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10 Must-Have Smartphone Apps For Hikers

by Jessica Festa on

The summer weather is warm and beautiful, and pretty soon autumn will be bringing stunning fall foliage to our national parks and nature trails. What better activity to enjoy this beautiful scenery through than hiking? To help ensure trekkers are prepared before venturing off into the wilderness, here are 10 must-have smartphone apps for hikers.

EveryTrail

Looking to find a new hiking trail in your area? EveryTrail is the perfect app for you. This community-driven tool allows users to “share tips, connect with other travelers and find new great things to do.” It features over 400,000 trails around the world, including points of interest, reviews, useful information, audio and video for each. Additionally, EveryTrail provides directions to, from and along the trails. For example, after looking at “Half Dome Hike” in Yosemite National Park in the app, I now know a wealth of information, such as the hike is a difficult 15.7-mile trek that takes you to the signature landmark of the park. Furthermore, there is a set of included interviews with veteran hikers, a preparation list, inspirational messages, photographs and a video taken via a head-mounted camera.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free. U.S. Army Survival Guide

This app, which is called “Army Survival for iPad/iPhone” in the iTunes store, is something you should download before any outdoor adventure. There is information on how to find food and water, how to create a shelter, information on plant and animal identification and more. The tool has over 1,400 pages of information adapted from an actual military survival manual, so you know you’re in knowledgeable hands.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free on Android, $1.99 for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

MapMyHike

MapMyHike is a smartphone app that allows hikers to log their treks, get elevation information, create a hiking journal and share details via Facebook and Twitter. The tool uses GPS to note your location, then shows an interactive map that marks out your route while measuring duration, pace, heart rate, calories burned, elevation and speed. If you’re looking to increase your fitness, MapMyHike saves all your treks and tracks improvements.

Available on Blackberry, Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free.

Point de Vue

Are you the type of person who likes to hike high peaks, and wants to know more about the surrounding mountains? Point de Vue was created with you in mind. No matter where you are in the world, this smartphone app will supply you information for mountains that are within a 125-mile range of your current location. Unlike with similar apps, you won’t need to hold your phone in the air, and it even works in bad weather and indoors. Moreover, you’ll be able to download maps for any location in the world and search for summits, sorting them by elevation or distance. Point de Vue works both online and offline.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. $3.99.

ProCamera

Looking to take some high-quality iphoneography pictures? While you could stick with the free and popular Instagram, a more professional nature photography app is ProCamera. This user-friendly tool allows you to set the focus, exposure and white balance points when taking photos. Likewise, hikers can edit their photos afterward to adjust exposure, brightness, saturation, contrast and color temperature, as well as crop, filter and rotate pictures. What’s also great about ProCamera is you’re not just limited to still pictures, but can create superior videos, as well.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. $2.99.

GotoAID

You never know what could happen when you’re exploring the great outdoors. Even if you’re hiking an easier trail, sprained ankles, sunburn and choking on your mixed nuts are still possible. GotoAID tries to help prepare hikers for these unfortunate incidents with a smartphone app they can always have on hand. The app has three different tabs to separate treatments for humans, cat or dogs. Furthermore, a wide range of topics are covered, including respiratory, poisons, heat, cold, cuts/wounds, bites/stings, burns, breaks/sprains and serious emergencies. The app is created for the “non-professional responder,” meaning the app takes you through exactly how to respond in an emergency step-by-step.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. $4.99.

Simply Hike

If you’re in the market for some new hiking gear, Simply Hike is a great app. You can shop for outdoor gear right on your phone and have it delivered to your door. Search by department or just browse for the item, and you’ll be given product descriptions and photos for the merchandise. So, why would you use the app and not the website? Simply Hike gives special discounts and offers to app users.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free.

MyNature Animal Tracks

MyNature Animal Tracks is a handy app for identifying animal scat and footprints when hiking in North America. Images are extremely clear, with illustrations of both fore and hind feet, and detailed descriptions of track measurements, animal life cycles, gait patterns and even sounds clips. Moreover, the app includes a journal, and works both online and offline.

