A Brief Guide To The Mapping Style Of The Laramie Maps

Since all of the Laramie maps (to date) have been mapped by the same surveyor (Mikell Platt), it means the style of mapping is fairly consistent across the entire batch of maps. Once you've been out on one of the representative maps and understand how it has been mapped, you should have a good idea of what to expect from the rest of the maps. Here are some comments about the mapping style, by symbol color:

White

Open forest consists of nearly entirely either lodgepole pine or ponderosa pine forest. Much of the ponderosa forest can be quite sparse and could be mapped about as well with either semi-open or rough semi-open, depending on the ground vegetation. Trying to discern the difference and navigating off of it probably isn't a sound idea.

Small circular areas of white appearing in open areas are usually accurately mapped single trees which aren't particularly noteworthy.

Yellow

Full yellow open areas generally correspond to short grass prairie, while rough open usually means sage brush is present in varying amounts. On the earlier maps some areas where the sage was shorter and not quite as dense were mapped as full open areas also. In the Granite terrain brittlebush is often mixed in with the sage and adds to the feeling of rough open versus full open.

Semi-open is used to show areas of scattered pine trees in shortgrass prairie.

Rough semi-open is used to show areas of scattered pines in sage/brittlebush.

Green

Light green (slow) is nearly always depicting aspen forest. The aspens on our maps have a strong tendency to grow in compact clumps and groves that often have rather distinct edges, and because they stand out so sharply visually in the terrain, they can make quite good navigation aids. There are places in larger forested areas where aspens can mix in with the pines and form enough of an understory that running speeds and visibility are reduced. These areas have been shown with scattered, "schematic", blobs of light green. Most of the larger areas of aspen aren't actually difficult to run through, however aspen groves tend to have a fair number of fallen trunks to hop, tend to have grass growing to knee-high (thus making it hard to see some of the logs), and often have footing that ranges from damp all the way over to full-blown marshy forest. Aspen groves will be very wet early in the summer season and gradually dry out as the summer progresses.

Medium green (walk) and dark green (fight) are almost exclusively used to show varying amounts of willow thickets growing down in marshy bottomlands. Footing in willow thickets will almost always be wet and boggy or worse, whether or not any marsh is shown in the green. Often the willow thickets grow in thin, long strips roughly following a watercourse, and it's usually no problem to quickly find an easy way to cross the thin thickets. Thicker areas of fight should be avoided, however. Very small blobs of fight are usually distinct clumps of willow.

Green circles (special feature) are used to show very distinct pine trees out in the open. The difference between those trees and trees mapped as small areas of white is very much a matter of judgement and in mid-race might seem rather arbitrary to the runner.

Vertical green lines have been used to map select areas of aspen krumholtz. This is a seldom seen feature and thus not of much significance.

Blue

Practically all of the stream valleys have rich amounts of beaver ponds, marshes created by abandoned and drained or draining beaver ponds, and marshy willow thickets. During the snowmelt season and extending into July, practically anything that is low and potentially wet, will be wet. Deeper into summer many of the open marshes will dry out, and once grazed by cattle, will offer good running. Some marshes remain thoroughly wet throughout Summer, and at least a few marshes are actually quaking bogs. Generally all marshes shown as crossable can be easily crossed even when wet, but that doesn't mean it won't pay to observe your foot placement! Uncrossable marshes, while they might not be truly uncrossable, are best avoided.

All beaver formed marshes (and of course any standing beaver ponds) will have at least remnant portions of the original beaver dams forming them. These dams may be impassible due to willows overgrowing them, but more often dams will offer a quick and dry way of crossing a marsh area.

Beavers are active on all of our Granite terrain maps, and can quickly move into a stream valley, chop down an aspen grove, and--bang!--totally change all aspects of the valley, rendering the map there wildly obsolete, so the orienteer should anticipate that possibility.

The marshy forest symbol has been used somewhat erratically to show areas of aspens that have a wetter nature.

All streams are small and most are very narrow, especially out in the meadows, but be aware that often these very narrow stream can be quite deep!

