Customer Reviews

National Geographic Maps Adirondack Park Explorer 3D

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As part of the National geographic series, "Adirondack Park Explorer 3D" provides all the information of this 6 million acre park; the largest park east of the Mississippi River. I am unable to use this with my Magellan Triton 400, unfortunately, but the TOPO! USA and State maps will download with an SD memory card inserted. It is completely compatible with getting GPS waypoints, trails, creating trails and waypoints, all downloadable into your GPD handheld. It also has a cool feature of making your trip in varying degrees of 3D depending on the angle you choose to view it. You can actually split your computer screen in two and view the 3D and 2D at the same time! You can easily customize any of your routes with notes and other information. There are plenty of extra graphics to customize your own maps. Afterwards, you can point it all out. I've done that and got them laminated (you can also buy N. G. paper), so I can take them out in the field without wear or wetness. This program is compatible with PC or Mac's, as well as most handheld GPS units.

Works as advertised. Takes some work to understand the program. Crashed a few times on me when running from a folder and not from the disk, as the program doesn't install onto hard drive.

Pros - Distance and trail plotting is awesome! Elevation profiles are a must have! Search locations. Label routs and add color coded objects (ie. arrows, icons, and flag/name routs objects.


Cons - Only 4 zoom levels. Resolution of maps when printed could be better. Needs more options.

This is a great way to view the Nat Geo map of the Adirondacks, however, there are some serious flaws with this program and I actually couldn't take it and returned the product.

1. The program crashes all the time. I run Windows 7 64-bit, so maybe this worked good when it came out, but the program consistently crashes. Even though the program is designed to make custom paths along trails, it seems to not like handling the process and creating a route or deleting one will cause the program to crash on you. This is unacceptable and even though I fully updated the program and ran in compatiblity mode, I cannot stop the crashing. I have no idea how this got past Nat Geo and why they wouldn't update the program to prevent these crashes. The program is literally crippled and not worth the money due to this.

2. Mileage on the map is mostly in tune with the ADK guidebook, but mileage on the custom routing is wrong and not even in tune with the map it's drawn on. Let's make a simple comparison of mileage between the ADK guidebook, the Nat Geo map, and the custom routing. The Garden parking lot to John's Brook Lodge. The Guidebook states 3.5 miles to JBL. I know for a fact the signage here also states 3.5 miles. The map states it is 3.5 miles long. The custom routing, drawn as carefully as possible, states it is 3.21 miles. That might not seem like a lot, but that is off by nearly 10% and therefore wildly inaccurate for longer journeys. This experiment repeats itself with any route chosen.. it is clearly off and could be DANGEROUSLY MISLEADING to a hiker. This is an unbelievable flaw and I would not even trust the program to carry anything over to my GPS, I would use it merely as a visual guide. The only thing it has going for it is the map itself, which is higher resolution then the ADK guidebook's and much prettier to look at.

Don't bother with this. Buy the physical map, at least you can take it with you or scan it into your computer. All the additional features are flawed.