HikeArizona.COM

As an ATA member, one gets access to a GPX file containing waypoints along the trail for each passage. These files can be loaded into a GPSr and used to help navigate while on the trail.

I'm planning a trip along the AZT from the south rim of the Grand Canyon to the Utah border for October so I recently got the files for those passages and imported them into some mapping software I have. There was a problem that I haven't seen with any of the previous passages' GPX files, namely waypoints with duplicate names. I'm wondering how others have handled this duplicate name issue.

The waypoints with duplicate names are:
Passage 38: 38-085 and 38-140
Passage 39: 39-061
Passage 40: 40-056, and 40-080
Passage 41: 41-085 and 41-115 (actually 3 for this waypoint)
Passage 42: 42-045

What I did:
38-085 - renamed the footbridge waypoint to 38-086
38-140 - renamed 2nd occurrence to 38-145 as I think it was named wrong to start with
39-061 - renamed 1st occurrence, dirt rd jct, to 39-062
40-056 - renamed 1st occurrence to 40-057
40-080 - renamed 1st occurrence, Dog Lake, to 40-079
41-085 - deleted 2nd occurrence, milepost.
41-115 - renamed 1st occurrence to 41-114 and deleted 3rd occurrence, milepost.
42-045 - deleted 2nd occurrence, milepost

Just curious, what do the paid for ATA GPS tracks get you, that the Free http://www.HikeArizona.com official tracks don't?

38 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=10956
39 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=12046
40 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=12022
41 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=12022
42 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=12043
43 http://hikearizona.com/map.php?GPS=12044

@The Eagle
Waypoints. Which is what the OP was asking about.

The Eagle wrote:Just curious, what do the paid for ATA GPS tracks get you, that the Free HikeArizona.com official tracks don't?

For the GPX files that are tracks, probably not a lot of difference. But there are GPX files with waypoints that I find very helpful for letting me know how far something is ahead or how far I've travelled on the trail. The waypoints mark things like road junctions, water sources, campgrounds, etc. The waypoints are named by passage and distance. So, for example, waypoint 38-085 is 8.5 miles into passage 38 and waypoint 29-255 is mile 25.5 into passage 29.

Not sure if you are familiar with HikeArizona.com Route Manager, but it gives you the ability to add waypoints for anything, effortlessly. Also, there is 1 click for water sources in view on the map and water reports.

rcorfman wrote:I'm wondering how others have handled this duplicate name issue.

What do I do? I don't bother downloading the waypoints. Just the tracks. Convert the track into a route, and load the route into my Garmin eTrex Vista.

Yeah, I suppose the waypoints might add some information that I'm missing. Usually, I'm too busy hiking, trying to reach the end as quick as I can, to bother looking at the GPS for a waypoint.

Here is one I was working on where I created the waypoints with info from AZT and the water sources from HAZ. The waypoints involved copy/pasting and then the desc. It is time consuming but turned out pretty well: http://hikearizona.com/map.php?MY=13413&M=6

@tibber
So, when do we go do this one?

Sredfield wrote:@tibber
So, when do we go do this one?

I presume you're going to want me to do that for the rest we have left... I should have thought twice about posting it

tibber wrote:I presume you're going to want me to do that for the rest you have left

Yes please ;)
:thanx:

I guess, what I'm hoping, is that whoever controls/maintains the GPX files on http://www.aztrail.org/ will fix them. Technically, there's nothing wrong with them but I don't know of any GPX consumer (e.g., GPSr or mapping software) that is happy with like named waypoints.

Personally, I edited the XML but how I did isn't necessarily the best way to do so.

The HAZ Route Manager doesn't seem to mind waypoints with the exact same name. But I think when you export to GPX or another format you may run into issues.

rcorfman wrote:I guess, what I'm hoping, is that whoever controls/maintains the GPX files on http://www.aztrail.org/ will fix them.

There is a contact link at the bottom of each page. You could use that to report the duplicates. They have responded fairly quickly in the past when I have had issues.

They redid all the data files in April. Some errors may have crept in then. Just looking at pass 38, the dupes are not in the previous data file. It looks like the position of 140 was moved, but the old one left in. 85 was also moved to a more accurate fix, and a new one added for the footbridge. The naming convention of the nearest 10th mile is good, but it looks like the footbridge was too close to the milepost waypoint to have a different name.

w h a wrote:There is a contact link at the bottom of each page. You could use that to report the duplicates. They have responded fairly quickly in the past when I have had issues.

I submitted this issue and received the following response:

Thank you for submitting this information and making us aware of the problem. We are already working on a reformatting solution.

With the recent reprocessing of the track/line that represents the Arizona Trail to make it much more accurate, waypoints/points were added and adjusted to match the new track/line. However now with greater accuracy locations closer than 0.10 mile received the same number but different geographical locations. This was an oversight in creating the data. Hopefully soon we will reprocess and provide a cleaner datasets.

Sincerely,