Hiking trail app, anyone?

[randomness]

Is there a Google Goggles sort of app for hiking trails? I would like to be able to look "through" the phone and see a brightly colored line the color of the trail blazes that indicates the trail route I am supposed to follow.

Some of the trails I've been on lately are really badly blazed. It doesn't help that last fall and winter was not kind to the trees and trails so some of the blazed trees are now flat.

As it is, I do a lot of backtracking and cursing.

Comments

[stolen_tea]

FWIW, I've heard that http://www.openstreetmap.org/ has some of the most accurate hiking maps out there.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

backpacking and cursing is an old tradition. ;)

actually, i'd be interested in seeing such an app, even though i couldn't use it. that'd be fricken neat, esp off-road.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

In addition to cursing, I also do a lot of loudly declaring to my hiking buddies and the heavens, "Whose idea was this, anyway?!?" when the idea was, in fact, my own or one I assented to.

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

I would also be interested if anyone knows of anything like that. However, I suspect the problem would be that in hiking trail-type parks, location tracking won't be quite fine enough to make it work well.

[istemi.livejournal.com]

Cautionary tale:

When I was hiking in the Fells I tried using a jpg map and google maps plus my iphone's GPS. It worked great ... except for the 60% of the time when I didn't have a good signal.

A good app would let you look at the map offline, like the good travel map apps do. I haven't found it either.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Having encountered similar problems, I am thinking about investing in good topo maps of areas I frequently hike. I think that hiking may be best suited to options that don't require connection to the internet. REI seems to have a selection of paper and cd-rom topo maps.

I'm also starting a "basic hiking class" at the AMC in Boston next week. I'll let you know if they have any suggestions.

[doctordidj.livejournal.com]

I'm sure my Native teachers would sneer at the idea of GPS, Google View, etc. for hiking. They discouraged paper maps, even. They were always urging us to use eyes, ears, and all other senses for situational awareness.

That said, my experiences in the Middlesex Fells indicate that such an app would not have enough GPS resolution to be useful. The tricky places where the trail is hard to follow are often within a few feet, and it can still be hard to figure out which is the real trail and which is a bogon.

In your defense, this time of year is the worst for following poorly marked trails -- after the snow has gone, before the undergrowth has greened -- everything's just brown and flat, and it can be quite difficult to find the trail.