Hiking apps

To you, it may be pricey, but to many who utilize it, this navigation instrument is priceless. That's because, in addition to the common option of satellite imagery, Gaia offers dozens of map overlays showing terrain, weather radar, parks, trails, hotels, national monuments, and other important points of interest. Better yet, these enhancements are downloadable for an area of your own selection, thus reducing the possibility of filling your iDevice’s precious storage space with irrelevant data. Lastly, a subscription to GaiaPro allows offline caching and opacity selection of multiple map layers, custom waypoint images, trip planning, and more.

Here we have another one of those multitools, providing various fundamental function and a few extras. In the significant feature category, MotionX GPS contains contains dozens of map types. From a simple street atlas to satellite imagery and nearly everything in-between, MotionX GPS has you covered. Information comes from several sources along with precise activity tracking and detailed statistics logging. For added convenience, the developers have decided to embed Facebook access to expand exporting and importing, LED activation for flashlight operation, music selection and playback controls, location-relevant and filtered Wikipedia entries, address searching, plus more.

By providing a great mixture of capabilities to plan, navigate, track, log, analyze and share, Trail Tracker certainly presents itself as one of the most well-rounded instruments in this group. For trip preparation and open referencing, there’s the free to explore Plain Map. This handily features a combination current location and direction indicator atop an easy to view and zoomable sketch-type graphics road map with bonus terrain depiction for mountainous areas and Google Street View-capable drop pin distance markers. To gauge performance and keep records, the app can actively track your route, speak progress data, and even allow retracing and side-by-side comparisons of captured journeys.

If you’re new to a region or simply desiring a different challenge and scenery, taking a figurative step into this guide is a good start. Once inside, you’ll notice that the app is elegantly refined and colorful, making it easy to discover new places to trek via a pinned map, vibrant listing, text searching, or trait filtering. Speaking of attributes and features, each overview includes a basic map, photos, total distance, elevation, estimated time to complete, allowed activities, noteworthy elements, overall user rating, and a difficulty grade, which is color-coded in the browsing and results listings. For extra helpfulness, there’s the ability to track your progress and performance as well as save, share, and mark trails as favorites.

Terra Map could be considered a less mature version of Gaia GPS; it doesn’t have quite the elegance or topography data. However, it is capable of tracking and logging routes and waypoints, capturing scenes using the iDevice camera as well as showing you trails, camps, parks, golf courses, elevation markings, and more on a colorful, hand-drawn-style street map or satellite view able to be stored for offline use. Additionally, your courses and tagged points of interests can be shared for others’ enjoyment.

As a combination weather station and activity tracker, WeatherRun does indeed provide a novelty efficiency. In fact, even the user interface has a dynamic design that stands out. All it takes is a quick drag-and-drop motion or a couple of presses on your Pebble watch to swap the measurement display, always having one gauge emphasized for better clarity. Optionally, in-app, there’s map view, offering the common, classic road atlas, satellite imagery, or hybrid view. Disappointedly, the creativity is marred by a few glitches, some unintuitive commands, and a lack of polishing details, such as the inaccuracy of estimated calories burned because the BMI equation lacks the person’s height.

As one of the App Store’s longest standing activity trackers, RunKeeper has matured quite nicely, progressively refining its appearance and functionality. Plus, its developers have teamed up with other software and hardware developers, including Pebble. Just to give you some insight, the app features various outdoor activity support, spoken action and stat updates, live tracking on a free to explore plain street map, optional goals input and progress display, as well as multiple social network integration and personal feeds. Basically, it’s an amazing fitness assistant, which is only partially helpful when trekking the more brutal back country.

This is for those hardcore hikers in the United States, or anyone willing to travel. As the name quite clearly indicates, Summit Seeker helps you reach the pinnacle point, or rather every highest achievable point of each state. Courtesy of Wikipedia, each summary includes a photo as well as key and captivating details, such as crest and a comparison to other famously massive mountains, which gets cached for offline viewing. In addition, location verified check-ins allow you to claim and share your victory. In the big picture, there’s not much here a person couldn’t obtain through a good Wiki client, but that doesn’t mean this handy tiny guide doesn’t deserve a spot in your hiking app pack.