If you happen to be visiting Moab for some intense 4-wheelin’, you really need to pick up a copy of Guide to Moab, UT Backroad & 4Wheel Drive Trails by Charles A. Wells. Simply put, it is THE best reference for wheelin’ the Moab area. At $20, it is a bargain. More info on this book can be found at the Funtreks web site.
One of the things you get in the book is a table of GPS coordinates for the 40 some trails that Mr. Wells details. I thought twice about putting the coordinates here on my web site, but then I realized that without the book, the GPS coordinates are almost useless. The book supplies all of the necessary directions that are needed to make sense of the GPS coordinates, and some of those other basics like getting to and from the trail head, name of the trail, etc.
So, I am posting the GPS coordinates for a number of the trails here in OziExplorer .wpt and Garmin MapSource .wps file formats. The MapSource waypoints are supplied by Kent Warner, a local Phoenix area Jeeper. This will save you HOURS of typing these little buggers in by hand. What is that you say…..you don’t have OziExplorer? I would strongly suggest you think about adding it to your off-road PC toolbox. You can read my comments about it here on my site, or check out the OziExplorer web site. Please don’t ask me to convert them into some other file format. You can do that if you want. If you do, send me a copy and I’ll post them here with my file and give you the credit for the work.
I have zipped the waypoint files together, with each file in the .zip reflecting its own trail number, as they are referenced in Mr. Wells book. Likewise, the waypoint designators themselves share the trail number as part of the unique waypoint ID. Once you load one up, you will see what I mean. Makes for a nice clean way to load your GPS, if I do say so myself.
I currently have an e-mail message off to Mr. Wells concerning the map datum he used when creating the waypoints used in his book. Since his book does not indicate the datum, I took a chance and used WGS84, which is what the waypoint files reflect. It is possible that he used NAD27 CONUS which is what the 7.5′ USGS topo maps used, and he references those maps in his book too. So, it was a crap shoot as to which datum might have been used. Either way, it won’t be that significant. His coordinates were taken prior to May 1, 2000, which is when the Selective Availability on the GPS signals was turned off
The waypoint files include trails 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, and 38. You will note that I left the easy trails out and most of these are all from area 2 in the book.
Download the Ozi waypoint file collection here.
Download the MapSource waypoint file here.