Acquisition Makes AllTrails the Most Comprehensive Resource for Outdoor Enthusiasts to Discover, Plan, and Record Their Activities
San Francisco, CA (Aug 16, 2016): AllTrails, the most extensive online guide to the outdoors, announced today the acquisition of EveryTrail, the GPS-enabled publishing platform. Both organizations have been recognized as innovators in the outdoor industry and were founded with the goal of making the outdoors more accessible to all.
EveryTrail users will be able to seamlessly sign in to AllTrails.com with their their existing EveryTrail account info and will find all of their EveryTrail trip content intact and automatically imported to AllTrails within 24-48 hours of logging in.
“Technology can help people connect with the outdoors in simple ways, like making it easier to find your new favorite trail,” explained Jade Van Doren, CEO of AllTrails. “Instead of using paper maps for researching and following on the trail, we provide a fun, end-to-end digital experience that’s tailored to every person’s interests and skill level.”
By adding EveryTrail’s user-generated trail data, photos and trips to its current data, AllTrails increases its lead as the largest platform dedicated to helping people safely explore and enjoy the outdoors. With a combined community of over 4 million hikers, trail runners, and mountain bikers sharing their experiences, AllTrails has the most up-to-date information about trails and trail-related activities.
AllTrails acquired EveryTrail from TripAdvisor, which had owned the company since 2011.
About AllTrails AllTrails helps people explore the outdoors with detailed trail maps, photos, and reviews crowdsourced from a community of 4 million registered hikers, mountain bikers and trail runners. AllTrails has the #1 Outdoors apps for iOS & Android with more than 3 million mobile downloads and reaches 15 million people each year through alltrails.com.
Even in the smartphone era, being able to print paper maps remains an important feature of AllTrails Pro.
Heading into the backcountry, AllTrails Pro allows you to save maps to your phone for offline use (GPS works even if you cannot get a cellular signal) but paper maps offer an extra margin of safety, and for certain key use cases, such as Search & Rescue (SAR), they are essential.
Right from the start, we’ve offered the ability to print maps on-demand from the comfort of your home with a large range of scale options. However, the scale options provided by digital maps through services like Bing or Google maps don’t match up with traditional scales such as 1:24k, 1:50k, etc. An even bigger problem for people who like to use a map & compass is that digital map scales change with latitude so the scale changes drastically as you move north or south.
For communities such as Search & Rescue, we’ve had a lot to requests for precise scaling of printed maps that coincide with more traditional USGS map scales (i.e. 1:24k). One additional benefit of exact scale printing is that you can use measuring tools (rulers and compasses marked with scale distances) to quickly calculate distances and plot your course. These tools rely on the fact that, for example, on a 1:24k scale map, a 1 mile distance is 2.64” on the map.
Announcing Exact Scale Printing!
In addition to our full range of approximate scales, now when you print a map in AllTrails Pro you can chose from four exact scale options: 1:24k, 1:25k, 1:50k, and 1:100k. When you chose one of these, the map is resized precisely to match the desired scale no matter what area in the world you’re trying to print.
We’ve also added an option for showing the maps with a NAD27 or WGS84 datum grid, which are definitions of the shape of the Earth that differ only slightly, but enough for it to be crucial to some of our power users (again, we’re looking at you Search & Rescue).
The scale (and datum) of the map are now always, next to the scale length bars:
Now it’s time to get out there with an exactly scaled printed map and your favorite map tool.
We launched AllTrails more than 5 years ago to revolutionize the outdoor recreation experience. The release of Map Editor last year was a major step in simplifying the trip planning experience and the launch of our AllTrails Outdoors map earlier this year gave access to one of the most comprehensive outdoors maps on the planet, providing the best coverage of trails worldwide.
All that hard work has lead up to this moment and today we’re excited to announce the launch of some game changing improvements to Map Editor.
Say goodbye to having to click point-by-point to meticulously draw the trails you want to follow. The new Draw Route tool allows you to select any trail segment from the AllTrails Outdoors map with a single click and plan multi-day trips in seconds by automatically routing you between your start & end points.
All you have to do is hover over the hiking and biking trails to highlight them, and when you click the best combination of trails to get you to your destination is calculated instantly. It’s deceptively simple but it may very well be the most powerful tool you’ve ever used to plan your adventures. You know what they say, “with great power, comes great responsibility”.
After firing up Map Editor, select the Draw Route tool and then click the first segment to start your route. You can then click on additional segments to continue adding them to the route or skip way ahead to where you want to go and Map Editor will automatically connect the segments by finding the best path between them. Full video here.
As with all our maps, you can view the length and elevation profile of the route as you build it and once you’re done you can easily share your map with friends, print it, export it, or sync it automatically to your phone for offline use:
“There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by.” – John Steinbeck
A good map can be put to many uses. For AllTrails, our communities of hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners, paddlers, etc. each have slightly different needs in a map. We have tried to meet these needs by offering a choice of map types (often called map layers) across our website and apps. These include the familiar types Road, Satellite, and Terrain, plus some more specialized options such as “OpenCycleMap”.
