Before a hiking trip, Google Maps fills up fast: the trailhead, a car park, the bus stop, a night camp, the last grocery store. That list is all you need while the phone has signal. Getting the same pins into a hiking app, next to a proper route track, takes some preparation, and it is much easier done at home than at the trailhead.
Hiking apps work with two kinds of data. The track is the line you walk. Waypoints are the practical points around it: parking, water, a place to sleep, an early way off the route. A Google Maps list is waypoints. Join its pins together and you don’t get a route, you get a zigzag through a car park, a pharmacy and a campsite.
What to save before the hike
Resist the urge to dump the whole trip into one oversized list. Split places by region (Negev, Judean Desert, Galilee) or by job: transport, accommodation, emergencies. Once imported, each group can be switched on and off separately instead of burying the map under pins.
Start with the two ends of the walk. Linear routes rarely start and finish in the same place, so save the car park, the nearest bus stops and some way of getting back if plans change. Check the timetable separately for Shabbat, when most services stop from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening and the exceptions vary from city to city.
Water needs more care than any other pin. Taps get shut off, caches get emptied, and last season’s trip reports go out of date. Save a refill point only after confirming it against current route information, an official source or the hike organiser, and write the date of that confirmation into the note along with a plan B.
Beyond that: official night camps (khanyonei laila), accommodation, the last proper shop before the trail, a pharmacy, the nearest clinic, and any point where the route can be abandoned early. For a typical two-day desert stretch this comes to eight or ten pins in total. The notes matter as much as the pins themselves: check-in details for the guesthouse, the last practical bus of the day, a shop’s opening hours.
Choosing between GPX, KML and GeoJSON
Google Maps has no built-in way to export a list as GPX. Starred Places cannot be shared the way a custom list can, and the official export, Google Takeout, produces a raw archive that still has to be converted before a navigation app can use it.
A saved list should not become a hiking track. The route file describes the path; parking, water stops, night camps and accommodation stay independent waypoints. With the ExportMyMap browser extension you can export the saved places as individual GPX waypoints, then import them alongside a separate route track. The same set of points can also be saved as KML or GeoJSON when another tool needs one of those formats.
For hiking, GPX is the sensible default. Each place becomes a separate waypoint, with no line invented between them. OsmAnd, Garmin Explore and similar apps import this directly, though what you see afterwards depends on the importer: in most apps you can count on the coordinates, the name, the address and your own note, while the remaining fields vary.
The other two formats have their places. KML is for Google Earth and Google My Maps; GeoJSON is for QGIS, GIS analysis and custom web maps, and it keeps the richest data: categories, phone numbers, ratings, opening hours where available. For the planning stage there is also an Excel export, with one place per row and its rating, opening hours and notes in columns, ready to sort and compare before anything reaches a map. For loading waypoints into a hiking app, though, GPX is the one you want.
Putting the points and the route on one offline map
In OsmAnd, import personal waypoints as Favorites, not as a track. The verified route loads separately, for example the GPX that comes with a purchased hiking map. On screen you get one line to follow with your own pins around it.
The waypoint file carries no map behind it. Download the offline map for the region in advance, over Wi-Fi; otherwise the points will import correctly and sit on an empty background.
A few days before leaving, put the phone in airplane mode and check the whole setup at home. Open the hiking area, find both ends of the track, and tap a few of the remote waypoints to make sure their names and notes are readable. If the app has drawn a line through your campsite, car park and pharmacy, the file went in as a track; delete it and re-import as Favorites.
Dedicated GPS units need a rehearsal of their own. Models differ in how they treat waypoints, routes and tracks even when all of them read GPX. Garmin Explore imports waypoints and syncs them to compatible devices, but the exact steps depend on the hardware, so run one trial import before packing.
A final check before leaving
Before travelling, confirm that:
- the route track opens and draws as a single line;
- your waypoints sit beside it, imported separately;
- the offline map for the region is on the phone;
- the start, finish and bail-out points are easy to find;
- every water point has been confirmed against a current source;
- map, track and waypoints all work in airplane mode;
- the critical junctions also exist as screenshots or on paper;
- the phone and the power bank are charged.
Before leaving, you should be able to open the offline map, see the route as a line, and read every essential waypoint with its note, all without a mobile connection. If any of that fails, it is much easier to sort out at home than on the morning of the hike.