The 7 best outdoors apps for your iPhone
The great outdoors offer a lot of opportunities for adventures, from camping and backpacking to rock climbing and hunting. Whatever your pleasure, you should make your outdoor adventure safer and more fun by arming yourself with the tools and tips these seven apps offer any nature enthusiast.
MotionX GPS
One of the most important things to remember in the outdoors is to not get lost. MotionX GPS is a mere $0.99 on the App Store, and it provides you with a comprehensive and accurate GPS app for your iPhone. You can pick from 14 different sources, including road, terrain, satellite, and marine maps. You can also download as many maps as your iPhone will hold, for those times when you’re deep in the bush without cell phone coverage. MotionX GPS can save up to 2,500 waypoints and 300 tracks, so you’re sure to find your way in and out of the wilderness with ease.
Recreation.gov Camping – Find available campsites
When you’re looking for a great campsite in the U.S. National Parks or Forests, it can be confusing having to wade through all of the various websites for the different parks. Recreation.gov Camping is a free app on the App Store that brings all of the campsites at National Parks, Forests, and other Federal Recreation Facilities straight to your iPhone or iPad. You can check campsite availability for today or a future date, view photos to pick the best spot, and find out all the important information about the campsite. When you’re ready to reserve your spot, it’s just a touch away to the Recreation.gov website or to call the National Recreation Reservation System call center.
Knot Guide
If you are or were a Boy Scout, you might already know how to tie every knot known to humanity. Most of us, though, need a bit of help when it comes to figuring out which knot is best to use for a particular purpose and how to tie it. That’s where Knot Guide, available for free on the App Store, comes in. Knot Guide has more than 100 knots, and more are added regularly.
Classic Camping Cookbook & Meal Planner
Coleman’s Classic Camping Cookbook & Meal Planner is available for free from the App Store, and it should be a required download for planning your next overnight or week-long stay in the great outdoors. The app contains a wide variety of recipes from Coleman and others, and it allows you to plan the perfect meal based on food type, category, and ingredients. You can quickly and easily build your meal plan and shopping list all from within this essential app.
Packing Pro
When you are preparing for your outdoor excursion, you want to make sure you and your party bring everything you need. There’s nothing more frustrating to me than making the three hour drive to Hocking Hills, spending two hours setting up camp, and then realizing that I need to make another trip into town to purchase essential, but forgotten, supplies. That’s where Packing Pro comes in, available for $2.99 on the App Store. Packing Pro not only allows you to build a checklist of the things you’ll need for that camping or hiking trip, but it has a number of templates to get you started. Packing Pro is also full of other features, like keeping track of the weight of your backpack and sharing your list with others in your group.
Spyglass
This fantastic toolkit is available for $3.99 on the App Store, and brings to your iPhone too many features to list here: binoculars, angular calculator, rangefinder, heads-up display, military grade compass with maps, and much more. Spyglass is probably one of my favorite all-in-one outdoors apps, because it has so much to offer. I can quickly and easily switch from the tactical GPS receiver to a sun, moon, and star finder, all while saving waypoints on the map for navigation later with a real-time augmented reality display.
Army Survival for iPad/iPhone
Of course, mishaps can happen when you’re hiking or camping, and you can find yourself in life-threatening situations. Knowing how to survive is crucial, and the U.S. Army knows better than most how to train their personnel to survive. Their field manual is the most authoritative guide on survival, and Army Survival for iPad/iPhone provides the complete reference guide on basic survival, first aid, evasion, and recovery information. Available for $1.99 from the App Store, Army Survival for iPad/iPhone is one of those programs that should definitely be on your Home screen.
All of these apps are beneficial to outdoor enthusiasts, so make sure you check them out along with other recommendations from our articles about programs for adventuring. Better safe than sorry.