Available on Android, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. $6.99.

Leafsnap

Developed by researchers from Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian institute, Leafsnap makes use of visual recognition software to help hikers “identify tree species from photographs of their leaves.” How it works is every leaf photograph is matched to images in the app’s library using shape measurements and the leaf’s outline. From there, the best matches are returned to the user. Additionally, simply browsing the library can be an interesting virtual trip into nature.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free.

Mosquito Device

If you’re like me and get eaten alive no matter where or when you’re hiking, Mosquito Device is an excellent tool to have. The app emits a high-pitched sound that is harmless to humans, plants and animals but keeps mosquitos away. Just be careful if you have small children, as it can hurt the ears of youngsters.

Available on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Free.

Inside South Korea’s Boryeong Mud Festival

by Bradley Cohen on

A 6-hour bus ride with 40 intoxicated English teachers and a blowup dinosaur named Stanley is not where I wanted to be two days into my trip to South Korea. I was still jetlagged, and sleep was impossible with the back of the bus belting out 90s songs and discussing their favorite sex positions. I imagine no Koreans’ journey to the Boryeong Mud Festival, where I would soon willingly cover myself in mud, included this much morning noise, though, – considering South Korea’s love of all things adorable- perhaps it could have included a blowup dinosaur.

The Boryeong Mud Festival began in 1998 as a 4-day event to – according to the official website – “make the public aware of the superiority of Boryeong Mud” products, and has been held every July ever since. It’s grown larger each year, reaching a peak of more than 2.2 million people in 2011. On its 15th anniversary this year, it extended to eleven days: from July 14 to 24.

Reading articles about the festival or watching this amazing promo video, which informs viewers “parents, children, friends and lovers are having the time of their lives,” one would think this is a giant, muddy playground with supposed health benefits of the mud.

This is how the festival started, and it still seems to be a pretty accurate depiction for the Koreans coming to the festival. But in reality, Boryeong is a tale of two parties.

The festival takes place on Daechoeon beach in the town of Boryeong, about 200 km from Seoul. When I was there last weekend, the great divide, so to speak, between western and Korean parties, was almost literally drawn by a line in the sand. The Koreans were having wholesome family fun at the front of the beach, while the insatiably thirsty foreigners perpetuated the western stereotype in the plaza behind the beach.

At the front of the beach, Koreans buried each other in sand and did group exercises like mud obstacle courses and 3-legged races.

Meanwhile, the foreigners congregated at the plaza behind the beach, where they could rub each other with mud from basins and buy soju – Korea’s version of sake – and 1.5L bottles of beer from the convenient store for a few bucks. As soon as I saw large men sucking down beer bongs – an animal not native to Korea – I felt a bit guilty. I normally pride myself on getting off the beaten path, and this path had definitely been trampled long ago. Still, this wasn’t exactly as excessive as the full moon party in Ko Phangan, at which thousands of backpackers turn a gorgeous Thai beach into a debaucherous (albeit fun) cesspool.

My travels have also taught me to leave expectations at the door and embrace the moment, however, which is how I eventually found myself with a plastic bag of gin and tonic hanging from my neck and chowing down a chunk of soju-soaked watermelon.

Finally, as the day wound down, I convinced a new acquaintance to wrestle with me at the mud playground, a roped in area at the center of the plaza, which contained large inflatable mud slides, mud skiing and pools for mud wrestling, among other attractions. This, along with the music stage at the back of the beach, is where the two parties converged, and where one can really embrace the mud, letting it into every crevice of the body, where parts of it will remain for the next few days. And it is, as the marketing suggests, good clean fun – figuratively speaking.

Afterward, I danced myself clean at the back of the beach, where speakers blared K-pop and electronic dance music, and boys with massive hoses sprayed muddy water into the dancing crowd, often aiming for girls precariously balanced on top of men’s shoulders.

