Maps

Just out of interest - how much do you pay for your Topos? i'm sure I saw $6.90 at Bivouac, but just got stung $10 each (!!!!) from a local Map and Laminating place...

About $7-8 here in Rotorua. Bloody good considering the old ones were $14

I have just seen the new topomaps for the first time. Not impressed - the old ones were 30 x 40kms and the new ones are 24 x 32 ? (I forgot the second measurement but it was about that). But I was never going to be happy cause I was busy collecting the 260 series for our planned Ship Cove to Bluff walk, and was over halfway there with more than $250 of 260 maps. And cause it took me three months and the help of an aussie engineer on the top of Travers Saddle to get my GPS set up for NZ maps in the first place. So I have no chance of figuring out how to change it, or even if it can be changed over! I see a trip to the Map shop coming up.

In response to an earlier post on this thread: I once failed to obtain maps for a New Year's trips before everything closed down, and ended up scouring Blenheim for a way to either buy or print maps. Ended up saving them off NZ topo-online in an internet cafe as jpegs and going to a pharmacy with photo-printing outfit who printed them off on A4 photo paper. Brilliant clarity and waterproof to boot. Probably cost as much as buing the maps, but got me on the hill on a day I would otherwise have lost.

Chris: I just added an article with the steps to set up NZTM on an older GPS that doesn't have that grid in it. See http://www.tramper.co.nz/?4856 As you have pointed out the maps are slightly smaller than the old ones and in portrait rather than landscape format. You can also download the maps as tiffs for free, see http://www.linz.govt.nz/topography/topo-maps/map-chooser/index.aspx but they are huge files and probably more expensive to print than the real thing. On the whole at the price I think we have a fairly good deal. The content is exactly the same. Any changes to the actual maps would have have happened in any reprint of the 260 series anyway. I have a few of the new maps but see no reason to throw out my old maps. I will replace them as they get tatty as I usually do.

Thanks pmcke, great instructions, even I should be able to follow that and if I can change back and forward between the two, you have made me a very happy chappy!

Which model GPS do you have? I think I recall a conversation about GPS with you but don't remember which model you have

I really like the new size. It's A1 because they wanted to go metric, and I find it folds more nicely, and fits more easily into whatever else is designed to take metric paper sizes (eg. folders, photocopiers, printers). They're proportionally cheaper, and are available for $3.50 each direct from LINZ with a bulk order of 20+ maps... which I'm about to go in for with a couple of friends.

I'm still stuck with old maps because all of my gear were built in early age including tramping guide books.

No problem being stuck with the old maps. Remember the content is just the same, the grid and shape are the only differences. Just update as you normally would. I have quite a collection of maps and some of them are very old. The backcountry just doesn't change that much.