There are a handful of isolated ponds unconnected in any way to stream valleys, and these ponds are seasonal in nature. Some years they will stay wet and even full all summer long while in other years they may be entirely dry already by mid-summer.

Brown

There's nothing so unusual about the way brown features have been mapped. Form line knolls might be quite shallow. Dot knolls, when rocky, and particularly when overlain with the bare rock symbol (grey), might strongly resemble boulders or boulder clusters depending upon the angle of approach. Some rocky knolls contain so much detail on them that the detail has been greatly generalized; these areas are typically quite limited in extent. In general the basemaps we've used have been of high quality and therefore the contours on the final maps also are generally well done and highly reliable.

Gray

Bare rock appears in varying amounts on our Granite terrain maps and is often a very useful feature for navigation. Knolls overlain with bare rock are usually easier to pick out in forested areas, while sections of bare rock out in large expanses of prairie can often be used to pinpoint a runner's precise location. Sometimes gray has been used as a generalizing symbol on small rocky knolls where trying to show all the rock detail would make for a useless clutter on the map.

A special bare rock symbol has been created for areas of "broken bare rock" appearing on our Western Limestone terrain maps. This symbol shows areas of outcropping limestone layers. The symbol looks like the semi-open symbol, except in gray. It can be hard to see where these areas begin and end, but when you're on one of them, there's no doubt about it. Runnability on these areas is very good, but it has a distinctly different feel from running on areas of short grass prairie.

Wolves, when spotted, are also shown in gray.

Black

Rock features are probably the thing that will cause the greatest difficulty for the orienteer because of the great profusion and variation of the rock detail in the Granite terrain.While usually a given object is clearly a boulder, or a cliff, or a rocky dot knoll, and anyone would agree that's what the particular object is, it's also true that often the features present in ways such that the lines separating cliffs, boulders, boulder clusters, and some contour features are blurred. In those cases, the way an object will look (boulder versus rocky dot knoll) may vary widely depending upon the angle of approach. Mapping of these features can be highly subjective!

Boulders must be at least one meter on all sides to be mapped, with very few exceptions. Some flexibility in the boulder height standard has been used (i.e.- in areas where there are lots of rocky things, boulders might need to be a little bit higher in order to stand out enough to be worth mapping individually whereas in areas where rock features are very sparse and visibility is good, the height standard might be lowered a little bit.)

Large boulders are generally at least 2 meters high on all sides and generally will be the size of a small car or larger.

Very large boulders will be drawn to scale and shape.

Boulder clusters present a special difficulty because the feature being mapped could range from three tightly packed boulders to a couple of house sized boulders adjoining each other. It will help if the orienteer is prepared for the gamut of possibilities.

Cliffs generally must be 2 meters high and fairly vertical to make the maps. Little effort has been made to use the thinner/thicker cliff line to distinguish between passable/impassible cliffs. Rather, usually it is the presence of cliff tag lines that will clue the runner that the cliff in question is impassible.

Some of the maps feature "dragon teeth", which are long lines of narrow stony ground out in the prairie. They're very distinctive and often useful for navigation.

The stony ground symbol is usually used to show areas where some small rock is visible. It's only rarely the case that runnability is impaired in these areas.

The black "x" special feature has been used for manmade objects in the terrain that are easy to spot. These features can range from abandoned vehicles to old wood stoves, and so on.

The black "Q" is a special local symbol to show outcrops of quartz. These can be very handy because they're so distinct and easy to see.

The various place names appearing in black text are mostly whimsical and are provided so that when your friends ask you: "Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand?", you can tell them that you are headed over to the Rock Palace and that you have the gun in case of deadly badger ambush.

There are many narrow, distinct trails lacing the maps stamped out by cattle over the years; these trails have not been mapped. Also, over recent years the Forest Service has been removing some trails from use and has plowed them over in order to speed up revegetation. Nowadays the decision has tended towards omitting or removing these trails from the maps, even though they are still quite visible in the terrain, in order to discourage runners from using them.

The distinct vegetation boundary (black dots) has not been used, even though it could be used on many of the distinct aspen groves.