I don’t know if it was splashing around in a pool of mud – it dripping from my hair, my nose, my mouth – or if it was just the K-pop, but suddenly I began appreciating that I was in Korea. This might not have been off the beaten path, but there was still something that felt foreign about it – the U.S. mud festivals I’m aware of include big trucks and bikini contests in lieu of big slides and “mud physical training.” The addition of a few thousand English teachers among tens of thousands of Koreans didn’t make this festival any less Korean.

Leaving the center, a slight sting consumed my mud-covered body. Apparently that was the minerals doing their job. One festivalgoer assured me that “tomorrow your skin will never have felt so soft,” before rubbing more mud through my hair with the same promise.

In reality, the following day, the only difference I felt was the mud still caked in my ears and the soju forcing its way through my digestive system. But at least I managed to sleep off my jetlag the whole bus ride back.

The Boryeong Mud Festival is held every July at Daecheon Beach in Boryeong, South Korea. Buses leave daily from the Seoul Express Bus Terminal and the Dong Seoul Express Bus Terminal (two to three hours). There are also daily buses from Busan (four to five hours) and Daegu (two hours). Alternatively, contact the Korea Tourism Organization for package trips, as hotels can be hard to arrange (but beach camping is free if you have a tent).

Lost Maya Temple Discovered In Guatemala

by Kraig Becker on

Archaeologists have announced the discovery of a lost temple in the remote jungles of Guatemala. The 1600-year-old structure, which is part of a larger complex, is believed to have been located at the seat of power for El Zotz, a small but industrious kingdom in the Maya Empire.

According to National Geographic, the building was known as the Temple of the Night Sun and it was designed to leave a lasting impression, particularly on the nearby rival kingdom of Tikal. The temple’s outer walls feature 5-foot tall, intricately carved masks that represent the various visages of the sun god as he moves across the sky throughout the day. The faces include those of a shark, an ancient being that drinks blood and local jungle jaguars. If that wasn’t impressive enough, the faces were painted bright red so that they would stand out even from a great distance.

The temple, which is only 30 percent excavated so far, sits at the heart of a Maya city. Near by archaeologists also found a 45-foot tall Diablo Pyramid, a royal palace and what is believed to be the tomb of the city’s first ruler. As they continue the process of unearthing the site, they believe they’ll uncover other clues about how the inhabitants of El Zotz lived and why they decided to suddenly abandon the site sometime in the fifth century.

The video below gives an indication of the importance of this find and shares images from the temple itself.

[Photo credit: Edwin Romain, Brown University]


Exploring Orkney: Scotland’s Rugged Northern Isles

by Sean McLachlan on


In my school library in Canada, there was a curious old volume printed in 1909 called “The Orkney Book.” It was written for schoolchildren living in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland and told them about their land, culture and history.

This book fascinated me with its stories of Viking warriors and mysterious stone circles. I studied the grainy black and white photos of those remote islands and dreamed of going there. Last week I finally did.

Orkney, as Orcadians call their home, is a group of about 70 islands between the North Sea and North Atlantic. The exact number is a matter of dispute because in addition to the numerous inhabited islands, some with a population as low as one, there are many more uninhabited islands and skerries. When is an island really an island and not just a rock sticking out of the sea? I suspect this has been the subject of many long conversations in Orcadian pubs.

My wife, 6-year-old son and I landed in the tiny airport at Kirkwall, Orkney’s capital. With a population a little above 7,500, it’s not exactly a booming metropolis, but it does account for more than a third of Orkney’s population. What Kirkwall lacks in size it makes up for in history and character. In the broad harbor are moored numerous fishing and pleasure boats and a few larger vessels. Beyond can be seen other islands, green humps rising out of the gray sea.

Dominating the Kirkwall skyline is the 12th century St. Magnus Cathedral built of red sandstone. It was built in 1137 by Earl Rognvald, a Viking at a time when most Vikings were nominally Christian. He built it to house the remains of his uncle Magnus, who had become a saint after having his head split by an axe in traditional Viking fashion. Magnus had been an Earl of the Orkneys, ruling for the Norwegian king along with Magnus’ cousin Hakon, who was Earl of another part of Orkney. This co-rulership led to trouble and when Magnus and Hakon met to sort things out, Hakon betrayed him. Hakon didn’t want his own hands soiled by a kinsman’s blood and called on his cook to perform the foul deed. Soon miracles started happening around Magnus’ grave and he was proclaimed a saint.

