2026 Must-See Celestial Events

March 17, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Peak camping season is officially here, and to help you plan your nights under the stars, we’ve mapped out key celestial events for the remainder of 2026. Below, you’ll find the perfect intersection of astronomical timing and trail-tested recommendations for your next overnight adventure. As always, bring a headlamp, carry your map, stay mindful of cliffs, and check the weather for clear skies before heading out.

March 20: Spring Equinox­
At the Spring Equinox, the sun rises and sets almost exactly due east and west.
Trail: Sky Bridge in the Red River Gorge
Camping: Koomer Ridge Campground
April 22: Lyrid Meteor Shower­
The Lyrids are famous for bright “fireballs.” The moon will be a waxing crescent and set early, leaving a dark window for viewing.
Trail: Auxier Ridge in the Red River Gorge
Camping: Dispersed backcountry camping near Pants Grip Point. Make sure to follow all park regulations.
May 31: Blue Moon­
Since May starts and ends with a full moon, the Blue Moon is your best chance for a classic moonlit sandstone hike.
Trail: Rough Trail in the Red River Gorge
June 15: Peak Milky Way­
Mid-June offers the longest window to see the galactic center with the new moon.
Trail: Honey Creek Loop in the Big South Fork NRRA
Camping: Picket State Park Campground is in an official “International Dark Sky Park.” 
July 29–30: Delta Aquariid Meteor Shower­
The Southern Delta Aquariid Meteor shower will produce a steady of dozens of faint meteors each hour under dark skies.
Trail: Rock Bridge Trail in the Red River Gorge
Camping: Dispersed camping near Rock Bridge Recreation Area
August 11–13: Perseid Meteor Shower­
This is the gold standard of meteor showers, producing 30–50 meteors per hour. 2026 is a perfect year because of a New Moon, so the sky will be as dark as possible. 
Trail: Yahoo Falls in the Big South Fork NRRA
Camping: Alum Ford Campground
September 25–27: Harvest Moon­
The Harvest Moon stays bright for several nights in a row, traditionally helping “hunters” navigate the woods, and it’s great for night hiking. 
Trail: Ridge Trail to Pinnacle Overlook in the Cumberland Gap NHP
Camping: Gibson Gap Backcountry Campsite
October 21–22: Orionid Meteor Shower ­
These meteors are fragments of Halley’s Comet. They are known for being fast and leaving glowing “trains.” 
Trail: Hensley Settlement in the Cumberland Gap NHP
Camping: Martins Fork Backcountry Campsite
November 16–17: Leonid Meteor Shower­
Historically famous for meteor storms, the Leonids usually produce fast bright meteors with occasional fireballs.  
Trail: John Muir Trail toward Laurel Fork Creek in the Big South Fork NRRA
Camping: Station Camp Campground
December 13–14: Geminid Meteor Shower­
The Geminids are one of the most spectacular meteor showers can produce over 100 meteors per hour from debris of asteroid 3200 Phaethon. 
Trail: Sheltowee Trace north of Cave Run Lake
Camping: Clear Creek Campground

Filed Under: News

Happy New Year!

January 4, 2026 by Leave a Comment

Another year stretches ahead, and with it, another chance to explore Appalachia. The trails shift dramatically with each season, offering new reasons to lace up your boots throughout the year. Spring wildflowers emerge from forest floors. Summer brings waterfalls at their coolest. Fall delivers brilliant reds and golds stretching between overlooks. Winter strips everything down to rock and sky, opening up expansive views.

The best adventures aren’t random; they’re timed. Catching peak wildflower bloom. Hitting the trail before summer crowds. Standing at cliff’s edge when fall color is at its peak. These are the moments that become your stories. Make 2026 a year of those moments. Pick your trails, mark your calendar, and hike out when the seasons deliver.

Our favorite hikes from 2025? Spring trails in the Red where mountain laurel blooms surrounded the trails, cool weather held, and sunshine lit up the forest. Those days reminded us what exists beyond the everyday—wilderness that pulls you out of your routine and shows you raw, natural beauty. We can’t wait to see it again in 2026.

Here’s to another year of memories on the trail. Happy New Year!

Filed Under: News

2025 Winter Map Sale!

December 5, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Skip the gift cards this season and gift the hikers, climbers, and explorers on your list something they’ll actually use…again and again. Check out our Winter Sale map deals and give the spirit of real adventure. Because the best gifts aren’t just opened—they’re experienced.

