Many years of travelling in the Newfoundland backcountry, both for business and pleasure. Mapping is mainly based on Bing imagery, personal GPS tracks, and knowledge of the areas.

Currently working on mapping the thousands of kilometers of forestry roads and trails on the island portion of the province of Newfoundland, using the following tagging scheme:

1. Path: ATV/Horseback/mountain bike/hiking would be able to use these roads, but not a regular road vehicle.

2. Track: Usually indicated on satellite imagery by two parallel tracks. Usually passable by 4x4 vehicles. Usually a dead-end road that branches off from an Unclassified road. Can use “grade” to indicate how overgrown the road is (how much it has returned back to nature).

3. Minor Road (unclassified): rural roads that are not provincial or national highways network. Indicating the surface=* when it is known, usually unpaved or gravel. Usually has a number of other roads branching from it. Usually passable by regular road vehicles.

4. Tertiary: same as minor road but joins different zones, either cabin areas or allowing access from one major paved road to another. Usually unpaved. To be used sparingly, as other types of roads are often more appropriate.

5. Service road = driveway, for short-distance access to cabins.

NOTE: I am not in the practice of classifying all off-pavement roads as highway=track. Different roads have different levels of importance, even in a rural setting. Some roads join different areas and can stretch unbroken for hundreds of kilometers in unpopulated areas, while others are local dead-ends, while others truly are tracks.