South Coast Track

[Roger]

I am planning a walk in Jan 10 on the best track in Tassie .... the South Coast Track. Last time I did it I come off the Ironbound Range in dreadful weather and ended up getting lost and it took a bit of map reading to get me back to the track. I'm doing it a bit smarter this time and taking a GPS with me. Does anyone have a list a coordinates for the track that I can load into my GPS?

Thanks

[tastrax]

I have loaded a Google Earth KML file of the track as it appears on the map to this location

http://www.hobartrotorsport.org.au/v2/S ... tTrack.KML - Track
http://www.hobartrotorsport.org.au/v2/C ... hcoast.KML - Most Common campsites

I will leave it there for a couple of days so you can download it. I will also check to see if there is a more up to date one as I know a recent survey was undertaken along the entire track capturing the state of all built infrastructure. It may have a better alignment.

[jose]

I just tried loading the file into Google but it wouldn't work for me. The file opens in a web browser and shows xml content rather than kml. I'm using Google Earth version 4. I am only checking out of curiosity to see how it would work. I don't want to get in too deep - I'm still in the paddlers pool with computers.

[jose]

Oh Oo, its OK. I just changed the extensions to KML and loaded in the campsites and they worked fine so then I did the same with the track file and it all worked beautifully. Sorry for the earlier question.

[tastrax]

. I don't want to get in too deep - I'm still in the paddlers pool with computers.

Well done Jose....you can take off the floaties now!

[Roger]

Thanks for the info Phil. I am slow on the uptake woth my GPS ... I followed the map/links on google earth and manually loaded the coordinates into the GPS. Probably is an easier way but it worked for me.

[frank_in_oz]

One of the forum members did it last month and has sent me a full set as described below in his email to me (all care, no responsibility )

I've just got back from Perth with the remains of my walking gear and am attaching here the GPS track and waypoints. I can't remember how I did this last year so I'm sending them in a number of forms. I've included the Garmin Mapsource file (.sct) as well as the OziExplorer (.plt) file and just to cover my bases I've also done it as a gpx file which many most mapping programs can use. Sorry for the duplication but one of those should work for you.

In regards to the waypoints, you'll find them on the sct, wpt and gpx files. Be aware though that the waypoints came originally from you. I added some from maps and from information provided to me by John Chapman but have only moved (made slightly more accurate) a couple. From memory the ones I moved were the Louisa River campsite and the Ironbounds high camp. The others were either accurate or I didn't really refer to them. I found the track easy to follow and because I didn't often refer to my GPS I didn't really hassle about the waypoints other than to get a reading of roughly how far I was away from them while walking. So you should treat them with some degree of caution.

PM me with your email address and I will happily forward the files.

If you are interested he (Larry) has written up the whole trip and I am publishing in parts over the next couple of weeks (including his extensive gear list and analysis of it), The first bit is here: http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2009/07/s ... inter.html

Larry is a great writer and thinker and did the walk solo over about 10 days. His report on the Port Davey Track from last year is also great reading.

Hope this has been a help.
Frank

[tastrax]

Updated file for the South Coast Track has been uploaded to

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.p ... ost1246924

Complete log from Melaleuca to Cockle Creek - compare it to the one listed above to see the changes from the 1:25,000 series maps