I recently received an ad on Instagram for AllTrails (nice targeting job by the marketing team). As I was curious to see more information about the Mt. Seymour hike that I did on my last trip to Vancouver and I am planning to increase my hiking this summer with a trip to Bruce Peninsula, I downloaded it.
AllTrails allows you to search for trails, see reviews, photos and activity recordings. It’s website boasts that it has 60,000+trails and 10 million explorers. The app is free but has a premium paid version with more features ($2.50/month or $99.99 for one lifetime payment).
The app has standard, easy to use features and allows you to search for trails through a variety of filters, including length, rating and difficulty level. Each trail has photos and reviews provided by the community, as well as a map of the trail.
As this appears to be a crowd-sourcing model to fill in the information about the trails, some trails may have more information then others. For instance, when I compared two trails on Mount Seymour, the Mount Seymour Trail had a description, waypoints, tips, contact and weather section, whereas Pump Peak only had weather information. However the information provided for Pump Peak was accurate detailing the route, elevation and distance. AllTrails also provides driving directions to the trailhead, a feature I appreciate as I have definitely spent some time driving around lost in Gatineau Park.
AllTrails also lets you record your activity, which can be shared injunction with the trail profile giving users an idea of the time length of a particular trail (however some users indicate an issue in consistency with this feature). These stats can also be shared with other users providing a social aspect to the platform. I currently don't use any type of fitness tracker so having the recording feature on would have been interesting to track my progress up Pump Peak (as I had been hibernating in Ontario for the past couple of months it was a rather rude awakening).
A key disadvantage is that the free version does not allow you to download or print the maps. This means your device would have to maintain its’ charge for the duration of your hike and you would need to be using data. I like the accessibility and simplicity of the app (as I am by no means a hard core backpacker and not doing long, extensive trips – for this I hear Gaia GPS is the way to go) and could see myself using it to plan day trips.
What do you think? Have you tried AllTrails? Is there a better or different app that I should use to plan my trip to Bruce Peninsula?