Hike101.com – Outdoors just got easier

Just stumbed upon a new outdoor site, http://www.hike101.com/ , on another outdoor blog, http://www.outdoorvancouver.ca/2009/04/bcs-hiking-trail-conditions/ .

The site is split up into two main sections. The first is their money maker and it’s for their basic up to advanced outdoor classes. The starter course if free but the range from $40 to $80 after that. The courses mainly focus on map and compass navigation sans GPS. A good way to learn if you are new to it or just adding to your toolbox of skills.

The fun part hangs out in the live trails section.

Logging into the interface with Facebook connect, you’ll see a list of trails. That is what this site is about; trails, trails and more trails. The site currently only has trails listed for Canada and most of those are in BC. Alberta comes in with the second most at 305, with the rest of the provinces petering out to only a few each. 112 trails are listed on Vancouver Island. You get a table with the big list of trails and some quick information about them. Round trip length, Elevation, Number of Reports, Photo Albums, Date of Last Report and Result of Last Report.  You can add trails here or just add a report to existing trails

The result of last report is interesting. It shows red or green depending on if the last trip failed or not. Clicking into one of the trails, you get to see the detailed information about the trail(which isn’t much)  and a list of the reports from users. Most of the reports are fairly short, indicating the conditions of the trail. Very useful information but definitely lacking in anything fun. Many of the trails I looked at could be edited but didn’t have any information about directions or details about the trails. Tis a shame because they’ve got a good list going.

Click on the pictures of the users takes you straight to their facebook page. I would have thought they’d have some specs on the site and maybe a link to their facebook page within that. You can add pictures to reports from an album on picasa, flickr or facebook but no real way to search through them on the site. Easier said that done though, I guess.

Pros:

- There is a good list of trails there. The reports hold some valuable trail report information about the condition of the trails.
- The signup process and adding of photos is very easy.

Cons

- If you don’t have a Facebook account you can’t sign up.
- If you don’t have a  Facebook, Flickr, or Picasa then you can’t add photos. (minor issue, these services are all free to sign up for)
- There is no way to just search through users or photos. (I’m assuming they’ll add this in the future)