Hiking Trails Blogs

This is the Big Moment for those of us in the Everytrail Guides Authors Guild (created right here as of this moment, I suppose): Guides are now available on the iPhone (via Everytrail Free and Everytrail Pro).

I wish I could brag that I was the most prolific Guide author, but that honor goes to Stuart at Trailspotting, who has left the rest of us in the dust with guides for Hawaii, Lassen Volcanic National Park and a host of High Sierra locales.

This feels very much like the day back in about 1996 when I realized I could learn to create Web pages. Not like being present at the Creation or any such hype — just a sense of being part of something that was going to be huge.

I felt the same thing the first time I noodled around with my iPhone just two summers ago. When the founder of Everytrail dropped me a note last summer asking if I’d like to be a part of this plan to create location-aware, GPS-enabled travel guides, it took about a half-second to say “when do I start?” (didn’t hurt that my so-called newspaper career perished practically the same day).

In 10 years every amusement park, shopping mall and museum will be using this kind of technology to help people find their way (to the bathroom, mainly); it’ll be as second-nature as GPS guidance systems in cars.

Everytrail hopes people will pony up $1.99 for the privilege of using Guides on their iPhones. I can’t imagine outrageous fortunes flowing from that trickle of a revenue stream, but the technology is so new that nobody really knows where it’s going.

I have no illusions about the hurdles Everytrail has to overcome: I hiked every weekend for half a decade without once using a GPS unit, much less a GPS travel guide. Furthermore, the very idea of taking an iPhone into the wilderness is a huge conceptual leap: after all, it’s a cell phone. Why would you take it where there’s no cell service? Legions of inventors have seen their brilliant, world-shattering ideas wallow in obscurity — just because people can do something does not mean they will.

For now, though, it just feels good to be there at the start of something really cool.

Incidentally, these are my most recent Guides:

• Best San Francisco Day Trips — a bundle including Angel Island, the city waterfront, Marin Headlands and Bay Area scenic drives.
• 
  Great East Bay Day Hikes. Sunol, Briones, Mission Peak, Mount Diablo, Murietta Falls.
• Best strenuous hikes in the Bay Area. Berry Creek Falls, Murietta Falls, Mount Sizer at Henry Coe, North Peak at Mount Diablo.

The Guides project also has a couple new partners of note: Fodors, creator of many tourism guides; and Trail Kilkenny, with Guides to the land of my ancestors in the Emerald Isle.

So when do I start penning Guides on trails a bit closer to home? Soon, but I’d like to have hiked a trail at least twice before committing it to Guide status. I’m having so much fun finding new trails that it’s hard to get charged up about returning to places I’ve already been. If you’ve put up with me this long, a little longer won’t hurt.

I’m still contributing to the Guides project at Everytrail.com, which has signed up a half-dozen “partners” besides me to develop GPS-enhanced travel content. For now they’re nice resources for Web travelers, but in the future they’ll be available for download to iPhones and Android phones, so you can, for instance, track your progress up Half Dome (assuming the cables are up and you’ve reserved your spot).

Mine are all grouped at my partner page. Current count: 31. Other partners:

• KQED Quest — Science education at Bay Area outdoors locales.
• Trailspotting — Hikes in Hawaii, High Sierra, New Mexico, the Bay Area and more.
• Calipidder — Seven-part series on backpacking the High Sierra Trail.
• Modern Hiker — Trio of interesting Southern California hikes.
• Beautiful Places — Travels to Mount Saint Helens and Bryce Canyon National Park.
• Travel Savvy Mom — Reports from Paris.

I’ve done a half-dozen guides in the past two months. The highlights:

• Berry Creek Loop at Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
• Bay Area Backpacking: The best places for overnighters. Includes new guides for Angel Island, Henry Coe and Point Reyes.
• Best Bay Area Day Hikes — A bundle from Guides I had already written.

I still have a few more Bay Area guides to write; after that I’ll turn to hikes in the Carolinas and points nearby. Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited in the Park Service system, so it’s ripe for exploration and guide creation.

In the old days (like, last summer) the bane of guide-enhanced hiking was never knowing where you were, no matter how good the instructions might be. GPS-enabled smartphones could soon make that a thing of the past, though these gadgets are not quite ready for prime time in the outdoors — they can grab a GPS signal in open terrain, but they’re neither waterproof nor impact-resistant, and they turn a plum’s worth of battery power into a prune before you know it.

Still, there’s huge potential here. It’s fun to be batting in the first inning of this one.