Virtual Trails

Virtual Trails is our effort to accurately map and photograph, from the air and the ground, the Wests tracks, jeep roads and hiking trails. This project evolved from our survey work on wildlife and botanical transects and study of the effect of hiking trails on the environment. Concurrently, a big part of my Watershed Workgroup development has been making computer models that divide streams into small, photographed segments or virtual streams

In the Colorado Front Range we use satellite and aerial imagery to locate and map human and animal developed pathways. We then hike each trail with GPS-located, digital, still and video cameras setting virtual trail transect points every 30m. Later, in other seasons, botanists, geologists, wildlife biologists, cultural anthropologists and others can use these virtual waypoints to enter and map data into the GIS database. Although this ArcINFO GIS system allows these data to be smoothed and modelled over the whole region and compared to the transect field measurements, the photos themselves can be accessed with a number of simple commercial and web-based interfaces.

We're always adding new virtual trails to our work projects and we're always proposing new uses for these information systems in research and management. If you have any ideas, drop us a line!

Map of the Virtual Trails in the Front Range

A Sample Trail: Thunder Lake, RMNP

A Sample Transect: Bear Peak West Ridge #22

Other Products Include:

Virtual Roads and Paths
Virtual Climbs
Virtual Ski Routes and Descents
Virtual Parks
Virtual Transects
The Virtual Kayaker

Virtual Trails 3D
Virtual Streams 3D
The 3D Virtual Watershed
The Virtual Grand 3D
The 3D Fourteeners
National Parks of the West
Virtual Geology 3D
Virtual Climbs 3D