TAT - difference between Sam and gpsKevin

One microSD card, many devices...

So to answer the original question, is it possible to read the tracks from this SD card and pass them around to other riders on the trip?
Or is it somehow locked kind of like the map cards that Garmin sells.

I use an iPhone running Gaia but I can tell you once a gpx track is on the phone in Gaia you can do whatever you want with it. There are about a half dozen different ways to share gpx tracks from a phone and you can do it an infinite number of times. Who knows how Garmins or SD cards work, I have no idea.

Once you have the track file it is easy to share many different ways to many different people.....that's not a problem.
But I don't think you are supposed to share SAM's work from what I understand. So it's not a question of if you can share but a question of if you should share.
Doesn't SAM ask you to agree not to share?

From memory there are 18mi in OR south of Drew where Sam's route goes through private land.. and so does Kev's. And there are dozen other places so it is not like one got upper leg over another.

Speaking of Private Property issue in general, this is what I have problem with: guys build a house in boonies, turn road maintenance to county then still treat road as personal driveway. It may be still on their property, but the moment they turn it in it becomes public road. And even if road abandoned and had been taken off the maintenance list owner of the land has to go through legal proceedings to get it back and to my knowledge the only big developers go through this hassle not average Joe.

I had seen people trying to gate parts of Lincoln hwy, county roads, abandoned highways, etc. You can always spot what's going on because they put "Private road" sign when they know they can and "Private Property" when they try to fool you.

Now I don't have any prob getting off the bike to open and close gates to keep cattle in, that's common courtesy. But don't put a lock on it plz

Yeah Sam's tracks are for sissies. I had both and with one or two exceptions you could pretty much count on route to become easier when Sam's joint back and harder when it left.

The other advantage Kevin's tracks always start and end on gas station and Sam would bypass so it will be up to you to figure where to get off to get gas and how much range you need.

On the other hand, Kevin's tracks will sometimes send you many miles to a dead end at a big yellow gate and a very determined rancher putting you in to the fuel emergency you might have been trying to avoid by using his tracks. I never had a problem finding fuel on the entire TAT using either tracks other than being misdirected by Kevin. BTW, when I contacted Kevin about the dead end, me told me he knew about it when he published the update but was hoping someone would figure out a work-around. Yeah, don't go the way is the work around.

When did you ride it? Is this from personal experience or hearsay? There was one spot like that in CO.. guess what? Sam's tracks where going through it too. And you just had to stay on main road for a fraction of mile before making right turn. That was this September maybe things changed after ROFLOL.

EDIT:
.. and if gates need to be yellow this is on BLM land in Oregon.. west of Glendale.. closed to prevent illegal mining.. and Sam's tracks go there too

Kevin's TAT tracks used to deviate from Sam's somewhere southwest of Doyleville onto a very minor private ranch road. Sticking to Sam's tracks saved quite bit of hassle of trying to break into the ranch to ride a mile of two of primitive private road.

Yes that's the spot and Sam's used to go through that ranch too. If you just keep on main road pass ranch you will get on it shortly.

There was also an issue on Kevin's following trail of tears.. east of Mississippi; there was a plant built and it looks like he went through construction site.

The other issue which hasn't been discussed is that Sam's tracks have much less precise sampling interval so in some spots you come and see multiple roads forking off and it is unclear which one to take especially if base map is off. In some cases tracks were just going off the cliff or up the slope with little correlation to actual road like in example below (blue is kevin and purple sam)

Must have been a while ago. We did it in ~2009 using TAT tracks we purchased in 2007. We stayed on the main county road the entire time. BTW a really nice alternate is the Old Stagecoach route further west just after the forest service work camp.

Yeah, we went around that gate in Oregon. Yes, rode the entire TAT in 2015. The fuel emergency was put on us on a red track in Nevada on Kevin's tracks. The rancher told us that the road might still be technically a public road through his property but he had been the only one to maintain it for the last 30 years and we were not going to be permitted to cross it.

My reaction is that we're visitors and he lives there so I'm more than happy to be nice and cooperative with anyone like that. Sure there were blocks on Sam's route too (forest fires, closed gates, etc) but the difference seems to be that Sam publishes a work around when he's notified and Kevin seems to think places that have been dead ends for years are just part of the adventure.

They heavily fortified both sides of that gate with big boulders. There was a line on right side you had to drop down into ditch 6', make sharp 90deg and shoot up and if you didn't make it you would get stuck with no chance of recovery, at least being solo on scrambler I didn't wanna take risks. The guy from Kentucky on WRr who was a day ahead of me made it judging by the tracks. I spent an hour looking for bypass (and there is one if you trust map but then got fed up and just dragged bike.. took 5-10min including loading and unloading.

I was glad I had both Sam's and Kevin tracks I rode main Kevin's as much as possible, though Sam's helped me to get through the fires in Oregon; had to backtrack and take his route to avoid hard road blocks and activate fires in Umpqua NF.

From what I have seen both Kevin's and Sam's have issues. Maybe Sam's is more updated but either has pros and cons. Kevin's is definitely harder in second half and they both go over that effin' hill with burnt side-by-side 25mi before Quinn Creek, OR. Almost made it lost traction near the top and couldn't get it hook up..

I get the impression that some of the hard closures might be caused by a large influx of TAT riders. And is eliminating some good rides that locals might have been enjoying.

I don't think so. There weren't that many people riding I doubt there is even a hundred who is doing it on a good year all way through. Most of the traffic I have seen was local, and many times more side-by-sides not bikes.

The only closures I came across were either because of fires or like that one because of illegal mining if you believe signs. Or because trails deteriorate and rangers close them as unsafe or to prevent further damage.

The route is in very good shape considering that situation changes on ad-hoc bases, length of the track and the fact that there are no local volunteers like on BDRs to keep it up to date.

I see some older posts talking about free tracks from Kevin but all I see on his website is an order form for a microSD, is the GPX file available somewhere else? Not trying to rip anyone off here and happy to buy the SD if necessary but any and all savings are gonna help.

Not necessarily a comparison. I have both Sam's and Kevin's SD disks and have tried loading them on a new Garmin XT. Kevin's maps are visible when the card is installed. However, I can't see Sam's on the GPS, phone or computer. There is lots of information, maybe too much on the XT. Can someone give me guidance on how to install Sam,'s? Is there a way to have both Kevin and Sam's open at the same time?

I think I saw somewhere recently that Kevin's tracks are now imbedded in a .img file. I suspect Sam is still sending his out as conventional tracks in a .gpx file.

I don't have an XT. On my Montana one has to select each track and explicitly then select "Show on Map" to get it to show on the gps unit.

To see the tracks on a phone or computer, you have to be using some software that knows and can display the tracks like Locus (phone) or Basecamp (computer).

But on my Montana I would still have had to Enable any .img file that I want to be displayed.

I don't know of any way to display .img files on either a phone or computer. But there probably is one.

Thanks for the response. I can see Sam's on my phone, but have had no luck with the XT. Guess I'll run Kevin's on the XT and have the phone as backup.

This sounds strange to me. But I have only mediocre knowledge of all this. I am just curious, what are the file extensions on the two track files you are using, .img, .gpx, or something else?

thanks