A new feature in Google Earth shows hundreds of hiking and biking trails across the US, and it allows users to add and rate new trails. You can send the trail info to your cell phone and plot the hike if you’re running a GPS-enabled phone. To see the new hiking trails courtesy of Trimble Outdoors and Backpacker Magazine, just turn on Google Earth and look under the Featured Content in the Layers pane. With all this technology, pretty soon I won’t even have to leave my computer to go hiking.
via Modern Hiker
ByRocky Thompson
For a custom version of the Hiking trails, the Suunto X9i GPS watch tracks you as you ski, hike etc, and can overlay the track on Google earth when you get home. The watch also give all the standard GPS data: distance, speed, elevation profile, etc. This is a free software upgrade from Suunto that links to Google earth. No need to take your laptop hiking now! Whew!
Beecee, why on earth would you take your laptop with you? Try out the new Trimble layer and you’ll see that you can send a hike to your GPS-enabled phone. Trimble even makes tracking software for a bunch of Sprint and Nextel phones. No need to take your Garmin with you!