As I was saying in the previous post, I own a Garmin GPS which I bought for a good deal from a webstore located somewhere in England. I didn't choose the option to buy ready made Garmin maps which are somewhat very expensive, especially since I was thinking that I wouldn't really need them. (My original plan was to use the GPS for hiking routes where maps don't really exist or are very difficult to find).
Indeed, over the past few years, I had 2 experiences when I thought that a GPS would be really useful:
- Last summer in Montenegro. I wasted spent a whole day in Podgorica (the capital city) looking for hiking maps to end up being quite unsuccessful. At least, the city was nice! But hiking maps are simply non-existent for some areas at the moment (such as the Sinjajevina plains). In the best case, hiking maps are pain in the ass to find. (This is the case in Montenegro, but I believe that the situation might be similar in some other countries where the national geographic institute didn't do its job very well, if it's even existing...)
=> For Montenegro, the current best option is to print Russian military maps which can be found from the web (here for instance) but these maps are most of the time very old and can be out-dated.
- Last winter in Indonesia. I tried very hard to find maps detailed enough so I could venture in the wild but it appears that detailed maps are nearly impossible to come by.
Thus, I bought myself a GPS and I try to use it as much as I can while longing for bigger trips. I was having fun with it altought I rapidely found the limits of not having a decent map layer with the GPS. This is when I found out the possibility to upload rather good maps on your Garmin device (.img files), and for free thanks to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project! I also discovered that these maps can also show some hiking trails if these have been recorded in the OSM data before.
I think that OSM is a good opportunity for hikers to find trails and routes, given that another OSM member has been there before and have recorded, uploaded, and draw the trail in OSM. In this is a specific domain, I think that there is a big potential with OSM if you compare it with the current capabilities of the other free sources of digital maps, such as Google maps.
OSM can therefore be placed as a rather good first source of information when planning a tour. It doesn't mean the data provided is entirely reliable and that you won't have to look for other sources of information: You can (and have to) cross these data with other sources. But in case alternative information is unavailable, OSM data can be better than nothing.
Here is a quick example from an area I know very well for having spent so many afternoons mountain-biking the trails of this hill when I was a teenager. I haven't edited anything in OSM for this area, but it is just to show you what you might be able to get from OSM.
here is what we can find from OSM
here is the same area as can be shown in Google maps
(In this particular example, you'll also find out that no more information is appearing while zooming in the Google map. In the other hand, you'll find a lot more information if you zoom in the OSM map)
I'll hear you say that this example is not worthwhile, since IGN Top 25 topographic maps are very easy to find, even for free (from geoportail as instance), but bear in mind that not all country provide this kind of information so easily.
As to come back to my previous example of Montenegro, here is a comparison from what you can get for the Kom Kucki area:
Pretty impressive, isn't it?
Of course, not every trails have been recorded in the OSM database (it's actually far from that!). The Sinjajevina area which I was talking about previously still doesn't have any data in the OSM database (Too bad I didn't have a GPS device at that time!). But it only belongs to all of us to improve this!
If you're a backpacker avid of adventures, I hope this could convince you to take part in the OpenStreetMap project and upload your own records of georeferenced data!
