Hikers Toolkit - A Recommended Free App

 

Back in July I was asked if I'd have a look at a new free outdoors app called the Hikers Toolkit. I did and I liked it, which is why there's a quote from me on the website saying that the app "is useful and contains helpful information and links. It's easy to use and uncluttered with no confusing or unnecessary material. I think having the info together is valuable".

The app contains the following:
Grid reference
Basic mapping
Interactive compass
Grid magnetic angle
Timing and conversion calculators
Weather links
Sunrise/Sunset
Moon phase
Windchill calculator
Emergency procedures

All bar the weather links work offline. Those links give connections to the Met Office Mountain Weather Forecast, MWIS, and the Scottish Avalanche Information Service. Having these three together makes it easy to check them all at the same time.

I think the most useful tool for regular use in the hills is the grid reference, which you can see as just numbers or with your position on a basic map. The latter does have contour lines and is legible on a phone screen smeared with sunscreen and food and with my reflection as you can see in my photo! 

The most useful page of all is one that no-one wants to ever have to use and that's the Emergency one. However if an emergency does occur having clear information about what to do would be valuable. In an actual situation I can imagine it would be easy not to remember everything. Having instructions could be helpful and calming.

This free app is well having on your phone even if you rarely use it. At the moment it's only available for Android phones via Google Play but it should be available for iOS soon. 

ViewRanger: thoughts, memories, the future

On the GR5 Through the Alps, 2018

ViewRanger, the navigation and mapping app, is changing. In fact eventually the name will disappear as it's integrated into another app, Outdooractive. Recently I asked ViewRanger about the changes and wrote a piece on this for The Great Outdoors online. This elicited a large response. Many people obviously like ViewRanger and don't like the idea of it changing. 

On the Pacific Northwest Trail, 2010

Thinking about ViewRanger I realised that the app has accompanied me on every walk, long or short, for over a decade. No piece of physical equipment has done that. ViewRanger has been on several different phones in that time and has helped me navigate on the Pacific Northwest Trail and the GR5 Through the Alps, and in the High Sierra, Death Valley and, every month, the Scottish Highlands. Sometimes it's made navigation far easier than it would have been with just map and compass. Finding the hidden start of a faint trail in dense forest on the Pacific Northwest Trail, keeping me on the right ridge during a long descent through another forest into Death Valley, crossing the Cairngorm Plateau in a white-out.

ViewRanger in 2009

Having tried ViewRanger for the first time in 2009 I was impressed enough to use it on the Pacific Northwest Trail the next year. Indeed, I bought my first smartphone in order that I could do so. (I was loaned the one for the 2009 trial). After that smartphones came and went but ViewRanger remained. It did just what I wanted it to and it did it reliably.

Death Valley, 2016

Will Outdooractive be as useful and reliable? I hope so but I don't know yet. It's a much bigger app with far more features, most of which I probably won't want. As long as I can ignore them I won't mind that, just as I don't mind the ones that have been added to ViewRanger and which I've never used. My ideal navigation app has good mapping (OS/Harveys in the UK, equivalents elsewhere), gives your position fast and accurately, and can record or follow routes. That's it.

The ViewRanger app will be around for at least a year but it will disappear. I'll be sorry to see it go. It's been part of my outdoor life.