Using these maps ourselves, and hearing feedback from our members, we realized that while each has their strengths, no one option was ideally suited for the outdoors, especially when compared to some well designed paper hiking or topo maps. Paper maps have many downsides – size and weight, cost, being out of date, no “You are Here” GPS dot – but after decades of evolution they include just the right amount of relevant information for the outdoors enthusiast. We saw the need to create an ideal trail map for the digital age.
AllTrails meets Mapbox
Around the same time, a relatively new online map tech company, Mapbox, was starting to gain some major customers, including some relevant to us such as the National Park Service (NPS). In 2013 the NPS worked with Mapbox to create an online version of their classic park maps, and using the Mapbox tools they were able to reproduce the “look” of the paper maps in the sort of online mapping experience people now expect. We were also impressed by Mapbox’s own “Outdoors” layer that they released in early 2014.
Seeing that this level of control was possible, we contacted Mapbox to see if we could work together to produce a may layer ideally suited for our community of outdoor enthusiasts.
The Design Process
Our main task was to determine what kinds of information should be included on the map, at what zoom levels these details should appear at, and what the best data source was for each. The expert cartographers at Mapbox worked on the graphic design elements of the map, such as the colors, fonts and line types to be used. The map data themselves came from combining a number of trusted sources including OpenStreepMap, USGS, Mapbox, and our own data.
The starting point in the visual design was the classic USGS-style topographic map, but we wanted to make sure trails were given particular prominence, and we also wanted to try to include mileage labels on each trail segment as are often seen on trail guide maps. We also wanted to show shaded area labels and boundaries for parks and wilderness areas.
At first we worked iteratively with Mapbox, supplying them with the trail data that we wanted to include while they in turn supplied us with drafts of the map design. When we got to a point where we felt the map design was 95% complete, then we brought the project in-house so that we could more rapidly experiment with different design changes, and so that we could start to get feedback from beta testers amongst our members.
A major lesson we learned is the challenge of showing the right amount of text (labels) on the map at each zoom level. If we made summit labels more prominent we’d get fewer park labels being shown; if we made contour height labels bigger, we’d get fewer trail name labels being shown; and so on.
In the end we came up with a scheme that we think works relatively well, while we know there may be a few times when a label disappears as you zoom in, then reappears when you zoom in further.
Another big question is at what zoom levels trail lines should be shown. If you are zooming-in on a backcountry area for example, you can show them quite far out because the trails are generally long and widely spaced, but if you zoom in on Central Park the shorter, more densely packed paths will look every cluttered.
Since we will be using this map as the default layer across all our products, we needed to make sure the maps looked and functioned well on the smaller, glare-prone screens of phones.
The Final Product: AllTrails Outdoors
After a lot of trial & error and feedback from many of you, we settled on displaying trails as fine black lines when they first appear, then as thicker dashed lines as you zoom in further.
We’ve used a blue shade for trails where we know bikes are permitted, and also included intersection markers with the trail distance shown for each major segment. There is plenty more work to be done on correctly designating trails as being bike friendly but it’s a start.
Amongst the many other features we have been able to include are hill shading, waterways (creeks, lakes, etc), summit labels, land cover types (forests, glaciers, etc) and detailed building footprints.
Finally, the data underlying the map are worldwide, so it is available wherever you travel.
Ready Now for You!
The new map layer is now the default option on our flagship website at AllTrails.com, and will be available in the coming weeks in our iPhone and Android apps. AllTrails Pro members can of course start printing customized maps using the new layer, and use it to plan routes in Map Editor.
The AllTrails community hit a big milestone last year. We passed 3,000,000 mobile installs with many of you contributing tracks, photos, reviews, and more. We couldn’t think of a more fitting way to celebrate than by mapping all your activity in 2014.
The YOGO Mat provides minimalism, durability, and comfort for every outdoor Yogi. Made of a biodegradable tree rubber, the YOGO presents a more compact and portable exercise mat than your classic foam and rubber roll-up. Featuring built in buckles and snaps, the YOGO takes care of itself when it comes to packability and ensures that no adventure is lacking in a clean, comfortable practice.
Charge up your dinner while recharging your phone. The PowerPot V provides any techie outdoorsman with a tool to quickly complete your trail meals while also ensuring that you stay connected to the virtual world. The PowerPot combines lightweight cooking with a portable USB charger, ensuring that any mobile device can be charged on the spot.
Who says the outdoors can’t be enjoyed in comfort? Sorel’s Manawan Slippers provide the ultimate warmth and softness with their wool blend interior. Slip on a pair before you leave your tent to greet the morning, or just to pad around the house while you plan your next great adventure.
Campers with furry adventure pals rejoice! Never worry about Fido ripping the floors of your tent’s nylon again. Nemo’s PawPrint provides a soft, yet durable cover for your tent’s floor. Spread it out and use it as a base, or even as a sleeping cover. It’s lightweight build makes it an easy an essential add-on for any camping trip with man’s best friend.
Embrace a return of the 90s with this built-for-comfort Puff Hat. Available in several vibrant colors, you’re sure to stand out on the slopes or the trail in style. A quilted nylon exterior brushes the wind aside while a downy fleece interior keeps you warm. It’s the perfect way to add a splash of unique style to our outdoor wardrobe.
