Blue View - Best Routing Apps for Trekking

When you need to find the fastest or shortest route to get from Point A to Point B, it’s hard to beat Apple Maps, Google Maps or any of the other available smartphone apps. I’m always amazed at how they know which streets are one-way, or that you can’t make a left turn at the next intersection, or that there’s a speed change in the road ahead. Sure, they do lead us astray from time to time… I remember a tow truck driver in Wyoming telling me that Google Maps was the greatest boon to his business ever, directing dozens of hapless tourists down a particular four-wheel drive road in the area, but in general, these apps do an amazingly good job.

Most smartphone mapping apps are also great when you’re walking and want to find a route from your parked car to that Tex-Mex restaurant you’re heading to, but they aren’t always ideal for following a rural trail. Their databases may be quite extensive for roads, but they are much less complete for trails and paths.

Apps made for hikers and bikers

There are several apps that are specifically aimed at hikers and bikers, however. I’ve tried most if not all of them, and my favorites are All Trails and Trail Link. Both allow you to search for trails in your area or search for trails by name. Once a trail has been downloaded, your progress is shown as you walk or bike along it, even if you lose cell coverage. Both have their pros and cons, however.

Trail Link has a better user interface, and the trail routes are updated more frequently to reflect detours and closures. Its biggest negative is that it has no scale of miles. As you zoom in or out on the route, you’re never sure whether you are looking at 0.2, 2.0 or 20 miles.

All Trails seems more clunky to use, and we’ve encountered a few trail errors with it. On the other hand, it does have a scale of miles, and it also has an elevation gain and loss profile for each trail. In addition, All Trails seems to be better at showing other connecting trails, which is nice when you are doing a long trek involving two or more trails.

We use both, but I give All Trails a slight edge.

Another app we really like and use frequently is Maps.me. This app allows you to download a local map when you have an internet connection and then use it later when there’s no cell coverage or internet access. No matter where in the world we’ve been, whether we were exploring Devil’s Island off French Guiana, St. Helena in the South Atlantic or Ushuaia in Patagonia, we were able to download a detailed local map.

Once a map is downloaded, Maps.me provides the same features of most navigate apps, like search for a place, then generate a route to it, or list restaurants near me. In addition, the app allows you to use the smartphone touchscreen to add waypoints or ‘saved places’ anywhere on the map. These waypoints can be used to generate complex routes or calculate distances.

We used the app extensively when we were hiking across Europe on the Via Francigena. When planning the next day’s route, I’d plot the starting point, the ending point, and as many intermediate waypoints as necessary to make sure we stayed on the route and didn’t get lost, then let the app generate the route. Maps.me would also calculate the distance we’d be walking, and if it was more than the 15-20 miles we could reasonably walk in a day, I would look for a closer destination.

We use a similar approach with our bike trekking. If the trail is good, we can do about 35-40 miles a day, round-trip. Using Maps.me, I can usually find a parking spot along the trail less than 20 miles from where we left off the day before. I place a waypoint at the parking spot, and use the app to generate a driving route from our campsite to the parking place. Once on the trail, we usually use All Trails or Trail Link to follow it and track our progress. Often, however,  we need to find a detour around a trail closure or make a transition between two trails, and that’s when Maps.me is stellar.

Cost

Here’s the cost of each…

All Trails: Basic Version - Free; Pro Version - $29.99

The Basic Version does most of what we need, but doesn’t allow downloading maps… you can only use when there is adequate cell coverage. We upgraded to the Pro Version.

Trail Link: Basic Version - Free; Unlimited Version - $29.99

The Basic Version doesn’t allow map downloading, nor does it show your progress along the route, two key features.

Maps.me - Free

It used to be $2.99 a few years ago when I first bought it, which I still thought was a bargain.

Next week’s blog is a bit off the wall. See you then…