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I recently got a Garmin eTrex HcX and am wondering what:
- additional "things" I need to buy to get full fiunctionality for berg hiking (eg topographical maps, memory cards etc...) and where the best place is to buy these.
- are there any settings I need to change on the unit

Previously one of the members of this forumn helpfully supplied me with waypoints from the traverse. Are there any other sites / sources where one can get waypoints to download to the GPS?

Thanks for any help

Rolf

Rolf

What I have installed on my Garmin Vista HCX GPS is the GARMAP topo and rec series of maps. You need to pay for these but they are well worth it as they have 20 m contours for the whole of southern africa and quite a few features besides. Have a look at www.garmap.co.za. The topo and rec series also include routable GPS road maps for Southern Africa.

What you do is you buy a dvd with all the GARMAP software on it for about R100 (from any hiking/outdoor shop). Then when you install it on your computer and GPS you need to pay for whatever software you actually load - this amount varies depending on what you already have loaded on your GPS (max R 1300). The payment is made through a the garmap website with your credit card.

You may need to upgrade the memory card in your GPS - the 2008 verion of the topo and rec maps fitted on a 2Gb card.

This site is by far the best I have found for waypoints and tracks for the berg.

Good luck with the traverse.

Balarka

Agree with Balarka - the Garmin topo map is a worthwhile buy if you are into GPSing.

As for other sources of GPS data, more may be found on some of the sites listed in the Drakensberg link collection. Beyond that I'd be careful about fully trusting data from additional sites that may offer it. Sometimes the sources are not very accurate: either its based on the survey maps, or the wrong cave may be marked (for example).

We have much more in store on this site as far as GPS data is concerned. In time the Peak / Khulu data will be expanded, as well as the Lesotho section. We will also be posting data which is theoretical (calculated from maps), which will be clearly marked as such, and which will get updated as soon as the waypoint is reliably verified. We'll also get some creative ideas about track data going. Member contributions and ideas are welcome.

Settings on your GPS: the 2 main ones would be the datum and the grid. Be aware that the data on this site is all based on the WGS84 datum - the hiking maps are mainly the Cape datum and the survey maps are a mixture of both. For now I have kept all data on this site based on the Lat-Long hddd°mm.mmm' grid since currently this seems most consistent with other Berg data and can be directly measured as such on the maps. The hiking maps cater for this grid as well as the South African grid. The UTM grid is more modern and accurate but I won't use it for now to make things less complicated.

You can run on any setting that you want - it just becomes significant when you manually punch data into your GPS that you get from someone else, or when you read it off a map.

Balarka / Chris thanks for your help - I am well on the way to figuring out my Garmin and have been using the tracks from the site.

A further question - are there any tracks taking one from the usual start points (eg, hiker's car parks at Catehdral Peak or Monks Cowl)to the start of the passes up the escarpment?

Just narrow it down for me a bit more and, provided I have it, I'll make a new download available.

Thanks - the exact routes I am looking for co-ordinates for is from the Cathedral Peak hikers parking lot to junction C8 (we are planning on going up Organ Pipes via Camels Back) and then from Keith's Bush Camp (having decended Grays Pass) to the hikers parking lot at Monks Cowl.

I have already downloaded these passes.

Much obliged.