Coupons and offers cannot be applied to prior purchases. Valid on or before 11:59 EST Decebmer 31, 2025. TEE30 valid on up to two tees. Free Cumberland Gap map is not laminated. Other exclusions may apply. 

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

The Red River Gorge Trail Tee Is Back!

August 13, 2025 by Leave a Comment

30 of the most legendary trails mapped across your chest.

Our Red River Gorge Trail Tee is the ultimate conversation starter and functional wearable. We brought it back by popular demand so you can now get the shirt that fellow hikers have literally tried to buy right off our backs.

This is the perfect gift for adventurers, climbers, or anyone who’s tried to explain why you’d drive for hours just to walk in the woods. Currently available in very limited quantities!

Sandstone, Front
Sandstone, Back
Hemlock, Back
Hemlock, Front
detail of RRG t-shirt
Detail
Filed Under: News

Phase 3 oblique photograph explorer

July 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment

KyFromAbove released Phase 3 aerial photography, including oblique imagery, in Spring 2025. The images are available to download and are open data. However, finding the right set of images to download might be a task.

This viewer allows you to zoom in and see the available images for each exposure point, which takes 5 images: one nadir and four at cardinal directions. With 885,789 exposures, that’s over 4.4 million images, which range between 40 MB and 100 MB at roughly 10k x 15k pixels per image.

You can interactively search and download them through this website:

boydx.github.io/phase-3-oblique-centroids

You can interactively

  • toggle between oblique image centroids and exposure points (the paper airplane symbol),
  • discover the cardinal direction of each exposure,
  • place approximate frame extents for each selected oblique centroid,
  • interactively download full-resolution images, and
  • download a GeoJSON of these polygons with metadata in its attributes.

The oblique images are hosted as TIFFs on a KyFromAbove AWS S3 bucket and can be previewed on mobile devices using modern browsers.

Below are some screenshots of the viewer and oblique images.

Oblique of Frankfort Oblique of Frankfort

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Oblique of Laurel Lake Oblique of Laurel Lake

Search by flight and shot ID Search by flight and shot ID

Attributes of image footprint centroid Attributes of image footprint centroid

Filed Under: KyFromAbove, Maps, News

Change in surface height explorer

July 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Can we detect changes in surface height over time, at a neighborhood scale? The changes in heights represent the loss and growth of trees, buildings, and other features of the built environment.

KyFromAbove has multiple phases of lidar point clouds for Kentucky as open data. In this interactive map of Lexington, Kentucky (inside New Circle), we demonstrate how to visualize and explore these changes in surface height between 2010 (Phase 1) and 2019 (Phase 2) lidar point clouds.

While most point clouds are colorized by aerial photography to give a realistic view of the surface, this project uses a different approach. Points are colorized by the amount of change in surface height between the two phases. The color scale is from red (decrease in height) to blue (increase in height). Both phases are shown simultaneously with the ability to toggle the visibility of each phase.

View the interactive Potree scene viewer (which is VR-enabled) through this website:

contig.us/hawaii/lex-change

Below are some screenshots of the viewer focused on Kentucky Proud Park at the University of Kentucky campus.

Phase 1 decrease in height Phase 1 decrease in height

Phase 2 increase in height Phase 2 increase in height

Phases combined Phases combined

Phase 2 colorized with aerial photography Phase 2 colorized with aerial photography

Filed Under: Class maps, KyFromAbove, News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Ky Quick GPS Note Taker

June 30, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Have you ever needed to create a quick GPS track, plot a few points on a map, and generate shareable spatial data on the fly in the field? This browser app utilizes your browser’s local storage to save GeoJSON features as you create them interactively, using your mobile device’s GPS or manually placing points. Your data is kept on your device and is never shared until you decide to export a GeoJSON file. The base maps in this app use KyFromAbove’s latest high-resolution aerial imagery and elevation data.

Start GPS mapping through this website:

boydx.github.io/ky-quick-gps

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Viewer interface Viewer interface

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Free Maps, KyFromAbove, Maps, Red River Gorge, Sheltowee Trace

Phase 2 elevation and height explorer

June 6, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Building on our elevation profile maker, we examined height and elevation measures generated in the browser from Phase 2 elevation data within Lexington’s New Circle Road area.

