Thread: Paper topo maps

Originally Posted by Bagheera

as hinted, availability of paper maps is a bit patchy specially if you’re more than 100km from the place you want to visit. Often only one or two shops in a city carry them so you’ll waste some time finding them.

Your fallback is the NZTopo50 app which you get one for south and one for north island and carry a couple of powerbanks which is comparable in weight to 3 or 4 paper. This is much easier to use than the UK Ordnance survey app.

You wont want to be dowloading croppoing and printing your own maps while on holiday unless youre a real virtual geek.

Rememember in NZ magnetic north is ~22deg different from grid north and you should ideally buy an NZ compass.

Just thought I should weigh in here too. Have made and paid for plenty of mistakes myself, specially the edge of the map one…

New Zealand compass? Never seen one with magnetic north marked. The Recta compasses allow you to dial in magnetic north. Magnetic north varies both due to place and over time and occasionally reverses itself so that north becomes south. There is some discussion over how fast this happens. I wonder if it effects GPS.
GPM.