While doing good on my two-year old goal to clean up clearly wrong backcountry tagging of backcountry=yes, I noticed that since then, usage of it with waterway=access_point exploded. This is documented in the wiki since two months ago by @scarapella with the original documentation of that tag done by @quincylvania. That tag is recent, it appeared two years ago but seems to be used quite a bit.
This of course goes against what the wiki page for backcountry=yes says, as it is specifically about campsites, so we can either
redefine backcountry to say it applies to something in the backcountry
change the tagging for waterway=access_point to use some other specific tag to indicate an access point is remote.
Hello @supsup thanks for launching the discussion.
In OSM there are quite a few, very useful, tags that I would call “reusable common attributes” tags. (Which is a terrible name, so I hope there is a better one to use!) These are tags which describe attributes or aspects of features (or associated to them) and have the same meaning across different features. To pick a few that also happen to be used on tourism=camp_pitch
drinking_water=yes|no
fee=*
toilets=yes|no
shower=yes|no
(among many more)
To my mind, backcountry=yes|no fits nicely into that category. Sure, it’s not as universally useful a toilets=yes|no, but few things are as useful as a toilet when you need one. But it still fits nicely as it describes an attribute of the main feature and that meaning is consistent, transferable, and easily understandable, across different types of features.
So that’s why for me it seems natural to re-use backcountry=yes|no for waterway=access_point outside it’s initial associated with tourism=camp_pitch
For context, we’ve been tagging backcountry=yes/no on waterway access points in the US and Canada as a way to tell if a canoe launch is accessible by road (or some equivalent transport). This is critical trip planning information, to distinguish places where you could start or end a journey versus places that are only accessible by boat or hiking. In some canoe wilderness areas there may be hundreds of waterways access points but only a couple that are “frontcountry”, and most maps would want to highlight these.
And the whole tagging for was devised two years ago somewhere? I am just curious, it kind of sprang out of the blue :-).
What are the criterion of how far you need to hike to get to the access point? On some rivers, especially those in canyons, you might need to walk dozens of meters up from the canyon to reach the road up in a valley. I would not call those backcountry really. Something in the backcountry should be kilometres away from the nearest road (that is the use of the tag with campsites).
If you mean the waterway=access_point tag? We developed it in the US to support comprehensive canoe mapping and routing. Some background here: Canoe & Kayak Trails | Wayside Mapping
As for backcountry tagging criterion, I don’t think we have anything strictly defined but something like this that’s a mile from the parking lot would probably still be backcountry=no since it’s a designated launch site.
So in practice, when you use backcountry=yes, it is typically only practically usable for packrafts and such? (non-typical cases would be using animals/helicopters/other boats in case of seas or big lakes to transport the boats)? It sounds to me like a good criterion. I am a packrafter myself, so I am somwhat interested in this :-).
The examples of waterway=access_point + backcountry=yes I always think of are the access points on either end of a portage in the backcountry. Some of these might not be accessible from a land based trailhead at all. Ones that you can hike to with a pack raft also make sense.
Ok, I edited the wiki for backcountry to reflect that the tag is now general. I added a more detailed mention about its use with access_point based on this conversation, you might want to review it and reflect it in the article on that (but maybe not necessary).
I also noted that it is used sometimes for amenity=shelter, which I guess is fine though I am not sure it really adds value. It is also used on tourism=camp_pitch, where it is redundant, but unfortunately the parent tourism:camp_site relation that should carry backcountry is often not present.