This week I made a custom contour map of the hike-able volcanoes around Mexico City. Hopefully I will get to climb them all soon!

Tools I used:

• Mapbox Studio - to add and edit map layers

• Github pages - to host my map html

Context

Mexico City is already at 2000m altitude, and it’s surrounded by mountains that are much much higher. It’s an amazing place to acclimatize to high altitude and to explore many big mountain hikes only a few hours drive from the city. So far I’ve only done a few shorter day hikes, but soon the rainy season will be over and I’m excited to test my endurance on some of the bigger climbs.

With training I plan to attempt Pico de Orizaba, the highest mountain in Mexico.

Process

First I found a list of volcanoes and mountains to hike near Mexico City. I gave this article to ChatGPT and asked it to extract the names, coordinates, and altitude and format it as a JSON.

Then I created a new Style in Mapbox Studio, and uploaded the JSON as a new tileset, and added some formatting to the labels.

One thing I often miss in maps is the ability to see exaggerated terrain to appreciate the scale and height of these things. I added a bit of code to the html using MapboxGL JS let me exaggerate the terrain (it’s no longer in proportion with the rest of the map, but makes it much more dramatic).

Learnings

• Maps are great

Next steps

• Play with map colors and make the labels more readable

• Add hiking routes

• Start climbing!