MadDiver,
The reddish-brown color doesn't bother me so much because that's just part of the shaded relief, ie: cliff shadowing and altitudes creating as much of a 3-D image of the terrain on a 2-D surface as possible. Although the Tom Harrisons also have it in more of a gray shaded relief, it's just not so obvious to where you're going "Damn, that's steep!" The smaller scale, tighter contouring, and that shading are really the only reasons we ever carry those Nat Geo maps...they're just too heavy otherwise, and it always seems like it takes at least two to do the job. Both brands of maps also have the blue UTM grid line (1000 meters=1 kilometer= a klick), and if you've never tried using UTM instead of lat/long, you'll be amazed at how much more logical and user friendly it is...I can find you to within a few meters on an average day. Also, the one thing that the Nat Geo maps have that the Tom Harrison don't is a compass rose. But! You couldn't be more right about the thickness of the Teslin on the Nat Geo maps!! My rain gear isn't even that thick!
JdB,
Let me see if I can describe the boundaries without resorting to coordinates: To the north- just past Regulation Peak,so it leaves out a lot/most of the far northern trails in the park, then you would need to use the Emigrant Wilderness in the western part or the Hoover in the eastern part. To the south- the entire southern park boundary is included, only chopping off slightly below Miraposa Grove and the southern entrance station. To the east- it cuts off at Saddlebag Lake, Mono Pass, and just beyond Mammoth Peak, but it also does include a good chunk of the Ansel Adams Wilderness to the SE. From there east, you would need the Mammoth High Country map. Finally, to the west- this is where it kind of gets killed. You've got the western part of Hetch Hetchy cut off, nothing west of about 2-3 miles from White Wolf, nothing just west of the Wawona Tunnel and a couple miles west of Badger Pass on Glacier Point Rd, and then again just a couple miles west of Wawona itself. Beyond any of that and they refer you to the Hetch Hetchy map. Confusing enough?
We have a 1:125,000 Tom Harrison that we use for route planning in the bigger sense of things, but it's just too small a scale and doesn't have trail junction elevations, so it's not something I take out with me. I always, always, always take that 1:63,360 map on the vast majority of the trails with me. If we have a gap, that's where we usually end up filling in with the Nat Geo tarps, hopefully have the right Tom Harrison, or, we just keep walking until we somehow manage to find our way and marvel at our navigational skills.