. They are sorted on the road plan according to bivouac "Area Codes" such that junctions in the same area appear next to one another. When you click on a junction code in a road plan, it brings up a junction page with links to GMap.
Search
Text Search (on front page)
Do you know how to look up a given mountain using the search box on the front page?
The text search is the usual way to start investigating an area. For example, if you wanted to look at all the trails around Mount Garibaldi, you would search for "Mount Garibaldi", then go to the mountain page for Mount Garibaldi and then click the GMap link to bring up a map. This search depends on an exact match, of at least the string for which you are searching.
STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL

Find the search box
 The search box for the "text search" is at the top of the home page. Type the name of a peak into the search window at the top of the page, for example "Mount Garibaldi". If you are not sure if it is "Mount Garibaldi" or "Garibaldi Peak", just type "Garibaldi". Note that the search ONLY matches the exact string, so if you type "Garibaldi Peak" you don't find the main "Mount Garibaldi". You can also search for part of the word, such as "Gari"
Click the "Search" button.
 You will see the "Search Results". Note there are numerous subheadings, such as "Mountains", Roads and Trails, Areas, and so on. These correspond to different types of database records that have been searched.
Click the Mountain page link
 If you are searching for a mountain, the link to the mountain pages that match will be at the top of the list, under "Mountains". Even if your end goal is to look for trip reports to Mount Robson, you should first of all click on the mountain page, not directly on trip pages. The reason to go through the mountain page is because it will show ALL the trip reports near Mount Robson, even if they don't have Mount Robson in the title. It uses the lat-long, and does not depend on the title text.
Looking at mountain page
 Note that at the bottom of the mountain page is a complete list of ALL trip reports regardless of whether or not the title contains "Robson".
Other Text Searches: In addition to the names of mountains, you can use the same text search to search for anything else in the database including towns, ranges, photos, discussions or documents. You can also search for a huge number of technical articles such as "GPS" or "Map Datums" or "Prominence". You can also search for system functions such as "Trouble Tickets" (which are also in the Index).
- towns, mountain ranges
  - articles (Search for "GPS" or "Map Datum"
  - system functions
  
Radius Search
Do you know how to use radius search?
On every mountain page there is a link called "Radius Search" which allows you to search for all the records within a given radius of that mountain. For example, if you wanted to see all the cabins within 10 km of Mount Garibaldi, you would first look up Mount Garibaldi, and then click radius search. And then click "Cabins".
STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL
Search for Mount Garibaldi using the main search box on front page
 This brings up the "search results". In the case of Mount Garibaldi, this is a long list of items. Note that the items are sorted under subheadings such as "Mountains, Trip Reports, Feature Photos and so on.
In order to "go to" Mount Garibaldi, you click on the heading under "Mountains".
Click on Mount Garibaldi under "Mountains"
 This brings up the "mountain page" for Mount Garibaldi. Note the link titled "RadiusSearch" just below the title.
Click RadiusSearch
 This brings up various types of records for which you can search:

