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canyonwalkerFor the past year or so I've been using AllTrails.com and its smartphone app for hiking. 
It's useful for choosing hikes, planning my trip, and checking a map in real-time as I hike.
I remember looking at AllTrails a few years ago and finding it not that useful. What changed since that early attempt were two things. First, the site & app got way more trails listed. It's like the network effect kicked in to provide ample content. Second, I found that the live mapping works even without 4G/5G signal. You can't search trails or load a new map, but if you had a trail & map already cued up, the app knows where you are and marks it on the map. This may be as much a change in the capabilities of the smartphone (i.e., location data without cell signal) as the app itself. The upshot is, once I figured out this trick the app is now a useful companion on hikes.
In addition to merely showing me my location on a topographic map, the app is able to create a breadcrumb trail of where I've hiked. I've enabled this tracking a few times, usually out of concern that if I don't the app will lose the map and I won't be able to see anything. One reason I don't do it more often is this....
This is a screenshot of the app's breadcrumb trail partway through my hike at Angel Falls yesterday. As is typical with these— see also, my hike at Rainbow Falls last September— AllTrails' breadcrumb trail makes it look like I'm drunk and lost, stumbling around. I mean, look at that crazy, back-and-forth path I walked in the screenshot above. It's like I'm Billy from The Family Circus.
Remember The Family Circus from newspaper comics years ago? It was one of the regular comics when I was a kid. And one of the tropes author Bil Keane would often draw was the wandering, dotted-line path young Billy would follow in going from Point A to Point B.
This example (above) is from 2016. Gosh, that's recent! I remember reading this comic in the Sunday paper back in the 1970s and 80s. I couldn't find an older one, but this newer one sums up the trope pretty well. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but it's the least interesting, too!
Keep reading: Up the mountain to Fresno Dome
It's useful for choosing hikes, planning my trip, and checking a map in real-time as I hike.I remember looking at AllTrails a few years ago and finding it not that useful. What changed since that early attempt were two things. First, the site & app got way more trails listed. It's like the network effect kicked in to provide ample content. Second, I found that the live mapping works even without 4G/5G signal. You can't search trails or load a new map, but if you had a trail & map already cued up, the app knows where you are and marks it on the map. This may be as much a change in the capabilities of the smartphone (i.e., location data without cell signal) as the app itself. The upshot is, once I figured out this trick the app is now a useful companion on hikes.
In addition to merely showing me my location on a topographic map, the app is able to create a breadcrumb trail of where I've hiked. I've enabled this tracking a few times, usually out of concern that if I don't the app will lose the map and I won't be able to see anything. One reason I don't do it more often is this....
This is a screenshot of the app's breadcrumb trail partway through my hike at Angel Falls yesterday. As is typical with these— see also, my hike at Rainbow Falls last September— AllTrails' breadcrumb trail makes it look like I'm drunk and lost, stumbling around. I mean, look at that crazy, back-and-forth path I walked in the screenshot above. It's like I'm Billy from The Family Circus.
Remember The Family Circus from newspaper comics years ago? It was one of the regular comics when I was a kid. And one of the tropes author Bil Keane would often draw was the wandering, dotted-line path young Billy would follow in going from Point A to Point B.
This example (above) is from 2016. Gosh, that's recent! I remember reading this comic in the Sunday paper back in the 1970s and 80s. I couldn't find an older one, but this newer one sums up the trope pretty well. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points, but it's the least interesting, too!
Keep reading: Up the mountain to Fresno Dome
