[puzzlr]

It's hard to keep up with all the mapping work being done by various agencies. But this week I discovered that there was updated and higher resolution lidar imagery for much of the Middle Fork Snoqualmie valley. It's labeled as a 2020 dataset, but I can't tell if that's when it was taken or posted. Some sections of trails show up too. This presents hours of fun for me to explore ground-altering artifacts of the logging era in the valley. See the attached annotated photos for the comparison with the previous 2003 lidar imagery.

Area covered by this dataset

2003 lidar

2020 lidar

These came from the Washington Lidar Portal, specifically the "Snoqualmie Midfork 2020". Lidar projects have limited scope so every area will get updates at different times. Looking forward, someday we as hikers will have high resolution elevation data available on our cell phone apps to easily pick out the best route through a cliffy area. See the USGS 3d Elevation Program. Some will applaud that, some will not.

[car68]

That's an awesome website, thanks for posting it.

[Jaberwock]

For what it's worth Caltopo uses the 3DEP data you mention for their Shaded Relief and Slope Angle Shading layers

[Geography Nerd]

I remember when we received our first LIDAR delivery at the GIS shop I was working in around 2003, it was crazy to suddenly see road cuts, old slides, and other features that just weren't visible on the older digital elevation models. This is an awesome story map that WA DNR created showing how they use LIDAR. There's a few portions of the Seattle Fault on Bainbridge island, literally in people's back yards, they didn't know existed until they saw them on LIDAR. https://wadnr.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=36b4887370d141fcbb35392f996c82d9