  Roads or Trails
  Features
  Cabins
  Towns
  Mountains
  Trips and Traverse Routes
  Photos
Click on "Cabins"
 You now see a list of cabins within a 10 km radius. There are 4 cabins.
Adjust the radius to 50 km
Find road and trail information
Do you know how to find road information?
Bivouac has information pages on over 7000 backroads and trails. There is no giant list of roads. Three ways to find the page for a given road:
  1. Search by name (on front page)
  2. Radius search (around any mountain, town) (smart phone)
  3. From a Map
If you are on a computer, the best way to find roads is to use the GMap. Just click on the green icons on the road. See Find a Road using GMap.
Find Road Information on Smart Phone
Do you know the best way to look up road information on your smartphone?
Although GMap is the best way to find road information when on your computer, if you are trying to look up road information using your smart phone (and are not sure of the exact name), then the best thing is to use the Radius Search. Search for the closest possible mountain, then limit the radius so that you only see the most relevant roads.
GMap does work on smart phones, but it's difficult to use. On my Samsung Galaxy S4 it is difficult to click on the tiny road number icons.
STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL
 In this tutorial, we want to find information on the closest road to the north of Mount Matier (which we don't know it's exact name). Assume you are in a wi-fi coffee shop in Pemberton.
Search for Mount Matier
 This brings up the Matier Page.
Click "Radius Search"
 This will bring up a list of things you can search for, including "Roads or Trails"
Click "Roads or Trails"
This brings up a list of roads within 10 km of Mount Matier. This list is quite long.
Change the 10 km to 5 km
Now you only see 9 roads. I can see right away that "Cerise Main" is the road I want.
Click on "Cerise Main"
 Up comes the Cerise Main page. You can quickly verify you are looking at the right road with the sketch map. The road you are looking at is a purple line.
Trip Reports
Insert Trip Report (Basic)
Do you know how to enter a skeleton trip report (with just one waypoint?
 OVERVIEW:
 When inserting trip reports, the best thing is to first of all insert just the absolute minimum (a "skeleton" trip report). This makes sure you know how to get the basic trip record into the database before spending a lot of time writing the report. When the form comes up, you only fill in the date and title and one waypoint, then save it. From then on, you just keep updating the report, filling in the other fields a few at a time, and updating each time. If something goes wrong, you just go back to the previous. Once you are working on a skeleton trip report, I can help with any questions you want.
 You must be a paid member to insert a trip report. Trip reports take time to write, but they are the foundation of the website. Any problems you run into, contact me and I'll always do whatever I can to help you prepare a trip report. I can put in a skeleton trip report for you to update, if you find that easier to get started.
STEP BY STEP (Skeleton Trip Report)
Go to Authors Menu
 Login, then click your email address (in green) at the top of home page, and then "Author's Menu". Here is a link that works if you are logged in: 
Go to Trip Reports section
 Click the "Trip Reports" link on the author's menu.  This brings up a screen called "Trip Report Lister". At first it will be empty. But when you've got a bunch of trip reports, this is where they will show up.
Click the "Insert Trip" link
 The link is located to the right of the title "Trip Report Lister". It is a small brown link. This brings up the input form.
Fill in Title and  Date
 The Date format is Year.Month.Day. Eg: 2016.09.21.
Fill in a single test waypoint
 When actually writing the full trip report, you'll get your waypoints from GMap, but for now just put in a single test waypoint by hand. Just copy the waypoint below:

  49.12345,-123.12345=this is a test
Insert the form
 (Push the "Insert" button on the form.) The insert button is in the top left of the form. This should insert your trip report, and return you to the screen titled "Trip Report Lister". You should now see the title of your incomplete report in the list. You should also see a brown "Update" link. 
Update the trip
 Now that you have inserted your trip, you can go back and update it as many times as you want. To update, click the small brown "Upd" link beside the trip title. This brings up the Update form. Now fill in a few more fields such as a few sentences describing your trip.
You have now inserted a skeleton trip report.
 Now we can discuss the details of a full blown trip report.
EXTRA NOTES

On your first reports, don't try and do it all at once, go through the update cycle every 5 minutes or so, so you won't lose a lot of work if something goes wrong.
The "Complete" Field
 Note that trip reports have a field called "Complete". By default, this field is set to "no". When it is set to "no", the system allows you to leave various fields empty, but when you try to flip it to "Yes" it will validate all essential fields.
Using your text editor instead of the input form
 Some people write their whole trip report in a separate text editor like "notepad", or Microsoft Word, then cut and paste it into Bivouac form) That way they don't lose their work accidentally. Myself, I directly type my text into the form, but I save my work every 10 or 15 minutes.
Help Labels:
 Note that the label of each field is linked to a help message for that field. Please read the help messages for every field at least once.
The Waypoints Field
 The waypoints field is a string of lat-longs in bivouac format. An example of the bivouac format is as shown below:

