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Comment by gorbypark | Hacker News Reader

I use Organic Maps for hiking specifically because it's not a "hiking app". There are way too many apps out there that expect you to just hike a trail that someone else has already hiked. Want to combine intersecting trails? You're out of luck. Want to use a trail you didn't explicitly pre-download without a data connection? You're out of luck

But with Organic Maps, I find it has all the trails (at least on two separate one and a half month hiking trips in Andorra), and since they're all included with the base data, you can mix and match trails and do whatever you want.

Pain points: The search isn't so great, there's a lack of names for trails and no real way to tell the "grade" of a trail. It could be a super easy walking path or some barely marked scramble.

But overall I love it and it's way better than the commercial hiking offerings (WikiLoc, AllTrails, etc)

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You can tell the grade of a trail by doing Route To / Route From and selecting the walking option. After computing the route it shows you a fairly accurate elevation profile, as well as the length and total elevation gains/losses.

If you're using imperial units, you can also quickly estimate difficulty by doing the following:

- take the total elevation change, in hundreds of feet, eg 900ft = 9 * 100ft

- take the total distance, in tenths of a mile, eg 2.1 mi = 21 * .1 mi

- divide the elevation by the length and convert to a percentage: 9/21 ~ 43%

- grades are like so:

0-40%: relatively easy

40-70%: moderately big elevation, may be hard to sustain

70-100%: steep terrain, may involve some scrambling

>100%: very steep, technical terrain. Sometimes involves ladders or a static line in particularly steep sections

For example, there's a pretty lengthy trail near me called Shining Creek, that's very sustained, but I wouldn't call it steep. It's got 2300ft of elevation change over 3.9mi, which corresponds to a 58% steepness, aka the upper end of a moderately difficulty hike if sustained.

The elevation profile is great, for sure, but I meant more like...difficulty, rather than grade? I don't know the exact word to use, but sometimes you have well used, well marked trails and other times you have a "trail" that maybe gets used a few times a year and is more like a choose your own adventure with a rock cairn or two every couple hundred meters if you are lucky.

Ah, I see! I'm not sure if OSM data can have that information, but it would be great! Some kind of bushwhack out of 10 rating?

OSM does have that data, and I've noticed that mapy.cz takes it into account. There are sac_scale [1] and smoothness keys [2]

1. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sac_scale

2. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness

sac seems a little too broad to me; most trails would be level 2 or below, without communicating much more than a simple elevation profile already gives you.

I think Komoot uses openstreetmap and is a little more hiking oriented, that might be useful to you.

It does not really say if any areas are exposed though. You can have near flat elevation but a very exposed path.

There's a topo layer in Organic! Close lines means (potentially) lots of exposure. That's not a silver bullet, though, as sometimes the topo shows nothing special, but when you get there you can have some exposure. For the cliffs in my area, there's also different shading and a line with triangles poking out in the direction of the fall line. So as long as you're hiking in places that are somewhat popular, you will have this extra info to rely on.

Doing true exposure on a per-segment basis would mean a new key I think, not to mention how much additional data this would require for the maps. If you're worried about the terrain to the point of needing highly detailed topo maps, it's probably better to get one of the many such maps in AllTrails (though the app is rather clunky)

As with all things outdoors, technology will only ever get you so far. Situational awareness and emergency preparedness are skills you should have if you're going somewhere you've never been before. Always prepare for more than you expect, and if you're not sure that you're prepared once you get to somewhere sketchy, it's always best to turn back.

Just wanted to add my experience with Organic Maps.

I used it extensively this year, mainly because it has hiking and bicycle paths that are not marked at all on Google Maps.

It works off-line. This is so valuable to me, especially when hiking.

One time I was lost deep in a mountain/forest, and the app found a GPS signal to show my location and direction, saving me from unexpectedly spending the night (for which I was not prepared). I suppose any map app is capable of this, but I was so glad.

It's also capable of giving directions.

And, unlike Google Maps, I can trust that the app is not collecting and misusing my location data.

Of course, as an open-source project, there are some rough edges. I have GMaps installed just in case, and on a few occasions I had to resort to using it. But I was pleasantly surprised by Organic Maps, so far it's my favorite mobile app for maps.

Please write us more details about search issues at support [at] organicmaps.app, or even better, create/update an issue on our Github: https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps/issues

If trails have names in osm.org but names are not present in OM, please let us know, it's a bug.

Will do! I am pretty sure the trails where I hike (mostly Andorra) are just not named is OSM. I thought about trying to update some myself, but there's a lot of overlapping trails, so it would be tough to get right. For example big stretches of the same trail might be both GR-7 and GR-11 and also a local Andorran trail number. I'd rather not do it than do it and get it wrong!

I use MapOut for that purpose. I believe it also has OSM base data and allows you to draw your own routes. It provides elevation gain and loss, as well as a remarkably accurate time estimate for the hike taking into account elevation.

FWIW AllTrails is pretty good, they will only show specific "known" routes in the search, but the underlying map data itself seems to be OSM data and everything is visible on the map. I tend to use it to find interesting trailheads and locations, but then I actually use Organic Maps when I need to navigate.

Mapy.cz

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