How to track climber's progress with Google Maps

February 19, 2008 10:13 AM

Using Google Maps to track Himalayan climber's progress: an easy way?

I'm helping a friend, who's preparing to climb several difficult peaks in the Himalaya, redesign his web site. I'm using Wordpress for the framework, and we'd really like to have the ability for him to track his progress with Google Maps (and possibly Google Earth). He carries a GPS and camera, and has Sat web access and a laptop at basecamp. We'd like something similar to Simone Moro's blog (the 'Follow Simone' box in the right column). The links in the map correspond to a blog entry.

Is there an easy solution for this?

posted by klinefelter to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Not sure if they will get coverage in the Himalaya's but this is a pretty awesome product: http://findmespot.com/explorespot/trackprogress.aspx
posted by joshgray at 11:03 AM on February 19, 2008

clickable, sorry link
posted by joshgray at 11:04 AM on February 19, 2008

GPS units don't broadcast a "here I am!" signal, so your friend will have to a) buy something that does that (e.g. joshgray's link) or b) update his location by hooking his GPS to a laptop or mobile phone. I've used a GPS with Google Earth after a hike and it worked nicely to create a map of where I'd been.
posted by desjardins at 11:40 AM on February 19, 2008

What make and model is his GPS unit? Sports Tracker by Nokia runs on your phone and can be used to log multiple climbs to KML files, which can then be loaded into Google Earth (or similar). The advantage is that it can just be left alone to log, and uploaded onto the computer when ready.
posted by xvs22 at 12:01 PM on February 19, 2008