You know that I’m a bushwhacko myself… and that I never go out without a paper map of where I’m going. But more and more often, the paper map is one that I printed myself… and includes data that I captured.

Thanks for mentioning open-source maps! I could wish you’d encouraged hikers more strongly to contribute to them, rather than just looking at them. You correctly observe that the first Bush administration eviscerated the USGS, and it’s unlikely ever to restart. (We have better maps of Afghanistan than we have of our own country!) The commercial outfits don’t have the manpower to survey the trails, and the trail clubs have a strong disincentive to share (selling maps is a revenue stream, after all). It turns out that everyone – USGS, clubs, NatGeo, DeLorme, CalTopo, whatever – winds up depending on the open source maps, and those in turn depend on citizen mappers to collect the data.

That, in turn, is the main reason that my smartphone GPS travels with me. Sure, it’s a useful cross-check on my navigation, but I’m pretty darned comfortable doing it the old fashioned way, and not at all comfortable that I’ll have a battery charge when I need it. Recording my tracks, however, is something that I do all the time, so that I can update the open source maps.

The information does indeed feed back. The fact that I was able and willing to keep my GPS running for the entirety of a Northville-Placid thru-hike (carrying a battery about the size and weight of a brick), was what enabled OpenStreetMap to have http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/4286650 – which you’ll then see on CalTopo and Waymarked Trails and even in a few places on the USGS web site (http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/viewer/#15/43.9663/-74.3887 – turn down the opacity, and its’ there). And then combine that with some field notes, and http://www.nptrail.org/?page_id=59 was also a result.

Will you see me Out There without paper map, magnetic compass, and barometric altimeter? Nope. Will you see me Out There with GPS and several electronic maps downloaded in advance to my smartphone? Yup. I don’t pass up useful tools.

Down the road, if you’re hopelessly off the trail and using the GPS to get back to it you may soon find out why it’s so important to understand those squiggly little lines despite months of backpacking experience.

Good read…thanks for sending it my way.