Closed Contour

I’ve posted new tiles with the following changes:

Whiter glaciers/permanent snow with blue contour lines. I talked about this in a previous post.
Change forest color depending on density (only in Yosemite and Sequoia/King’s Canyon NP so far). I also mentioned this in a previous post.
Non-SPS peak names.  Discussed earlier as well.
Pass names.
Trail names, mostly in the [...]

I’ve been working quite a bit on adding non-SPS peaks to the map.  It’s been a mix of learning some new skills and repetitive, tedious work.
This all started with California GNIS data.  After filtering down to just the summits, I converted it to a shapefile and threw it on the map expecting it to work out [...]

I consider the USGS 7.5′ quads to be among the best topographic maps around.  That said, working around their shortcomings is the primary cartographic motivation for Closed Contour.  Right now I feel like I have a ways to go before I can claim that my maps are ‘better’ (how ever you define it) than the [...]

I started working on this project about 3 weeks ago in my spare time.  The first few days I spent just trying to make some pretty pictures with some basic data, maybe a DEM, some contours, some summits, etc.  Once I convinced myself that what I had in mind was possible I began to work [...]

Simply put, Closed Contour is my attempt to create modern topographic maps using publically available data.  Here’s what I’m after:

User-specific data.  I’m into peak climbing and I want my maps to be focused on that.
Aesthetically pleasing.  A topographic map should look good at every scale and viewing distance.
Editable.  Ideally the map should be editable in a [...]