There exist many apps out there which are heavily used and are community-driven. As I’m a mountain-biker, I will focus on cycling apps here, but a similar hiking app would be AllTrails. What is Trailforks? Think of it as google maps for off-road biking. They call what they do a “crowd-sourced database”. They primarily aim to help trail users navigate trail networks, but also serve as an important tool informing governing bodies trail usage data which helps them justify funding trail network maintenance. This data also serves as a draw for tourism, with users easily looking up trail difficulties, network sizes, trail photos and videos, trail descriptions, and even trail reports. These reports are great indicators and user reviews of trails. I have found many trail reports stating that a trail has become overgrown or is in need of maintenance which tells me it’s not worth a ride. The NSMBA (North Shore Mountain Bike Association) uses trail reports to deploy full-time trail maintenance workers and volunteers to fix issures. It also serves as a notice to riders when maintenance closures may occur and the current snow line elevation.
Users of Trailforks are primarily on mobile devices, and it’s easy to contribute and create new trails in the app. This feature alone explains why trails have been mapped all over the world. There’s almost no way an individual company could do this on their own, and many municipalities aren’t interested in mapping trail networks like they are road networks. Simply record your ride through a new trail, and select the portion of your ride from which you’d like to create this new trail, and add a trail description. For moderation, Trailforks relies on users to “report” illegal trails and has some built-in black-out zones which are known to contain illegal trails. This heavy reliance on user data, user moderation, and user coordination is a great example of mobile culture at its finest. Trailforks has also recently expanded into hiking, snowmobiling, horeseback riding, skiing, and dirtbiking, and is relying on users to populate its dataset of trails. Weekly I run into tourists exploring trails and using apps like Trailforks to navigate them. The impact on tourism is unquestionable.
Here’s a trail map of Squamish including COVID closures:
