Appalachia, June 2001

By Lucille Daniel

From the window of his closet-sized office at Pinkham Notch, Larry Garland has a wide view of the world. Seated in front of his computer amid piles of software, manila folders, books, magazines, articles, and maps in progress, the AMC's cartographer can fly over distant landscapes, stopping to explore rivers, follow trails, scale cliffs, and circle summits—all with a few expert taps on a keyboard.

Garland, a former corporate manager of information systems, took a flyer in 1994 and offered his computer expertise to the AMC in exchange for room and board. He had left the corporate world behind a few years earlier, deciding to enjoy some "unstructured time," which he spent expedition-climbing and solo-backpacking in Africa, Europe, Alaska, South America, and New Zealand, summiting the highest peaks of four continents.

A former member of the AMC's Boston Chapter and an avid hiker, Garland was an experienced user of trail maps and a lover of geography. As he was thinking about his next career step, he read in AMC Outdoors about the Northern Forest Land Inventory. "I was looking for a way to combine my interest in geography with my professional training in computers," he said. Ken Kimball, the AMC's Research Director, knew a good offer when he heard it. The rest is now part of AMC history.

Shortly before Garland came on board, the club had received a grant to work cooperatively with Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire to process satellite images of the Northern Forest lands. For several months Garland worked with university specialists, using geographic information system (GIS) technology to perform a detailed visual analysis of the forest area. Garland worked on and off for the next two years as AMC's participant in the Northern Forest inventory, while grant money ebbed and flowed.

A New Direction for the White Mountain Guide
As he became more familiar with global positioning system (GPS) and GIS technologies, Garland began discussing with Kimball and former AMC Books Publisher Gordon Hardy the possibility of putting these new systems to use to remake the maps in the next AMC White Mountain Guide. Both Kimball and Hardy saw the value of developing digital maps for the guide, especially since they could be easily revised for future guidebook editions and manipulated in other ways for a variety of specific purposes. So, Garland became the club's first staff cartographer, working full time—and then some—to complete the arduous project, creating new maps for the twenty-sixth edition of the guidebook. As a result, said Garland, "We cut our teeth on AMC's flagship product."

The hand-drawn, artist-rendition maps in the twenty-fifth edition dated back to the early 1900s and map-maker Louis Cutter. His beautiful, meticulously crafted maps, many of which are available for viewing at the AMC library in Boston, had appeared in the first edition of the AMC White Mountain Guide in 1907 and then had been revised over the years by AMC volunteers in cut-and-paste fashion.

The new maps contain a number of important changes, which make them more "user friendly," according to Garland. The traditional hodgepodge of different map scales has been reduced to two, with all six maps measuring eighteen by twenty-four inches. They are printed in five colors instead of three to highlight public-land and special-use areas, such as Wilderness, and to better educate backcountry users and foster a responsible stewardship ethic. The trails are indicated in red instead of black to make them easier to locate.

Readers hoping to spend a night at one of the AMC huts, shelters, or tent sites can now find clearly marked icons representing each of these facilities. The maps have been drawn to work well with the new GPS equipment available for hikers. But, of all the revisions and enhancements designed to make these maps easier to use, the most significant is that they were all digitally created.

Quality Control
"We acquired the base layers of the digital data from sources such as USGS [United States Geological Survey], state agencies, and the U.S. Forest Service," said Garland. "But the quality of that data was questionable, sometimes contradictory, and not necessarily current. It was compiled in earlier years with more primitive technology. It was not the best data, but it was what was available."

Garland first looked for errors he could spot visually and change immediately, a process aided by his comprehensive, firsthand knowledge of the terrain. Then he asked other AMC staffers to review the maps. "The AMC knows the White Mountains inside and out," he said. "AMC hut and trail crews were an invaluable resource."

Part of the reason the USGS base maps were inaccurate is the difficulty of plotting trails through dense woods using aerial photos. "We mapped the trails ourselves using 'industrial grade' GPS technology," said Garland, who did a good part of the work himself and hired and trained interns to do the rest. "During a two-year period, we walked every mile of trail in the White Mountains (except those already surveyed by Bradford Washburn)—more than 1,400 miles—continuously recording data points every five seconds," said Garland. "We were able to locate trails to within one meter of ground accuracy."

Garland gives a great deal of credit to the White Mountain Guide's editors, Gene Daniell and Jon Burroughs, who also walked the trails with measuring wheels. "They not only helped us with the accuracy of the maps, but they improved the content of the guide as well," he said.

Garland also acknowledges the seminal work of Bradford Washburn, whose data on the Presidential Range proved invaluable. The story of the mammoth, 10-year project that culminated in the definitive map of Mount Washington, in which Brad was aided by his wife, Barbara, and longtime Mount Washington denizen Casey Hodgdon, was chronicled in a two-part article, "Mapping the Mountain," written by another project participant, Alan A. Smith. Those pieces appeared in the December 1990 and June 1991 issues of Appalachia and include much detail about both the scientific and human components of mapping a great mountain.

What's on the Horizon
Since the White Mountain Guide project, Garland also created digital maps for the eighth edition of the Maine Mountain Guide (including Baxter State Park), the new Southern New Hampshire Trail Guide (including Mountains Monadnock and Cardigan), and Acadia National Park/Mount Desert Island. These maps are, he hopes, only the beginning of a new era in AMC map-making.

Detail of AMC's new interpretive map of Crawford Notch (front). Map: Larry Garland

He has also recently developed a set of illustrated maps of Mount Washington, Crawford Notch, and Franconia Notch, which include interpretive information about the natural and cultural history of mapped areas. "Having done the hiking maps, I'm interested in creating maps that have more of a sense of place, that will show what a hiker will actually see and experience," said Garland. He particularly enjoys creating shaded relief maps that offer three-dimensional representations of visual landscapes. "These convey more of a sense of what the terrain is all about."

Another project that is still in the "gleam-in-his-eye" stage is the creation of interactive maps on this Website, which will "respond" to hiker's questions. "The idea would be to allow the user to identify an area of interest and customize a hiking map that matches his needs. If someone logs on and says, "I want to see a waterfall within two miles of the highway on a hike that is suitable for children under 10," the system would provide him with suitable choices highlighted on an interactive map display. Then he could continue to query, as each alternative is presented, and ultimately make a selection. "We are, in fact, looking into requirements and specifications for that type of service now," said Garland.

Detail of AMC's new interpretive map of Crawford Notch (back). Photo: Courtesy of AMC Books Department

Proud Tradition
As the AMC's first staff cartographer, Garland is following in the tradition of a long line of devoted map-makers who precede even Louis Cutter. At the founding of the club in 1876, expert volunteers like William and Edward Pickering, J. Rayner Edmands, and H. F. Walling set as one of the AMC's primary missions the creation of maps for use by recreational hikers. In fact, the very first issue of Appalachia, which was published the same year the club was founded, contains a sketch map of the White Mountains, by J. B. Henck, Jr.

The quality that unites the AMC's map-makers of the past with those of the present emerges from both the tissue-paper fragility of a map by Cutter, Walling, or Pickering and the lively computer screen of Garland: All these men share the firm belief that maps should be aesthetic as well as accurate. "When I create a map," said Garland, "I want to paint a vivid, beautiful picture of the world around us to captivate our interest and draw us in." What better way to support the AMC's mission of encouraging people "to enjoy and appreciate the natural world because we believe that successful conservation depends on experience"?

—Lucille Daniell is Editor-in-Chief of Appalachia.