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Lidar Terrain

Hillshade rendered from USGS 3DEP 1-meter lidar.

1-Meter Resolution

The terrain comes from USGS 3DEP lidar at 1-meter resolution — the highest-quality publicly available elevation data for the park, the same survey data professionals use. Granite domes, gullies, benches, and moraines show up as real shapes, not smoothed-over blobs.

Far Beyond a Scanned Quad

Classic USGS topo quads were drawn decades ago and digitized as flat scans. This basemap is rendered fresh from the raw elevation data, so the hillshade shows you the actual texture of the terrain — where the slabs are, where the slope relents, which way a drainage actually runs.

A Self-Made Basemap

The map isn't licensed from a big provider — it's rendered by the developer specifically for this app, combining the lidar terrain with trails and features from OpenStreetMap and water from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset. Every design decision is tuned for reading terrain in Yosemite's high country.