Have you ever tried searching for hiking trails, mountain biking trails, or snow shoeing trails online?
Back in 2012, we built and launched a (then) brand-new website for client Al Walsh that made it much easier to find trails in the Fort Collins – Laramie – Cheyenne area called “JustTrails.”
(Note: Al and his wife have since moved away from the area and no longer maintain the site, but you can get a peek at what is looked like on Wayback Machine.)
The problem with existing hiking trail websites
Existing hiking trail websites are littered with ads, always trying to get you to sign up for something. Then when you get in, they don’t have all the information you need!
The problem with traditional hiking trail guidebooks
It’s a pain to take a whole book with you while hiking. My wife and I like to hike as well, and I would agree. We also find it’s a pain to hold a book open while you are on the trail.
The inspiration for JustTrails
When Al and his wife were looking for home rentals, they found a site that used a map search to locate homes. Eureka! Al’s vision was born to use a map search to find trail heads for hiking, then include very useful information in an uncluttered interface about the trails.
Al wanted to meet the needs of people who had a couple of hours and wanted to take a hike, and wanted to find a local trail. Thus was born JustTrails(dot)com.
To find a trail, one would go to the homepage where they could find a map and see icons where trailheads are. Zoom and pan, click on a trailhead name get a description and see the squiggly line of the trail.
More solutions from JustTrails
- If you’ve never been to the trail before, it’s often frustrating to find the parking area or trail head if the only information you have is written directions from a guide book. JustTrails included a photo of the parking area and a photo of the trailhead so you could know exactly what to look for to find the trail and get started.
- Short video reviews of each trail were also included so you could get a quick feel for the trail visually, and you could also hear Al describe some of the key features and views in less than a minute.
- Photos taken along the trail system were a feature! The key here is that Al has hiked ALL the trails on the JustTrails website. So hikers would find this visual log for every trail so they could really get a feel for it before they ventured out on their own.
Al has also used his GPS to map out the trail while he’s hiked it—and that’s the trail you see plotted on the map. It’s the actual GPS path of the trail, not the theoretical path of the trail from a map, it’s the real thing, where you actually need to go. You could also purchase the GPS track and download it immediately for just $2, then load it into your own GPS to make it super easy to follow the path, even on tails that are normally difficult to follow or not well marked. You never had to guess again which way to turn on a trail.
We built an e-commerce component into the website for visitors to purchase not just GPS track downloads, but also detailed trail maps. Once you had decided to hike a trail, you didn’t need to wait for a store to be open to purchase a clunky guide book. You could instantly download a high-resolution version of the tail you see on the website for just $2, print it out, and hit the road. You could easily carry this one sheet of paper with you while hiking the trail which also included driving directions, trail description, elevation facts, fees if any, list of activities approved (and which were recommended or not and why), dog information and more. For some trails you could also purchase weather-proof trail maps for just $3 + shipping, which would arrive by mail in just a few days.
Once you had made a purchase, you’d have a login where you could go back to re-download any the trail maps and GPS tracks you’d purchased in the past. One of Al’s key goals was to take very good care of his customers and all of the features of the website had his constituents in mind first.
Al and his wife Rebecca worked hard to build the community of the JustTrails website. All the trail pages allowed comments and their goal was to have people who hike the trails leave helpful information for other hikers so it became a true community resource containing current trail information.
Rebecca and Al blogged regularly on the site with lots of useful information about hiking gear, techniques, and trails. Their vision was for this to be a very useful site with resources for their visitors first, and for that community to support them by purchasing their extremely useful high-res trail maps, weather-proof guides and GPS tracks.
If you hike, mountain bike, cross-country ski or snowshoe in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming, you can still learn from Al and Rebecca, even though JustTrails has been retired. They’ve archived their blog posts and notes on their other website AwayFromTheGrind.com.