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How We Got Started

How We Make Our Maps

Who's Who

We got into map publishing almost by accident. In 1989, we opened Map Town, a retail map and travel book store, in downtown Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Soon we were deluged by requests for up-to-date hiking maps of Kananaskis Country, a popular recreational area for Calgarians on the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies. So, in 1992, we responded with two manually-drafted 1:50 000-scale topographic maps - the Spray Lakes and Kananaskis Lakes maps, both of which are now collectors' items.

From there, we expanded our coverage of trail maps of the Canadian Rockies to include Lake Louise, Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay and Waterton Lakes National Park.

A few years into making the maps, we started to add trail descriptions and photos to the backs of the maps. We wanted to guide hikers to what we thought were the some of the best hikes on the maps, so that those unfamiliar with the area would have a place to start exploring the trails.

Concurrently with our recreational maps, we developed four touring, or driving, maps that roughly cover southern Alberta and B.C., and extend west to Vancouver Island, B.C., south to Northern Washington, USA, and north to Edmonton, Alberta.

To date, we have 21 maps on our product list.

Our original maps were laboriously digitized in AutoCad, with roads, drainage, contour lines and so on, all on different layers. We supplement that with air photos, lots of on-the-ground research including GPSing of the trails, as well as extensive consultation with Parks people in the national parks and Kananaskis Country.

Donna Nelson

Donna heads up our operations in Victoria.
She does all of the production work, up-dates the website (not as often as she should), and handles the rest of the day-to-day running of the office. She is very knowledgeable about the parks, not very knowledgeable about new technology, and likes to spend her weekends hiking. Donna is co-owner of Gem Trek Publishing with her husband, Roger.

Roger Nelson

Roger founded Gem Trek Publishing.
As technical support consultant, Roger works out the kinks in the digital map-making, keeping Donna from getting too many grey hairs. In his spare time, he enjoys adventure sports. After pursuing hanggliding and river kayaking for several years each, he now gets his adrenaline from racing sailboats.