Almost anyone who travels to wild places has wished at some point they had a GPS.  If you hike on your own, they’re a major source of comfort because you can always track back to where you started if you get lost.  They can also save your life.  Even if you don’t go off on your own, a GPS records your track so you can see where you’ve been, reliving perhaps a great adventure.

Hiking and travel GPSs aren’t like the auto equivalent.  First, you generally don’t hike along roads and use turn-by-turn directions.  Second, if you travel all over the world you would need maps for every place you go, which makes map availability a big issue.

I got my first hand-held GPS about five years ago, and it was a Delorme PN-40.  The primary reason for my choice was that the top brand, Garmin, had really expensive maps and Delorme maps were pretty cheap.  You could get a North American topo, marine, and some image subscription for less than thirty bucks.  The PN-40 has been all over the world, and I was able to get decent basemaps for everywhere, though they often cost me about forty dollars a location.

This year, having had some issues with the venerable PN-40, I decided to have another look at the landscape, and I found the Garmin Oregon.  The screen is bigger, navigation is easier, the satellite lock is more accurate…in all, better features than the Delorme.  I was also concerned that Delorme seems to be deemphasizing its GPS models in favor of a communicator with GPS capability.  I didn’t want that, and the current flagship of the PN line showed “temporarily unavailable” on their website.

Maps would still be an issue, of course, but what I found was that in 2015 the progress of the OpenStreetMap project has been so good that there are global maps available for it.  Not only that, most of these maps and others besides had been converted to Garmin format by an enterprising group of open map enthusiasts.  With (relatively) little effort you can get these maps for nothing, and they are quite good.

I got a good deal on the Oregon 600, without maps and without a camera feature, at Cabelas online, so I bought it.  I’ve been able to get maps for everywhere I plan to go, and free ones.  The map quality seems quite good, too.  So for those who travel globally and want a nice hand-held GPS, I thought I’d offer my experience as a guide.

Garmin’s approach to GPS is based on three elements—the GPS itself, software (in my case for the PC) that provides a link to the GPS to send maps and store waypoints and tracks between trips, and the maps.  Let me cover all these in order.

As a GPS, I picked the Oregon because it seemed to have the best screen and setup overall.  There are other Garmin models that promise slightly better tracking because they have a big external antenna, and there are ones with bigger and smaller screens.  The Oregon was a nice compromise, and it was on sale too!  I found out later on that the Oregon series is probably the easiest of the Garmin family to get maps for.

For software, Garmin supplies a program called “Basecamp” that provides you with map control and archiving support, and also communicates with the GPS.  Basecamp replaces an older program, MapSource, and the reason that’s important is that some of the free Garmin maps have been structured to install on MapSource and don’t appear to install correctly on Basecamp.  Basecamp is free and can be downloaded from Garmin’s website.

I strongly recommend that, in addition to Basecamp, you get a program called “JaVaWa GMTK”.  This obtuse-sounding program will give you a list of installed maps and also allow you to back up and restore maps.  Since it’s possible to mess up a map process, and mess up your whole installation along with it, that’s a valuable capability.

Now to the maps.  The best starting point for free maps for Garmin is the GPSFileDepot site, which provides tutorials, links to tools, and maps for a very large chunk of the globe.  For most people this site will give you what you want, particularly if you’re traveling in the US.

GPSFileDepot maps are available in three forms—in GPS-installable form, as a Windows installer, and as a Mac install.  I have never tried anything but the Windows installer version, largely because the Mac version is (obviously) for those with a Mac (which I don’t have) and because the GPS-installable version doesn’t have a map view on the PC on which to overlay tracks, show waypoints, or just check out the details to plan ahead.  Basecamp is a great tool and if you want to get the most from it you need to install your maps on Basecamp and transfer them to the GPS as needed.

International maps and marine maps are not always available on GPSFileDepot, and you’ll have to find other sites for them.  I’ve had pretty good luck with this site for maps of just about everywhere.  There is a site for nautical charts here, but I’ve not been able to get the installer to work with Basecamp, so I had to install the maps manually, a task that’s got to be done carefully and that I won’t attempt to describe here.

I have some recommendations for those who want to follow this process:

One big advantage of the Garmin and open maps approach is that you could share maps with a friend who had a Garmin GPS.  If you install your maps, back them up with JaVaWa, and give your friend(s) an SD card to restore from, they can install Basecamp and restore the maps to their copy, which means they can then load them on their own GPS.  Be careful with this if you download any maps that are copyrighted to insure you’re allowed to share them, and don’t sell maps from any of the sites I’ve listed here.

I would have to admit that most of the open maps of the US are less detailed than the USGS 24k quads that are the gold standard for hiking, but unless you’re blazing trails somewhere out there, they’re fine.  You can get more detailed maps on some selected areas, and you can also (if you’re technical) adapt both paper and online maps to the Garmin GPS.  If you want to play with all these options, go for it.  There is software and tutorial support available online.  For myself, I’m happy to take the semi-easy way of using the free maps already available!