Is Alltrails suitable enough for route planning?

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applesaucebake
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Joined: January 17th, 2019, 2:43 pm

Is Alltrails suitable enough for route planning?

Post by applesaucebake » January 17th, 2019, 3:06 pm

Currently, I use Alltrails but haven't really gone on a big enough trip to warrant use of planning a route as the beta is usually straightforward in finding a trail. So I wouldn't really know the extent to Alltrails app usefulness or if its missing anything significant for people who do this stuff fairly often.

I am also looking at Gaia, and Hiking project but have not used any of them yet. Any recommendations?

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adamschneider
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Re: Is Alltrails suitable enough for route planning?

Post by adamschneider » January 17th, 2019, 3:47 pm

Michael ("aiwetir") and I have been fixing up a lot of the local trails on OpenStreetMap, using Strava's infallible heatmap as the source. So any mapping app/site that uses OSM data will probably be pretty good. (And feel free to ask us whether we've tackled any specific trail yet.)

sizzler
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Re: Is Alltrails suitable enough for route planning?

Post by sizzler » March 14th, 2019, 11:24 am

I've used both Alltrails and Gaia and much prefer Gaia with the yearly subscription for $20. Gaia just seems much more intuitive and has a good route planning mode. You can use these to navigate, just make sure that you have the maps downloaded otherwise it will be useless when you get out there. Also, when using your phone make sure that you have a backup battery or way to charge your phone as these apps will use a lot of battery when recording your location.

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aiwetir
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Re: Is Alltrails suitable enough for route planning?

Post by aiwetir » March 14th, 2019, 12:03 pm

I believe Alltrails and most of Gaia's maps are based on OSM. In Gaia, OSM is the basis if their custom maps, Mapbox, and Thunderforest. ESRI aren't but I don't think I've ever seen a trail on an ESRI map. Each map layer has attributions so check those to make sure it's OSM based. USGS in the Gorge isn't recommended (by me) too many errors.
- Michael

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