 49.57333,-125.61333=*Trailhead
 49.59167,-125.61667=Outlet of Arnica Lake @1190m
 49.59333,-125.61833=*Camp1 Arnica Lake Campground
 49.59833,-125.63167=High Point @1440m
 49.59417,-125.64917=cp

Each waypoint above is a Lat-Long, followed by an equals sign. Following that may be a description, or the letters "cp" which mean "control point". The descriptions can also contain other things like elevation, but you can ignore that for now. The Master Waypoint specification is Master Waypoint Specification (Input Spec).
Nowdays people get their Bivouac waypoints from a GPS track log, or by marking their route on a map. See one of the following:
Get Trip Waypoints from GPS
 Get Trip Waypoints from GMap.
Use Multiple Windows
 When writing trip reports, you frequently need to look up other information. The best way to do this is to open multiple windows, side by side. One window will have your trip report input form in it, and the other window you can use for lookup. Multiple windows is the reason the Bivouac site is designed to run in small windows. In fact, I usually have a third window, which has the topo map. So I can cut and paste waypoints from the topomap into my trip report.
Trip Report Photos
 Putting photos into your trip report is a separate step, once you've got the report itself in the system. See Upload photo to Trip Report"
Update Trip Report
How to edit a report that has already been inserted.
These are instructions how to update a trip report. These instructions are useful when you or the administrator has already put in a sample trip report for you. Or in some cases, I have gotten you started on a trip report from information you've sent me, and now I want you to complete it.
Login to Bivouac
 Logging in will return you to the home page of Bivouac. When you are logged in, you always see your email address at the top of the screen, in green.
Click on your email address
 This takes you to a "member settings" screen. One of the items on that screen is "Authors Menu".
Click "Authors Menu"
 Now you see a list of things you can edit, such as Feature Photos and "trip reports".
Click "Trip Reports"
 Now you see a list which contains all your trip reports, including the one I have inserted for you. Note that every trip has a small brown "Upd" link beside it's title. This is the update link.
Click the update link.
 Now you are looking at a form that contains all the fields in your trip report.
Fill in a field or two and click "Update"
 This is just to get the feel for how to do a complete update cycle. Once you've gone thru the cycle once, you can continue to update by repeating the above 2 steps.
Edit the rest of the fields
 Usually I have already filled in some of the fields including some waypoints for you. To get more waypoints, use GMap. (Look up separate instructions).
Get Trip Waypoints from LMap Get Waypoints from LMap
How to Click..Click..Click a set of waypoints on the map, then cut and paste them into a trip report.
These days in 2023, most people first upload a "Raw" track log, and then use the LMap "Draw" function to do a rough trace of the raw track. When done, display the waypoints, then copy and paste them into the waypoints field of your trip report.
Most important is how to label key waypoints as you go along. This tutorial also shows how to adjust the position of points as you go, and how to insert new points between two existing points. 
STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL (Including making adjustments)
Start up LMap
 Go to any mountain page (eg; Mount Garibaldi) and click the Lmap link. This brings up LMap around Mount Garibaldi. It defaults to the CalTopo basemap.
Turn Draw_On
 In the upper right corner of the Lmap, you see a drop down with "Draw_Off". Flip it to "Draw_On" 
Click First point
 Click the mouse on the first point of your line. You see a blue teardrop marker. The tail of that teardrop corresponds to the actual point
Click Second point
 Move mouse to the next location along your route and click. You will see a second marker with a blue line connecting the markers.
Click subsequent points
Click the third, fourth and fifth points as described above.
Now you could jump directly to the step to display the waypoints. But before that, here's how you can do some adjustments to your waypoints.
You can Drag any point to a new position
 You can adjust the position of any point by dragging it with the mouse. (Hold down the left mouse button while in the point, and drag. Adjust your third point.
