Went Hiking, a hiking trip statistics logging tool, blog

[kylemeyer]

Hi folks,

http://cl.ly/6IhB/Screen_shot_2011-04-27_at_12.08.53_PM.png (http://wenthiking.com)

I made a free web app, Went Hiking (http://wenthiking.com), to keep track of hiking stats, reports, and photos for people that tend to do frequent short trips. It would also work well as a TrailJournal on steroids for someone hiking the AT, although nobody has used it for that yet. I'm really interested in any feedback anyone has.

The website was initially created for my own personal use. I have a full-time job as a web designer & developer, but take every opportunity to get outside and backpack. Last year, I started keeping track of my trips in a spreadsheet to see what my cumulative statistics were, mostly for fun, and partly to satisfy my obsessive compulsiveness.

Two months ago, I decided I could do better than a spreadsheet. I whipped up a really rough version of the site, and posted it to my local hiking site (http://www.portlandhikers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7041) to see if anyone else had interest in the tool. I've since made revisions based on their feedback, and while it's still not nearly complete, it is now a reliable tool for logging of trips and sharing them with others.

I'd really welcome any feedback you have. Please sign up and feel free to use the site—there's a lot more to be done with the data being collected geospatially, and GPS integration is coming soon.

Thanks!
Kyle

PS. As a bonus prize for reading, http://wenthiking.com/map is a fullscreen topographic map viewer. Right click anywhere on the map to view a pinpoint forecast for that area, and click "start drawing" to trace a hike you may want to do. The map will automatically calculate distance and elevation gain as you draw. I made this map to more easily plan trips for myself; I hope you like it!

[fredmugs]

Loading gpx track files would be great.

I don't know if it's possible but if you can take GPX files that someone else has already created for trails like the AT and PCT and then set it up so someone could point and click start and end points that would be really useful.

[Toli]

THAT is seriously awesome... Thanks...

[stephaniejmccloud]

Thank you for sharing this. I'm so glad to have a well-designed site to share my excursions. I made a tumblr blog to use as a trail journal because I couldn't stand to look at trailjournals.com, but I may even abandon that and move to Went Hiking...

Like Fred said, it'd be great if major trail were already present on the map, and you would pinpoint the total route taken, from start to finish of the hike.

[fredmugs]

I would also suggest looking at what is on postholer.com because right now he offers a lot more features and people aren't going to want to maintain journals in two different locations.

[kylemeyer]

Thanks for the feedback guys, and for everyone else who's signed up.

Gary / Stephanie: I am displeased you have bumped me from the #1 spots on the overnights leaderboard. You are forcing me to backpack more, curses! ;)

Fred: I understand Postholer does quite a bit, but which of those features do you find valuable?

I'll definitely be getting into GPX track loading and exporting, but I have to write my own parser in Ruby and I want to make sure it can handle all the goodies before it launches.

[fredmugs]

I like the fact that you can have text and location and a mileage summary and photos tied to that specific day all in one location.

But you still have to load all of that manually. I am the same as you in that I create an Excel spreadsheet before I go that shows distance between whatever points I want to throw in there. I also have a spreadheet that allows me to break out the trail into sections and then plan in dates when I think I will be able to accomplish them. The file can then show % completed.

I think where you could really surpass everyone else is having the entire trail loaded with lots and lots of waypoints. A section hiker like me could just make two clicks (start and end points) and it would display mileage, elevation profile, etc. That would be awesome and I think people would contribute to your site.

Halfmile setup tracks and waypoints on the PCT every halfmile (duh) and it was great being able to boot up my GPS on immediately know where I was at because the mile marker was clearly displayed on my unit.