Have you ever laced up your boots on a sunny Saturday morning and headed to the trailhead for a day of hiking, only to find the parking lot completely full?
Or maybe the parking lot is empty…because the trail is closed for maintenance. Or you brought your dog along and discovered dogs are not allowed on this trail. Wouldn’t it have been nice to know all this before driving to the trailhead?
Brian Lackey of Outdoor Interactive saw the need for real-time trail updates, so he came to us with the idea to build an iOS app called TrailMate. The app shows all the trails within your 50 mile radius, but more importantly, it displays trail statuses like open/closed, handicap accessibility, dog/horse/bike restrictions, parking lot capacity, snow/mud conditions, and current maintenance. Not only does the TrailMate app show real-time trail statuses, it also lists useful stats like trail difficulty.
The TrailMate app is paired with a sister app used by park rangers; the rangers can update trail statuses during their daily park rounds. When the rangers update a trail, it shows on the TrailMate app, and they have the option to push the status change to the city or county twitter feed.
We always enjoy developing apps, but everyone in the Rocket Jones office is REALLY excited about this app, both as developers and as avid hikers and mountain bikers.
Here are a few screenshots of the app. (Click to enlarge)
Trail List
The list view shows the trails’ status at a glance with the color-coded bars and icons.
Trail Map
The app uses your device’s location to show trails within 50 miles, but if you want to look at trails inside a smaller radius or outside that radius, simply switch to the map view and zoom and drag to your desired area.
Updated List
Then click on the trail pin to see details, or switch back to the list view to see the updated trail list.
Trail Details
On the trail details page, you can see the level of snow, mud, or ice currently on the trail.