Every map tells a story. The thin curved lines that trace the shape of mountains, valleys, and ridgelines aren’t just cartographic decoration — they’re data. Dense contours mean steep terrain; widely spaced ones mean gradual slopes. Read a topo map well enough and you can feel the land before you ever set foot on it.
My own fascination with maps started years ago, wrestling with ArcGIS to make backpacking maps for a Scout trip for Cache Creek Wilderness. Back then, tools like CalTopo weren’t on my radar, and National Geographic TOPO! software was out of my budget. I managed to hack together a basic map, but it was an agonizing amount of work for mediocre results.
When I gave it another shot a few years later, the ecosystem had completely changed. I discovered the incredible wealth of open spatial data. Many tutorials and blogs helped to guide me through the process.. Armed with QGIS, OpenStreetMap (OSM) extracts, and USGS digital elevation models, the process finally clicked. While still a process, the maps came together much more like I had imagined
What finally brings me to write this blog, however, is frustration. The tools we use to navigate the outdoors seem to be making increasingly bad UX decisions. AllTrails has a massive database, but a hostile user experience. Every time I send a trail link to a friend, I have to apologize for the forced logins and pop-ups. I find myself defaulting to CalTopo. It’s an incredible tool, but it is intimidating and not good for trail discovery. For many people, it also won’t answer the important questions: How hard is this hike really? What do recent trail reports say? Where are the scenic viewpoints along this specific route? What are the current conditions?
There is a massive gap between the locked-down, ad-heavy UX of mainstream apps and the cold, technical interface of advanced mapping tools. I want to build something that sits right in the middle.
I’m starting this blog to document my journey to build a better trail discovery service. Thanks to the current landscape of open data and modern processing tools, I believe this is something a solo developer can tackle without it becoming a multi-year slog. (Or maybe I’m naive, and I’ll give up halfway through and go back to reluctantly sending out AllTrails links. We’ll find out together.)
What to Expect
While the mapping project is the catalyst for this site, it won’t be the only thing I write about. I have a professional background in machine learning, a love for outdoor photography, and a severe penchant for overanalyzing my hobbies.
- App Development: The architecture, code, and tools used to build a custom mapping app from scratch.
- GIS & Spatial Data: Wrangling OpenStreetMap data, managing elevation APIs, and utilizing remote sensing and satellite imagery.
- Track Processing: Parsing raw GPX tracks and creating rich data visualizations.
- Data Science & ML: Terrain modeling, analyzing elevation profiles, and using machine learning to classify trail difficulty or extract insights from trail reports.
- Environmental Context: Integrating weather patterns, snowpack data, and wildfire risk into outdoor mapping.
- On the Trail: Photography and practical insights from the trails I am hiking.
Let’s get started.