Adirondack Rock fully embraces the GPS, but not necessarily for navigation. Everything you need to find a cliff—written instructions, maps, and compass directions—is included in the book. We've included GPS coordinates not only for those savvy with the technology and the patience to use it in the field, but for trip planning and as an adjunct for use with other tools, especially those available on the internet.

We've been using the Garmin eTrex Legend for GPS work.

Navigation Notes ● GPS coordinates are in the UTM NAD-83 format. Very important: All coordinates in the book are in zone 18T. ● The forest canopy often makes navigation with a GPS difficult. However, we've found that once a GPS has acquired a signal, it's easy to maintain that signal in the trees, as long as you hold the GPS away from your body (in other words, you can't hang it around your neck). Don't lose the signal, or you'll have to find an open area so that it can reaquire. ● The GPS is handy for determining the direction of travel to a desired coordinate, but most units don't include a magnetic compass. Even though the unit gives you a compass bearing, you'll still need a compass to follow that bearing. ● Use the GPS to record waypoints, then plot those points later using topozone. If you can't find the cliff, at least you'll be able to analyze your mistake later.

TopoZone is one of the best websites we've found for working with topographical maps and GPS coordinates.

Update 4/29/08: After years of being free, TopoZone was acquired by Trails.com and is now a fee-based service. If anyone finds other useful tools for GPS coordinates on the web, please email us (Jim or Jeremy). Meanwhile, try our Google mashup (details below), which does much the same thing as TopoZone.

If you click on the map, it centers the map on that coordinate and displays the UTM coordinate above the map.  You can enter that coordinate into your GPS, then use it to navigate to that position on the map.

Other Cool Web Sites

We've located some other web sites that can be used with GPS coordinates:

Microsoft TeraServer: You can browse topo maps and see the longitude/latitude, and there's a very good find command. Cons: it is difficult to determine GPS coordinates from the map, the map doesn't center over the clicked coordinate, and book coordinates need to be converted to longitude/latitude before used.

AdirondackRock.com Google Mashup

Try our Google mashup, a web page that combines Google Maps plus topo data from Microsoft TerraServer. The page supports everything a rock climber needs to navigate the park:

• Browse a topo map (with zooming) to find a location.

• See the exact coordinate of the location. Both UTM and Lat/Lng supported.

• Type in a coordinate (from the book) and navigate to that location. Both UTM and Lat/Lng supported.

• Create a link to a specific map, for emailing to others.

• A couple of buttons to quickly navigate to popular areas of the park.

For example, to quickly locate the Boxcar swimming hole:

●	Click here to see a map of Chapel Pond.
●	There are three UTM fields. In the first field, type 18 (all of the coordinates in the Adirondacks are in zone 18T).
●	The next field is the easting; type 602516.
●	The third field is the northing; type 4884884.
●	Click the GO button. You should the location of the Boxcar swimming hole.

Using GPS Coordinates with Google Maps

Adirondack Rock also includes GPS coordinates of many trailhead parking areas. These can be used with Google Maps to create a driving map from your location to the trailhead.

The GPS coordinates for all of the cliffs in the Adirondack Park are in this file. This is a KML file (an XML-based file), used for expressing geographic information for earth browsers.