I wanted to share a long overdue update on custom listings, new and improved models, and my upcoming event schedule.
Holiday Events
I’m thrilled to feature my work at a few upcoming events in the Bellingham area, including:
- November 30 from 11-3pm at the Boundary Bay Holiday Market
- December 7 from 3-8pm at the Aslan Arts and Ales Market
- December 14 from 4-8pm at the Kulshan Holiday Market (K2 Location)
- December 21-22 at the Bellingham Maker Market (Cruise Terminal)
If you’re in the area, please come by and say hello. I'm partnering with Whatcom Million Trees Project to donate 10% of proceeds from every sale at most of these events. Check them out - it's a really cool local conservation cause.
Besides the maps, I’ll have some very cool tree ornaments and stickers available too.
Custom Orders
Since I launched I’ve been asked by folks about custom orders, and while I’ve handled those unofficially, it was high time I made a custom order page.
It's been so much fun working on these custom requests of important places in peoples lives. Below is one I made recently of a peak in southern France. Everything in French, and had to work out a metric conversion for all my map scaling too. But turned out great!
Enhanced models
It’s funny, when I started this project, I optimistically planned to release a new mountain model every couple of weeks. But here I am, about 6 months in, and I’ve got 5 standard peaks in my catalog. I didn’t appreciate the amount of time it takes to really do one of these models right. Part of it is getting the scale and the features right. There’s also the mistakes you make along the way.
In fact - I just had to redesign Baker, Rainier, and Hood due to a weird issue with the map data I was using. Map systems rely on this concept of coordinate projection, and a reference system (CRS) to determine where to place features on a map, and how to scale them. My primary data source is the US Geological Survey, and the CRS they use differs from the CRS used by consumer map tools like Google Maps. The differences are really only noticeable when you work with a recognizable shape - I spotted it when I started working on Crater lake and the shape just looked…wrong. Too stretched on the east and west axis vs what a satellite image looks like. All my previous mountains had the same issue - it’s just wasn’t as obvious. While everything was and is still geographically accurate - the visual difference drove me crazy.
So I decided, why not remake this mountain map yet another time, and use it as an opportunity to add a bunch of polish on in the process?
The result of that work is now available for Baker, Hood, Rainier, and St. Helens
- Markings for rivers, streams & creeks. The water running off most mountain glaciers is pretty impressive, and a little scary to cross on a hike in early spring when the snow melt is starting. This map now shows all the little tributaries and streams around the peak, with labeling where possible.
- Glacier relief - As I’ve done with lakes and ponds, I’ve added a light engraving pass for glaciated areas. It adds an amazing color contrast to the rest of the model, and I just love how it looks.
- Trails and road markings are now included. I added all the major hiking & climbing routes, and where forest service roads or highways intersect, those are featured too. Basically anything US GIS was able to provide, plus some manual sourcing of route data from AllTrails and Strava. In the same fashion, I added the ski lifts on the south side of Hood too.
- WAY more labeling. I kinda went nuts here. I love poring over maps of both real and imagined places and identifying all the little details and their labels - so I figured why not bring that same level of detail to these maps too.
I’m really proud of these new maps. They’re definitely my best yet, and I'm looking forward to bringing this into the new year with some of the new peaks I'm planning. Stay tuned.