Given the absence of a statewide digital surface model (DSM) for Phase 2, we created a self-hosted raster tileset. This approach encodes elevations as RGB JPEGs or PNGs, which can be natively read by browsers.

The DSM was calculated from the Phase 2 point cloud using the highest first-return in a 2-foot resolution raster. The DSM was converted to an RGB terrain. The following formula converts the three-band values to elevations:

e = (r * 256) + g + (b / 256)

Pretty simple! This encoding works for Lexington’s range of surface elevations, has a sub-inch precision, and can be interpreted by MapLibre as a ground surface on which to drape features. A shaded relief map of the DSM with tree canopy cover height is the default base map. In terrain mode, the map becomes a 3D surface showing relative heights of features.

Height is calculated by subtracting the digital elevation model (DEM) elevation from the DSM surface elevation. The DEM is a 2-foot resolution raster that models bare-earth ground elevation and is hosted on kyraster.ky.gov.

Explore the web page here: https://boydx.github.io/urban-observation-towers

Click the map to sample heights and elevations. Export the samples as a GeoJSON for use in another application.

Screenshot from the web page
Enlarge screenshot from the web page

Screenshot from the web page
Enlarge screenshot from the web page

Screenshot from the web page
Enlarge screenshot from the web page

Elevation explorer looking at the height of Patterson Office Tower
The three heights of Patterson Office Tower

Data derived from LiDAR collected in 2019 and provided KyFromAbove and the Kentucky Division of Geographic Information (DGI). Building footprints © OpenStreetMap Contributors. Analysis by UKy Department of Geography and Boyd Shearer.

Filed Under: Free Maps, KyFromAbove, Maps Tagged With: , , , , ,

Explore Jackson & Rowan Counties

June 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Using the latest KyFromAbove 3-inch resolution aerial photography from 2024, we can get comfortably lost on our backcountry adventures. The latest imagery from our state’s aerial mapping program is impressive and in line with previous releases: it’s comprehensive, authoritative, highly detailed, and open data. We have updated two projects with the latest base maps from KyFromAbove.

Screenshot of web map
Explore Jackson County web map
Screenshot of web map
Explore Jackson County web map
Screenshot of web map
Explore Rowan County web map
Screenshot of web map
Explore Rowan County web map
Filed Under: Cave Run Lake, DBNF, Free Maps, Maps, Sheltowee Trace Tagged With: , , ,

Kentucky elevation profile maker

May 27, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Kentucky has multiple statewide elevation layers derived from lidar point clouds. KyFromAbove Phase 1 lidar has both a 5-foot resolution ground (bare-earth) and above-ground (trees and buildings) elevation models hosted as open raster data.

We can query these layers to find ground and surface feature elevations at specific locations, such as along a line. These elevation profiles are useful in urban planning, environmental studies, and infrastructure development.

Create elevation profiles and save the data as JSON.

boydx.github.io/ky-profiles.

Below are a screenshots from the web page.

Twin Knobs show ground and trees
Kentucky Capitol is 209 feet tall

Kentucky elevation profile maker
Creating multiple profiles at Laurel Lake

Downloading them as JSON for use in other applications
Downloading them as JSON for use in other applications

Filed Under: Free Maps, KyFromAbove, Maps Tagged With: , ,

KyFromAbove Data Explorer

May 26, 2025 by Leave a Comment

KyFromAbove has three phases of collecting high-resolution aerial imagery and elevation data. Over the last few weeks, we have made a four browser apps with MapLibre GL JS, Leaflet, and Esri JavaScript APIs that allow users to visualize and interact with the data from each phase. This page provides links to the apps:

boydx.github.io/kyfromabove

KyFromAbove Data Explorer KyFromAbove Data Explorer

Filed Under: Free Maps, KyFromAbove, Maps, News

Shaded relief and 3D visualization in the browser

March 17, 2025 by Leave a Comment

KyFromAbove has long produced elevation datasets for the public. Using their Phase II lidar point clouds, we created a new shaded relief and DEM raster tile sets for web mapping. While most mapping applications focus on ground elevations, we use the above-ground elevations to make a digital surface model (DSM). These elevations show buildings, trees, and even cars.

These above-ground elevations, however, have unique challenges. The latest project attempts to minimize errors and create visually impactful shaded relief and RGB terrain layers from DEMs for elevations.

