Congratulations on completing the first 6 chapters of the Alpine Hiking Bootcamp. You now mastered the basic concepts including planning routes through various map sources, field navigation using various techniques, planning all aspects of your journey, benefits of minimalist fast hiking, Himalayan geography and advanced mapping in Quantum GIS. In this chapter we will learn how to use and contribute to Open Street Maps, the public domain free-to-use maps for the worldwide hiking community:

Module 1 - Getting Started
Module 2 - OSMAnd
Module 3 - Settlements
Module 4 - Trails
Module 5 - Hiking routes

During the 2020 lock down myself and a team of volunteers already mapped a massive number of features across the Western Indian Himalayas: 2000+ passes, 1000+ peaks, 2000+ alpine lakes, 32.000 settlements, 400 hiking routes. Additionally we digitized some 1.5 lakh kms of trails (uploaded as OSM Traces) from older (less accurate) maps which are yet to be explored and - if still existent, GPS recorded and mapped into OSM.