You can Label a point
 You can label any point by right clicking on the marker. This pops up a menu with various choices like Delete Point. Click "Put Comment". This causes a little window to pop up. Fill in a comment and click "add". For example "we parked here" or or "Difficult point on the ridge".
You can Insert a Point
 Between two of your existing points, insert another point. Just  click on the first point beyond where you want to insert. When the menu comes up, click "Insert Point". The new point will appear half way between the point you selected and the previous point. You can then drag the new point to the desired position.
You can Delete Following
 This deletes all the points following a given point. I often use this when digitizing roads when I accidentally go up the wrong branch.
Display Waypoints
 When you are ready to transfer your points to your trip report, 
click any point, and "Display Waypoints". This causes a set of Bivouac waypoints to appear in the lower right corner. They are already highlighted in blue (selected). 
done the route, right click on any one of those points. Up pops the same menu that starts with "Edit this Point" we mentioned before. But this time, scroll down to the bottom of that menu. The last item is "Bivouac Display waypoint Text". Click that. 
This pops up a window labelled "Bivouac Waypoint Text File". Your waypoints are already highlighted in blue. Right click and "Copy" to your clipboard. Then go to your trip report and "Paste" them into the waypoints field.
Parse Gpx file into Bivouac Waypoints
How to parse a gpx file into bivouac waypoints
On your author's menu is a link to . This brings up a form into which you paste the text from a raw gpx file. Of course you first of all have to open your gpx file with a text editor so you see the text.
Once you have parsed the gpx file into Bivouac waypoints, you'll need to thin the waypoints. To do this thinning, there are links called "Thin50" and "Thin100" on the trip report page. Same thing on the road page. The number "50" in "Thin50" refers to the waypoint spacing in meters. In this case, an average of 50 meter spacing between waypoints. The opposite of spacing is density. Eg: a spacing of 50m would mean 20 points per km. 
Calculated Length: 19.0 km   Number of Waypoints: 238     WP Density: 12.5 points/km 
See the document Waypoint Spacing for a complete explanation.
Get Trip Waypoints from GMap - Basic
GMap "Draw and Save" instructions that are specific to Trip Reports.
This is the most basic procedure to get waypoints from GMap to put into your trip report. You start GMap by clicking a link on any mountain page. This brings up the map, allowing you to click..click..click your way along your route. When done, you save the points by right clicking on any point and copying the contents into your trip report. Don't do anything fancy until you have gone through the basic cycle. Once you have done the basics, you can then read Advanced Trip Waypoints using GMap.
Start up Gmap
 Start up GMap from any mountain page. Just click the GMap link and a map comes up. You can also do the same from your trip report page.
Turn on "Draw and Save" mode
 When you are looking at any GMap, you see a menu link in the upper right corner. Click "Menu" and then click "Draw and Save". 
Click the starting point
 Click your mouse on the start of your trip. A red circle should appear, with a black cross in the center. If you are tracing an existing line, it sometimes won't let you click right on that line. Annoying, but the way to get around this is to click a little off to one side of the existing line, and then drag the point back onto the line.
Click your route
 With your mouse, click,click,click a few more points so you see how it works. You see red circles for each point, joined by lines. So with that, you could describe your route. To label important waypoints as you go, right click and label. See GMap Draw and Save - Details. This tells you how to do things like label points as you go, adjust location of points, deleting and inserting extra points, and putting comments on points.
Transfer waypoints to your trip report 
 To transfer the waypoints, first get them into bivouac format. Right click within the red circle of ANY OF YOUR POINTS. This pops up a menu. Scroll down to the bottom of that menu. The last choice is "Bivouac display waypoint text". Click it. This pops up a window with your waypoints in Bivouac format. 