Kirkwall also has an excellent museum tracing Orkney’s history from the surprisingly active prehistoric period to the modern day. There’s also a cool Wireless Museum filled with a huge collection of old radios; one from 1912 actually works and on another set you can practice your Morse code. My son was more interested in the old TV where you could play Pong, a video game from an era that must seem as remote to him as the Neolithic.

%Gallery-160901%Our next stop was Stromness, a half-hour bus ride from Kirkwall. As we got off and gazed over the cluster of gray stone buildings huddled around the harbor, my son asked, “Is this the other place they call a city?”

Well, after growing up in Madrid, I guess it doesn’t seem like much of a city to him, but with a little over 2,000 people it’s the second biggest town on the islands. It has a thriving artistic community and many artists display their work at the Pier Arts Centre. There’s also a large museum about the lives of the hardy local sailors, whalers, and explorers of days gone by. Many of the displays are of the things they brought back from their travels, everything from artwork from Niger and Greenland to whalebone scrimshaw and necklaces made from human teeth.

The highlight of our visit to Stromness was walking along the shore and around a promontory. Soon we left the town behind us and looked out over the cold waves. Seals popped their heads out of the water to study us. “Look, a seal! Look, a seal!” my son kept shouting as he spotted another and another. A few rocks became identified as seals too, and spotting more seals took on the uncertainty and excitement that adults generally reserve for UFOs. We clambered over the remains of a World War II gun emplacement, one of many on the islands, and admired the high hills of Hoy island, shown in the photo above.

Both Kirkwall and Stromness are on Orkney’s main island, which Orcadians call the Mainland even though mainland Scotland is barely twenty miles from its southern shores. For those wanting a base from which to get out and about on the islands, either of these two cities is a good bet. Many of Orkney’s top attractions are on the Mainland and Kirkwall and Stromness have regular ferry services to other islands. While we stayed in Kirkwall, my wife and I found Stromness more attractive. Its old architecture and quieter streets had a more traditional feel.

We’d only been on Orkney for 24 hours and we were already hooked. I was looking forward to seeing the countryside and the smaller islands.

This is the first in my series “Exploring Orkney: Scotland’s Rugged Northern Isles.”

Coming up next: “The Heart of Neolithic Orkney!”

Protect Your Favorite Outdoor Places By Sharing Your Photos Online

by Kraig Becker on

Clif Bar, a company known for creating tasty and nutritional energy bars, has launched a new initiative that invites us to share our favorite outdoor or travel moments online. The program isn’t just about posting pretty pictures on the Internet, however, as it also serves as an opportunity for us to protect our favorite outdoor places.

The company recently launched MeetTheMoment.com, which serves as the hub for this new program. Visitors to the website are encouraged to upload images that best encapsulate their favorite outdoor adventures and share details of what made that particular moment so special. For each image that is uploaded, Clif Bar will then donate $5 to one of five non-profit organizations that focuses on protecting our outdoor spaces. Visitors to the site are also encouraged to share their favorite images on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and each time they do another $1 will be donated to the organizations. The non-profits that will be the recipients of those donations include the Access Fund; International Mountain Bicycling Association; Leave No Trace; Surfrider Foundation and the Winter Wildlands Alliance.

The program runs through the end of October, at which time a panel of judges will examine the 25 moments that were shared the most often. Their selection of the best overall moment will determine a grand prize winner who will have an additional $10,000 donated to the non-profit of their choice in their name. They’ll also receive a year’s supply of Clif Bars too!

This is an incredibly easy way to not only share your favorite travel or outdoor adventures with others but also generate some cash for five organizations that work hard to keep our favorite outdoor places healthy and pristine. I can’t think of a much better cause than that.