The Problem With Hiking Apps

In the old days, most people found trails and other places by word of mouth or just getting out there and exploring. It was easy to find quiet spots, and there was an unspoken understanding that some should stay secret, known only to those who stumbled across them. Today, with outdoor recreation more popular now than ever before, finding a place to hike, bike, or run is just a few clicks away. For better or worse, trail apps are here to stay.

Apps facilitate access to recreation for all abilities, which can be both helpful and problematic. For experienced outdoorspeople, apps are little more than a reference guide, but for beginners, they become a navigational tool. The rise of the use of technology in the outdoors has increased access for all walks of life, but it’s also led to a whole host of new problems, including overcrowding, vandalism, and blind trust in potentially inaccurate information.

Where Trail Info Comes From

The majority of information on trail apps is user-inputted, meaning anyone can name a trail anything they want, even if it’s inaccurate. As a result, apps are often full of errors and misnamed places, including:

• Unsanctioned trails
• Trails that don’t exist
• Inaccurate trail and place names
• Forest service roads labelled as trails

There’s little oversight and accountability. Even websites dedicated to trail guides often feature misnamed locations without confirming a place’s name or whether a trail is sanctioned. Some platforms claim to verify information, but the number of inaccuracies suggests otherwise.

The most reliable trail information comes from official sources, such as BC Parks, National Parks, Recreation Sites and Trails BC, and other websites. However, these sources are often scattered around the web and are not user-friendly. There simply isn’t one place on the web with comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date trail information.

There is also little to no information on most apps and websites as to who manages a trail. If there’s a problem with downed trees, washouts, or other maintenance issues, users don’t know who to report it to. Some apps like Trailforks do have associations and clubs managing regions on the app (including links for donations), but this is the exception rather than the rule.

Why Correct Information Matters

Mistakes on trail apps can lead to inconsistent wayfinding on the ground and with official maps. Unfortunately, once a trail is misnamed online, the error replicates across the web, making it difficult to correct.

Misinformation can lead to safety concerns. There have been many cases where people have had to be rescued after following a nonexistent trail on Google Maps. Problems also arise when people rely on apps for trip planning without looking at additional resources. A new problem cropping up is the use of AI. While AI is useful as a search engine, it can pull outdated and inaccurate information from the web.

What’s in a Name?

Incorrect place names are widespread in hiking apps. Since users can input whatever name they like for a place, many trails and even some mountains have been misidentified, leading to the erasure of cultural, historical, and personal identity.

Some names fade not because people stop using them, but because they were never written down in the first place. Locals have longstanding names for places that you’ll never find in an app, brochure, or government map. These pieces of local knowledge are slowly being overwritten by apps that favour crowd-sourced information over community memory.

Forest service roads are often misrepresented as recreational trails. This is problematic because these roads are primarily used for industrial purposes. Mislabelling can lead to unsafe interactions with active logging and blasting operations.

Why does it matter if a trail or mountain is misnamed? Well, it’s just plain rude, that’s why. Trail builders get first dibs on naming their trail, and there is often a story behind the name. Renaming erases community memory and history.

Does that sound familiar? Read on.

Indigenous Place Names

Some might consider it hypocritical to complain about changing place names that may have already replaced traditional indigenous names. Even official sources don’t always check whether a place has an existing indigenous name.

First Nations historically did not have a written language. Instead, information was passed down orally, through stories. Many stories were attached to the landscape, and the names of those places equalled knowledge. The land was alive through stories.

When you lose the name of a place, you lose the story.

Colonial naming practices effectively erased First Nations’ identity and knowledge from the landscape. Because so much First Nations knowledge has been lost to time, epidemics, and persecution, it’s incredibly important to retain what is still known.

Most people will welcome places being changed to their indigenous names, but with a caveat: they want to be able to pronounce them. This isn’t so much a problem with the way languages are structured as a lack of access to pronunciation guides. There currently isn’t any centralized resource for the average person to learn which languages are being used in their region and how to speak them. Many people very much want to learn.

Putting indigenous names into widespread use can help with reconciliation and keeping cultural identity alive.

When Trails Meet Hiking Apps and Social Media

The rise of hiking apps and social media has led to overcrowding and damage to many trails. The problem often isn’t the traffic itself, but rather the quality of the traffic. Most experienced outdoorspeople know to follow Leave No Trace principles. Inexperienced users are one of the main culprits driving damage to these areas.

The platforms driving traffic to trails usually contribute nothing to their maintenance. High traffic causes extra wear and tear to trails. It is volunteers who continually repair trails and clean up damage, and in most areas, there simply aren’t enough volunteers to go around. Most platforms don’t even have links to donation pages. The number of dollars donated to trail groups by platforms profiting from driving traffic to trails? Virtually zero.

The Anti-App Hiking Club

Online debates between app users and their critics are often polarizing. The anti-app faction thinks that the app folks lack essential skills and are putting themselves in danger. The pro-app people think the anti-app people are too dumb to know how to use an app.

Trained outdoor professionals are taught to never rely on technology for navigation, because it can fail. In fact, it should be expected to fail.

The problem with apps is that they don’t teach people navigational skills. Too many people blindly follow their screens in and out of the woods. Over-reliance on digital tools discourages essential learning like landmarking, orientation, and reading the terrain. We live in a world with knowledge at our fingertips, but being told everything (and in turn trusting that the given information is correct) is not a replacement for developing real-world skills.

Tips for Hikers: Avoiding Misinformation

If you do choose to use hiking apps, during your trip planning stage, you should:

• Cross-reference trail info with official sources.
• Consult multiple sources.
• Be skeptical of user-submitted difficulty ratings.
• Research trail history and conditions.
• Be adaptable if the trail differs from your expectations.

Ultimately, what it boils down to is this: hiking apps can be used for research, trip planning, and learning, but they should never be depended on. Working on essential navigational skills should be the goal of any new hiker. Nobody should be blindly following an app into the woods or up a mountain.