Cut and paste waypoints to your trip report
 From the previous step you now see your waypoints in Bivouac format. The job is to get them into your waypoints field. To do that, you need to open the "update" form for your trip report. Then paste your waypoints into the waypoints field. Note: You must do this to actually save the waypoints. Just marking them on GMap alone does not save them.
Get Trip Waypoints from GPS Upload Gpx File
How do I get trip waypoints from a GPS or a .gpx file?
(Get Bivouac Waypoints from GPS) (Upload a track log from your GPS to your trip report using your computer file manager)
OVERVIEW:
These instructions assume you already know the difference between a "track log" and a "waypoint" on your GPS. And know that the Bivouac waypoints field because is a different format from a .gpx file. If not, see An Introduction to GPS Data transfer.
Although Bivouac still has a utility to parse a gpx file automatically into Bivouac waypoints, and thin gpx files into bivouac waypoints. But there were several problems and it turned out that you get much better results tracing your raw line. This gives you a clean set of waypoints, and you can label key points.
These instructions assume you are going to do everything from your computer, as opposed to trying to write a trip report on your smart phone. That means connecting your GPS or smart phone to your computer via a USB cable. [If you tried to do it on the phone, you wouldn't need a cable. Instead, you would use the phone app to translate the track log into a gpx, then use the browser on the phone to go to the bivouac website, and then "Upload Raw Gpx" directly on the phone. ]
Trace and label that route using the "Draw and Save" function in GMap.
STEP BY STEP
Make .gpx file on GPS
 The first step is to get your GPS to make your track log available in .gpx format. On a Garmin device, track logs are directly available as .gpx files, but on smart phone GPS apps like Backcountry Navigator, there is usually a function called "Export" which does the translation.
Connect the GPS to your computer with USB cable.
 The folders on the GPS should now be visible to your File manager on your computer.
Create a new trip report using the normal form. Just put in a title and the date. You don't fill in the waypoints field yet.
Save your trip report. Now you can look at the trip report page, and see the title of your report, etc. Note: This is on the trip report PAGE, not the trip report FORM. Notice a link beside the title called "Upload Raw Gpx".
Click the "Upload Raw Gpx" link
 Click the upload raw gpx link. This will bring up a dialog that allows you to browse to the location of your gpx file. This loads the gpx file into Bivouac into a hidden place where the server can retrieve it. Notice that after upload you see a link on your trip report called "View Raw Gpx". This link only appears on your trip report once you have uploaded a gpx file.
Click "View Raw Gpx"
 On the trip report, click "view raw Gpx". This allows you to view the gpx file in GMap.
Trace the line
 In the upper right corner of GMap, click "menu" and then "Draw and Save". Now click near the first point of your trip. A red circle appears. Unfortunately, with Draw and Save you can't click exactly on the raw line you are tracing, you need to click each point beside the line, then drag it into place. Continue along your route clicking and positioning each point. As you go, put comments into key points by right clicking on the point.
See GMap Draw and Save"
When you have completed your tracing, right click on any point, and scroll down to the bottom of the menu. You see a choice that says "Bivouac Display Waypoint Text". This pops up a box that shows the waypoints you created, in Bivouac format.
Cut and paste the above bivouac waypoints into the normal "WayPoints" field in your trip report or road record.
Write trip reports on Macbook Pro
What differences are there when using a Macbook Pro rather than a PC?
I just wrote my first complete report using my new Macbook Pro, so I thought I'd publish a few notes regarding the differences. I used the track pad entirely, rather than a mouse.
Starting the trip report is the same as always. The parts that required new skills on the Mac were handling the photos and the GPX file containing my track log.
Photos:

I plugged the camera into the USB port on the laptop. This immediately started up iPhoto. I then copied them into iPhoto and then dragged the photos into my own folder which I created using Finder (the file manager). So at this point, I had 32 photos in my "Whirlwind" folder. I could see tiny thumbnails of them using Finder Icon view, but they were not big enough. Fortunately I discovered that I could expand the size of those tiny thumbnails by using "View..Show View Options..Icon Size. That enabled me to pick the photos I wanted, and change their names to something meaningful. Then I went back into my Safari window and used the standard "Upload Photo" link. This worked the same as on a PC, so I could upload each photo to bivouac, and copy and paste the filename into my trip report update form, and add the necessary
[photo] and [caption] tags.
GPX Files and GMap

I plugged my Garmin GPS into the USB port on the laptop. After a few seconds the laptop recognized it.

Plug in the Gpx, and go to Mass storage mode
 After 5 seconds, a garmin icon appears on the right side.
Navigate down to the GPX folder and drag the proper GPX file into the Finder.
Go to trip report, and upload raw GPX.
 To do this, up comes Safari in my Photo directory. So I have to navigate up to the parent folder (RTMaster) which I do with the up and down arrows that appear beside the folder name in the top row of icons. That shows the subfolders below the big folder view picture. When you get to the "Gpx" directory, you can see the GPX filename "Track_16-May-14 153309.gpx".
Double click on the GPX Filename
 This causes it to appear in the "Form for Upload Raw GPX" dialog.
Push "Upload File" button
Click "View Raw GPX"
 This brings up GMap and displays the raw track log. It is always best to redigitize along the track log, so you can label key points, and also get rid of bad waypoints. My track logs often contain extra waypoints at the beginning and end of the trip which I just ignore when I redigitize.
Redigitize using GMap "Draw and Save"
 When looking at the raw track log on GMap, I clicked "Draw and Save". I then "click..click..clicked" the points. I switched back and forth from satellite view to My Topo view in order to get good labels for key waypoints. To label a point, do a two finger click (secondary click) on the waypoint.
For my Whirlwind trip, I did several hundred waypoints. Several times GMap went into a mode such that I could no longer pan the map. Perhaps GMap can only handle some number of points at a time, such as 50 points. So the strategy is to copy the points out in small batches. Fortunately even when the map no longer will pan, you can still get your existing waypoints using the normal procedure.
Delete Trip Report
How can a normal author delete a trip report? For example, if I accidentally insert a trip report twice?
Trip reports are deleted using special "delayed delete" links. This ensures you don't accidentally delete a valuable trip. The "delayed delete" links are a magenta color. They appear on the Trip Report page. They also appear beside the trip titles on the trip list which is part of your Author's Menu. The "delayed delete" marks your trip report for later deletion by an admin person. In the meantime, it will no longer show up in What's New or in searches. This idea is sometimes called a "logical delete".
Step by Step:

Go to your "Author Menu". This brings up a list of different article types, such as Photo Essays, Trip Reports, etc.
Click on "Trip Reports". This starts up the "Trip Report Lister", which lists your trip report titles. Notice that beside each title is a magenta delete link. It is a special color because the delete is a delayed delete. 
Click the "delete" link. This brings up the "Delete Confirmation Screen".
Click "Mark For Deletion". This 'logically deletes' your trip report by putting it onto a list for deletion, and in the meantime makes it disappear from What's New, and show as gray on your trip lister.  
Where are the delete links?
 1. On the Trip Lister, as described above
 2. On the trip page itself.
If you make a mistake and accidentally mark the wrong trip report, you can restore it by clicking the update link ("Upd"), and then go to the bottom of the form, and flip "Logical Delete" from "Yes" back to "No". 
Using Waypoint Working Files
How to use a waypoints working file to store test waypoints, or to look at some waypoints someone else has prepared for you.
A "Waypoint working file" (Wpw record) is a means of creating a set of bivouac waypoints without having to make up a trip report. It could be called a "Track Viewer" or a "waypoint viewer". You create a set of waypoints by using the GMap 'Draw and Save' function to trace a raw Gpx file. Raw Gpx files are now stored in a separate database. See Raw Gpx Database.
Typically I upload a raw gpx file, and view that on GMap, and then use "draw and save" to trace and label points on the same line, which gives me Bivouac waypoints.
Waypoint working files can be used either for your own purposes, and also to share with other bivouac members. The working waypoints of any member, are available simply by looking up their authors menu. So you could use them to outline a proposed traverse.
TYPICAL USES

