Walking Access Commission

Not sure if many of you have come accross the Walking Access Commission. They've a small website with some interesting documents regarding the history of access, current access rights and liability.

http://www.walkingaccess.org.nz/

Reason they came to my attention is they're currently starting a tender process for a 'Public Access Mapping System'. Looks good from what I can see at this stage from the documents online: they hope make publically available (on the internet) geographic representations of areas of public access in NZ. They mention including legal roads (formed/unformed), marginal strips , esplanade reserves, the Queens Chain, public reserves, and other publicly owned land. They talk about 1:50,000 representation, on topo maps,m satellite imagary and air photos. Only at the RFP (requets for proposal) stage, but hopefully will all go ahead as planned.

http://www.walking...z/store/doc/RFP.pdf

How funny -- I looked at that RFP this morning. :-) It would be great to have that information available in an accessible form.

We are long over due for such a map in New Zealand.

Hi, yes it would be great. I'm using my Freshmap Cadastral maps at the moment. They have all the info mentioned below:

>>They mention including legal roads (formed/unformed), marginal strips , esplanade reserves, the Queens Chain, public reserves, and other publicly owned land.

This software wasn't cheap and I had to double my RAM to 500mb to run it.

I managed to get a shp file of Conservation lands from DOC recently and uploaded it to http://www.gwproje...nservation%20Lands/ if anyone is interested. I know madpom has looked at this data. At the moment I am going through a bit of a learning curve and trying to make a GPS loadable map from it. I am almost there, as soon as I stop working and tramping and can put my mind back onto the job again.

Interesting...they're planning to build a tramping and walking information site? I'm not convinced we need another one.

Commission business manager Bruce Lynch: "For the average walker they want to know exactly where the walk is, where they can park, that it's going to be safe, and some idea of how long it is."

http://www.stuff.c...line-maps-next-year

I think the work of the commission should be worthy of all trampers support. Hopefully they will be able to sort out the tangle of issues involving access in New Zealand with some good information.

Yes, one wonders if they are going to duplicate what is going on with this site, the DOC site, and others but I would think that they would have a slant to provide good information in places with doubious access situations.

They will also be carrying the authority of the Commission which is the sort of weight that other sites might not be able to provide.

By the way, I have been working on this DOC data that I have and now have a version that is loadable into a Garmin GPS. I am just trying to make it look nice. The data is of all DOC administered lands, not all of them with Public Access. But there are a lot of marginal strips in there which may be useful.

If anyone out there is using a Garmin GPS that is map capable (60CSX or 76CSX or similar) and would like a copy, send me a private mail. It doesn't have a fancy installer but you can edit a .reg file which will get it into Mapsource so you can use it from there.

Hi pmcke

I downloaded those files on Conservation land referred to in a previous post but I didn't know what to do next. It loaded onto my Freshmap file. Anyway, I'm sweet with my Freshmap, including cadastrals, plus what's available on the DoC website.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. I can see why the topomap people want us to keep forking out $13.50 per topomap rather than making this info appear online in a form of usable quality.

Certainly most of the keen people I tramp with have their own map data software now in whatever form it takes e.g. Toaster, Freshmap whatever.
On my 5 passes trip, one couple had a map that had had the ink run just where we were going, the other guy had failed to realize we were going to the Fohn Lakes so didn't have that covered and I only had 2 out of the 4 Topomaps but one guy had an inch to the mile with the Moir's route written on it so we managed!

The files you downloaded are ESRI shp files, that are used in GIS applications. You can view them in GPSMapEdit (free download from http://www.geopainting.com/en/ )Use file/import. That will give you some idea what you are looking at and if they are useful to you.

With maps, I always have the paper 1:50,000 topo in my pack. I still think they are good value. But I use Gary's topos, http://www.gtmaps.co.nz on my computer and GPS

Gawd, I think this GPSmadpEdit is a bit too geeky for me. I'll ask Doug Forster (Freshmap)about it. Bought a cable today so the GPS can talk to the computer. Bivouac are now dealing in Garmin. I am a huge fan of the Topomaps. I laminate mine in Duraseal and they are then bombproof (as long as I don't lose them). My eTrex is about 3 years old so can't be updated.