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

[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.