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The online maps like Google and Microsoft have satellite and (and increasingly, birds-eye aerial images) to go with the regular road maps. With one click you can get a satellite image (in populated areas, they can show you stuff in your backyard). However, even in the remoter areas where the resolutions are much further away, you can still get a picture that gives you a nice topographical picture to show you what that simple road map doesn't. But even the road map part can show you a lot. Zooming in real close often makes it very clear just how remote a road is (something the Rand McNally's don't show with their greater scale). The one the Kims were on has so many curves and doglegs that it's obvious that this is very mountainous terrain.

The online maps like Google and Microsoft have satellite and (and increasingly, birds-eye aerial

You are correct. I used MapQuest the other day to find a business location in the next town. I di zoom in enough to get the info I needed.

But I used it only because I have a dual boot system and I did not want to shut down linux and wait for W2K and all of the ant-spyware junk to load.

But I found the MapQuest harder to use, lacking in a lot of good information that Delorme has, and it worked for me because it was in a town with which I am pretty familar anyway.

And it was not on top of a snowy mountain.

For instance, Delome would have shown that there was not a filling station or a place to eat or any type of incorporated village for 85 miles.

That would get the attention of anysensible person traveling with a baby in a snowstorm.

The wife was the smart one, so far as self preservation goes. She would have raised a fuss.

I ran into something with Google just the other day. Sometimes the aerial views, when zoomed in to maximum resolution, appear to show trails and paths quite clearly, when in fact the routes have been abandoned for years. I thought I had found a new trail to ride and went out to view it. Sure, I could sort of make it out on the ground, in places, but it was not what you would call a continuous path. But on the Google view it looks almost like a paved bikeway. And you can't make out the fences!

The one thing I like is when you overlay the aerial view with the road map, like with forest service roads. It is kind of amusing when they don't quite match up.

I would never go into wilderness/remote area w/out a topo map. Particularly because I was taught at a very early age what information topo maps contain. This was the precipitating reason why I obtained USGS topo maps for surrounding foothill area in Denver before I ventured into the foothills alone.

This jaunt into the foothills went along HWY-6 (W into the foothills), and I had the appropriate topo-map segment facingt me in the passanger seat besides me, so as to know what the road was going to do as I hurtled towards that mountain-side obscured switchback (you know the one, with the 1000' foot tumble down into the ravine only feet from the edge of the road) at 100+ MPH.

With the topo-map I was confident that I could take the mountain road curve beginning from far outside, cut into the inside and drift to the outside (oncoming) lane with confidence that if one of the remote chance occurances of an oncoming vehicle would present itself: I'd be able to maneuaver back into my lane. Its not recommended to being in such situation only to find oneself in a 35% downgrade. That bad.

I can proudly say this: it has been said by somebody who's wet my seat, "You've not been in the mountains until you've been driven through them by RayGun - and at least 1000' feet of solid air 4' from your passanger door is all that is holding you up".