Check out the preview here: outrageGIS.com/maps/new-circle

Screenshot map web page

Lexington’s UKy campus

Filed Under: Free Maps, KyFromAbove, Maps Tagged With: , , , ,

National Land Cover Database on SheltoweeTrace.com

June 23, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Two new layers have been added to the web map for the Daniel Boone NF and Big South Fork NRRA: the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) for 2021 (mrlc.gov) and mined lands, 1985–2020 (skytruth.org). The NLCD is a 30-meter resolution (each cell is 30×30 meters) land cover dataset showing each cell’s dominant land use.

Screenshot of land cover map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of the land cover map at SheltoweeTrace.com

The cells are symbolized to show features significant for the area, such as multiple types of vegetation cover, the density of the built environment, and barren land. Inside the NF and NPS boundaries, barren land is likely to be exposures of bedrock, boulders, and earthen materials. For example, it shows Cumberland Falls. Outside of these boundaries, barren land is likely mines or construction sites.

While the layer is low-resolution compared to the aerial photography layer, the NLCD helps us quickly understand landscape conditions that would be tedious to interpret from aerial photography alone.

Screenshot of aerial photography map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of aerial photography map at SheltoweeTrace.com

One can identify the distribution of basic forest types and habitat patterns. The NLCD can be useful for understanding the extent of the wildland-urban interface — a vital consideration for Trail Towns, maintaining wildlife corridors, and managing tourism development in the region.

The NLCD layer, in conjunction with other layers on the web map, provides a comprehensive view of the public lands in the region. Before your next trip to the Daniel Boone NF or Big South Fork NRRA, take a look at all layers to get a sense of the landscape you will be visiting.

Screenshot of lidar-derived shaded relief map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of lidar-derived shaded relief map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of mined lands map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of mined lands map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of general topographic map at SheltoweeTrace.com
Screenshot of the general topographic map at SheltoweeTrace.com

The interactive map is available at: https://sheltoweetrace.com

Filed Under: Big South Fork, NRRA, Maps, Sheltowee Trace

Yahoo Falls

June 20, 2024 by Leave a Comment

Yahoo Falls Picnic Area is located in the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area in Kentucky. The scenic area contains short hikes and overlooks of the Cumberland River and Yahoo Falls, an impressively tall waterfall. The area is surrounded by the Daniel Boone National Forest with a variety of trails and camping options. You can create a 9-mile loop hike by combining the Yahoo Falls Trail, Sheltowee Trace, and USFS 602 & 612 trails.

Yahoo falls

Backpacking tips. While no camping is allowed in the Picnic Area, Alum Ford primitive campground is about 2 miles south on the Sheltowee Trace. Big South Fork manages the campground and it is $15/night. There is no water or electricity at the campground and cellular service is weak along the Cumberland River. Hit me up for additional tips. Get lost and have a blast.

Filed Under: All Hikes, Big South Fork, NRRA, Sheltowee Trace

Ridge Trail to Hensley Settlement

June 19, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Ridge Trail to Hensley Settlement

With 2,000 vertical feet, the hike to Hensley Settlement is a challenging mountain adventure. Cumberland Gap National Historical Park is Kentucky’s only mountain national park and sees the fraction of visitors that other parks and forests see. Why? It’s not easy to get to the Hensley Flats, a mountain-top grassland that the Hensley-Gibson families cultivated and lived for decades. The shortest route to Hensley is via Chadwell Gap, a 4-mile one-way trip. It’s steep. The next option is via the Civic Park trailhead, an 8-mile one-way trip. It’s steep and long. But, you’ll visit incredible destinations and overlooks, including the White Rocks overlook and Sand Cave, one of the largest rock shelters in the region. For an epic day or overnight, start at the Wilderness Road campground and take the Gibson Gap Trail to the Ridge Trail. You’ll be alone in the wilderness. When you get to Hensley, prepare yourself for a proper, crystal-clear mountain high.

Banjo tune, Cumberland Gap, performed by Rich Kirby @appalshop

Backpacking tips. This national park requires a free permit to camp in the backcountry. The cabin at Martins Fork, with three bunk beds and a fireplace, can be rented. Black bears are very active in the park. Drinking water can be hard to find on the Ridge Trail. Hensley Settlement has a water spigot that is available from spring through fall. The larger streams flow all year. The maps in the video show campsites. Hit me up for additional tips. Get lost and have a blast.

Filed Under: All Hikes, Cumberland Gap, NHP
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