Planned trips
 In several cases, I've put waypoints for planned trips into a working file, then emailed to other people in the trip to have a look at the route.
Discussions with other Editors
 If I'm upgrading a set of waypoints, I'll keep the old waypoints in a waypoints working file, and then I can email some other editor to have a look. Eg: Paul Kubik had a set of waypoints for the Baden Powell trail, and when I redigitized from the Terrain view, I kept his original waypoints, so we could discuss the differences.
HOW TO VIEW SOMEONE ELSE'S WPW RECORD
On the front page, search for "Robin Tivy". This brings up the author page for Robin Tivy.
Click on "Author's Menu". This takes you to my author's menu.
Click on "Waypoint Working Files". This shows a list of working files.
Click on the title you want. Eg: Baden Powell
Click on the GMap link. This brings up a map which shows both the working waypoints in magenta plus the current Baden Powell Trail.
Avoid junk characters from MS Word
How to avoid special characters when exporting from Microsoft word.
If you write a trip reports using programs like Microsoft Word, and then transfer it to Bivouac, you sometimes see mysterious character sequences. What is happening is that the "auto format" feature of word has inserted special "opening quote" and "closing quote" characters for what you typed, but the browser doesn't know how to handle these special characters.
To avoid this problem, you either have to turn off the "auto format" or when you export the text from word, make sure it is plain text. Or use a regular text editor rather than Microsoft word. Otherwise, somebody has to go through your article, and replace the text strings with the characters. I've fixed hundreds of such reports.
DETAILED EXAMPLES:
Example 1 - Mike Peel's trip report
 We got warmed up for this 6 day canoe trip by canoeing from Tuwanek Point (where we rented the canoes) - near Sechelt - north along the coast to Nine mile point, across the Salmon and Narrows Inlet and then on through Skookumchuck Narrows (at slack tide!), with a stop at the Cinnamon bun bakery at Egmont and then across Jervis Inlet to a small Island camp spot - home of Whiskers the baby seal
Example 2 - Single Quotes
 When I go into Microsoft Word and try to enclose a word in single quotes, I use the single quote on the keyboard. (the key beside the Enter key). But what happens is the "auto format" feature of Microsoft word turns my kestrokes to "opening quote" and closing quote. Below is an example:
Actually in the file:

 This is a 'quote'. 
This is what is displayed.
 This is a 'quote'. 
However in this case, it seems to know how to translate the leading and trailing quote.
Example 3 - Wayne Weber
 Wayne's member description uses the slanted apostrophe for the abbreviation "I'm". On his member page, these are displayed with question marks. Yet on this help page, they display as upright quotes.

 I'm a native of North Vancouver...
I'm a native of North Vancouver... 
Advanced Trip Waypoints
Advanced notes regarding waypoint preparation with LMap or GMap
This help document describes a few things you might want to know once you have successfully saved your first set of waypoints. These notes were removed from the beginner's instructions. See Get Trip Waypoints from GMap - Basic.
There are also general GMap techniques in GMap Draw and Save - Details.
Label your camps
 You can label camps with a special keyword starting with an asterisk. "*Camp1" or "*Camp2_3". This causes a red label to appear on the map. Don't leave space between "Camp" and the number, because the label will only be the first word.
How to trace side trips
 The simplest set of waypoints is just a single line. But sometimes if you do side trips, you want to go out and then come back the same route, and then continue the mainline. On the way back, just create a new waypoint beside each of the "up" waypoints, and drag it on top. When I get back to camp, I label that point "Back at Camp". This makes it easy to edit your route on a given peak in the future, since the sequence of points starts with *Camp1 and in the middle is

  *Camp1
  cp
  cp
  Summit of Peak @10,200'
  cp
  cp
  Back at camp
Put comment on waypoint
 Right click on any waypoint. This brings up the "point menu". Click "Edit This Point". Fill in the "Comment" field. For example, the first waypoint you would typically label with "Parked Here"
Elevation tags
 Some key waypoints such as passes, peaks, and your starting and end point should give the elevation. Use the special syntax with the "@" symbol and with the units, either "m" for meters or "feet". Below is an example:

  Parked here @1500m

 The "@" symbol causes the waypoint to be displayed in both feet and meters. 
No Return Path
 If your trip is a typical single peak climb, you only need to do waypoints to your farthest point. You don't need to retrace your whole route. In this case, the calculated distance will be one way.
Convert UTM  to Lat-Long
Convert UTM Grid reference to lat-long, especially when 
When a paper map starts the 2 digit grid reference numbers over again at 00, you must convert waypoints in 2 batches.
When getting waypoints off paper maps, you have the job of converting the UTM grid references to latlong. This is tricky because the convention was to leave out the leading two digits. Eg: Convert 943-669 to a lat-long.
To do the conversions, we wrote a <MassUTM_Trunc.asp?Example=On>UTM Mass Converter</a>. This allowed you to specify the leading digit once, and then put in a whole set of the 3 digit ones. Since the waypoints for most trip reports share the same leading digits, you could convert all references in one batch.
However, some mapsheets have grid reference numbers that make a "transition" in the middle of the sheet. Eg:

  95  96  97  98  99  00  01  02  03

In this case you must convert your waypoints in two batches, each with a separate "leading digit" for the "easting". Below is an example, which come from Rick Collier's report titled A Wet and Unpleasant Traverse from Whistler Mountain to Mount Gladstone.
Here are the original waypoints he was trying to convert in one batch: (which didn't work)
943-669=dirt-bike scar on Castle River road
946-667=intersection with fire lookout uptrack
960-677=open area near old fire lookout
964-679=intermediate summit
968-676=summit of Whistler Mountain
989-674=first summit E of Whistler
980-665=ridge turns E
995-664=second summit to E
004-658=low col SW of Gladstone
012-657=Gladstone/North Castle col
014-666=summit of Gladstone
012-657=Gladstone/North Castle col
019-654=Mill Creek tributary, SE of Gladstone
038-672=tributary intersects Mill Creek
037-697=gas well (end of Mill Creek road)
As you can see, he crosses the "transition" right after waypoint with the easting "995" and the next waypoint has an easting of "004". He is going from west to east. The leading digit for the ones on the west is "6", and the leading digit for the ones on the east is "7"
So you split them into two batches for conversion. If you try to convert them all in a single batch, with a single leading digit, half of them will be wrong.
HOW TO GET THE PROPER LEADING DIGIT:
 The first method is using the paper map. Take out ANY 1:50K paper map. (I'll use 82G.08 - Beaver Mines as an example, but you can use any map. Look in the lower left corner, and you'll see a faint blue number which is the full UTM:
  683000 E.
Now look in the lower right corner, and you see 717000.
  717000 E.
Note that the western leading digit is "6", but the one on the east is "7". Any UTM values east of the "00" which runs just 1 km west of Mount Gladstone, must be converted with a "7", whereas the ones east must be converted with a "6".
Note also that in addition to the blue grid reference, they also have a brown number 281000. Ignore that, it is the blue number you want.
You can also always get the leading digits by looking up two "reference" peaks in Bivouac, one on each side of the transition. The full UTM is shown on every mountain page of Bivouac. In this case, the easiest peaks to look up are Gladstone and Whistler, both on 82.G.08. Gladstone is east of the transition, and Whistler is on the west. So the waypoints with high numbers (before the transition) must be converted with

                          Leading Digit
                          For Easting
  East of the transition    6
  West of the transition    7
Compare Trip Routes Using Lmap Compare Routes
How to display waypoints from two or more trips on a map.
Often there are several trips that pass thru a particular area, in which you'd like to see variations of the overall route. To see two or more trip routes on the same map, use the "Trips" flag in GMapForm or LMapForm. The way it works is you pick a center point, and it shows you all the trips with a waypoint within 1 km of your center. So to use it, pick point where only the trips in which you are interested will pass within 1 km. You will then see all the unique trips that pass within 1 km of that point. 
See Filter Help for Trips Flag