Hey guys, I finally got around to trying out geotagging. It took some serious research to find the tools! It's still obscure for some reason.

A quick bit of background, part of the reason I took my Canon 10D with me on the last segment of the Tahoe Rim Trail was geotagging. I wanted to get the process down so when I take my trip to Mt. Whitney, I can have the pictures, with the GPS track, geotagged in Flickr, and mapped onto Google Earth. I haven't taken it to Google Earth yet.

So anyway, I took the pictures, and have the resulting jpegs in a folder. You can do this with the RAW files, but since I already had the jpegs on Flickr, I started there.

After lots of research I found a program called Geosetter. It works WONDERFULLY. When I put the .gpx file into the same folder as the images, once I clicked on the folder holding the images, it knew to use that file. It then was able to interpolate the data based on EXIF dates, and finally save the GPS data to the EXIF of the images.

Finally, I replaced the images already on Flickr with the updated ones. The process would have been a lot quicker had they not already been on Flickr, I could have just done one upload. You do need to tell Flickr that yes, you want to automatically map EXIF information.

Once I did that, the images were mapped within Flickr. Each image shows its city location, and a link to Map, which when clicked, shows the image on a map. Since this was backcountry hiking, I had to turn on the Satellite map. Here's a sample:



The rest of the images from that hike are here.

I apologize for not all the files being geotagged, but the images not taken by me didn't have timestamps. It seemed to work out pretty well! Not being a Picasa user, I'm not sure how it handles the images, but Flickr seemed to work out well.

I'll be geotagging a lot more images, as well as doing it for all the pictures from my upcoming Mt. Whitney trip.

It's AMAZING what a little cooler weather can do. Today it was a cool 63 degrees during my run, very abnormal for 10:30 on an early September day. For example, last week it was 80 when I went out. At any rate, I had the best run I've had in WEEKS.

Everything was better. My breathing was great, I wasn't fatigued, I felt like I could go on forever. The weather was awesome, my pace, while not my best, certainly was better than it's been. Well, you've heard me whining that my average has been more like 11 min/mile lately.

My pace was 9:42! That's the best it's been since before my bout with chest congestion, which was a few months ago now. Seriously, I did 5.25 miles in 52 minutes. And afterwards? I feel great!

While not accurate (I wasn't wearing the strap today), the GPS estimates 690 calories burned.

Anyway, I'm glad it was a nice day today.

The Tahoe Rim Trail is a trail that goes 165 miles around the perimeter of Lake Tahoe in California & Nevada. They have it separated into 8 sections so you can finish it without having to do the entire trail at once.

With the hike I did on Saturday, I've now completed all 165 miles! I had wanted to complete it last year, but my mother's illness made that impossible. I mentioned this to the TRT Association person on the phone, and she said, "Some people take ten years!" I found that funny, since the trail was only completed in 2001. :)



* 5-20-07 | 12.2 mi | Spooner Summit to Kingsbury Grade | Blog | Gallery
* 7-15-07 | 22.8 mi | Kingsbury Grade to Big Meadows | Blog | Gallery
* 7-29-07 | 17.5 mi | Big Meadows to Echo Lakes | Blog | Gallery
* 8-26-07 | 16.7 mi | Barker Pass to Tahoe City | Blog" | Gallery
* 9-8-07 & 9-9-07 (overnight) | 32.5 mi | Echo Lake to Barker Pass | Blog | Gallery1 | Gallery2
* 9-22-07 (snowed out) | 23.1 mi | Tahoe Meadows to Spooner Summit | No Blog | Gallery
* 8-16-08 | 23.1 mi | Tahoe Meadows to Spooner Summit | No Blog | Gallery
* 8-30-08 | 18.9 mi | Brockway Summit to Tahoe Meadows | Blog | Gallery
* 9-6-08 | 19.2 mi | Tahoe City to Brockway Summit | Blog | Gallery

A couple of the hikes varied slightly from the postings. Brockway Summit to Tahoe Meadows, for instance, we climbed Mt. Rose, which added 5 miles to the total.

I'm now a member of the 165 Mile Club, and eagerly await my certificate. Next up: Mt. Whitney in two weeks! Woo!

Saturday was my final Tahoe Rim Trail hike. That's right, I've now completed all 165 miles! For a while now I've not brought my DSLR because it's so big, but I also didn't have any pictures. This time, I decided to bring it and deal with the extra weight.

I played around, trying to attach the camera bag to myself. It's amazing with a bag that size, it's a game because you have to have the camera accessible or you won't use it, but the camera's so big, it gets in the way of mobility. I attached it to the pack's waist belt, and latched it so it wouldn't swing around. It worked surprisingly well, although it still got in the way of my left leg a bit.

So, yes, I'm back! I slept in until 10:30 yesterday morning, and enjoyed every minute. My wife told me she's glad I finished the TRT, that the day after I'm always grouchy and sore. Hmmph!



Like the last one, this one had views of Lake Tahoe for quite a while. In fact, as we started there was a great view as we ascended.


Here's a quick Google Earth view of the entire trail, this one according to the trail posting was 19.2 miles. At the end, the GPS showed 19.5 miles, but National Geographic TOPO! only showed 18.86. Well, close enough.


Also unlike many of the segments, this one wasn't stuck under trees the whole time, we could actually see quite a bit. The person who took this picture managed to get my gut in the sun. Thanks.


About 13 miles in there was a nice lake we got to relax by. Believe me, we relaxed. A couple people swam.


So that's it, everyone, I've completed the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail. This is the end-of-trail kiosk. There's one at every trailhead and trail-end.


Finally, the whole group, tired from hiking and awaiting food.


A little later I'll post an overview of the entire Tahoe Rim Trail.