AdminMatt Lenarz
(WikiTrail.org Founder, Lead Developer, Wikitrail.org)
My feedback
25 results found
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4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment -
2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks for the interest! Unfortunately, the site is still just the Appalachian Trail.
Which trail are you doing? If it's either the PCT or CDT, both of those trails have pretty good resources already (e.g. HalfMile, GutHook).
Have fun!
-Matt -
48 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks for the feedback everyone. The listings on wikitrail.org are open to edits/additions by all users. The fact that Mountain Home was not on the site simply means that no one had added it until a few hours ago - however, it looks like someone successfully added Mountain Home to the site: http://www.wikitrail.org/features/view/at/5749489302241280/mountain-home
Please see http://www.wikitrail.org/faq#editing for additional information about how you can make changes to trail data.
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5 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment This is a good idea. Once thing you could do as a work-around is to find the nearest town and use that as a rough approximation.
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4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks the idea! I can see how that might make the planner a bit more realistic.
It's a pretty big change, though (instead of just simulating a hike using your initial input, the planner would need to be able to allow modifications). If this gets a ton of votes, I'll take a stab at it.
In the meantime, you can create a bunch of smaller plans between your planned weekend breaks. You can also create one big plan, download the calendar and then tweak that as necessary. I realize these ideas are not the same, but they should get you pretty close to what you're looking for. Thanks! -Matt
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3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks for the idea! It's interesting. I feel like you could get the same result, though, if you just divide your available time in half and plug that into the planner (since it should take the same amount of time going either direction). -Matt
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4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey, thanks for the suggestion! I can imagine that it must be pretty tedious to use the trail guide when the font size looks too small. Unfortunately, I don't think it'll be feasible to create another version with a larger font size. (It actually took me an embarrassingly long time to get the font size to where I could fit all of the content on the page.) My recommendation would be to try landscape mode on your phone so that you get the larger font size without having to zoom in and out. Sorry!
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7 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks! There actually is a print-friendly PDF that you can download. Search for 'Trail Guide' on either the trail page or the section page - and you should be good to go. Enjoy! -Matt
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks for the feedback. Actually, this should already be possible. There's no 'share' button, but if you copy the url in your address bar and send it to your family, they should be able to see it (without editing rights).
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4 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey Tim,
There are two ways to add new things to the trail: one for things that stand on their own and another for things that are sorta like children of another thing on the trail ( they belong to e.g. a shelter or a town). With the first way, you identify its position on the trail by setting its distance from Springer Mtn. With the second way, it inherits its position on the trail and, instead, you indicate its distance from the parent feature (e.g. a hostel that is 0.5 mi from a given town).
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey Tim,
The KML files can include water sources and campsites - but only if they have GPS coordinates on them. I just took a look at the KMZ file for the whole trail and there were only a handful of water sources that got exported (because people usually don't do through the effort of tagging them). If you have their coordinates, feel free to add them - and they should show-up in the updated KML file.
Thanks!
-MattAn error occurred while saving the comment Hey, thanks for your interest in wikitrail.org! The site has the GPS coordinates for a lot of the spots along the trail. There are a lot missing, though, too. If you find a campsite without coordinates and you know what they are, you can add them by clicking the edit button on the top (the pencil icon) and then hit the 'edit feature' menu item.
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey there, thanks for the suggestion. The Florida Trail seems like it could be a candidate for the website some day. It's not a priority right now, though, because it seems like there are not a lot of long-distance hikers on the trail compared to AT, PCT and CDT.
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2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thank you! The AT should have most of the resupply locations. If you see one missing, feel free to add it. As for PCT and Wonderland, I would love to add these trails but it's more work than I have time for at the moment. If I were you, I would check-out either Guthook's app, HalfMile's maps, Hikerbot (android-only) app or Yogis's guidebook. Have fun!
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks! Will do :)
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3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment I'm don't know. Googled and found some info over here: http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php/56292-Ouachita-Trail
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey, thanks for the comment. Yeah, unfortunately the trail's elevation data is not as accurate as it could be. The GPS/elevation data comes straight from a survey that the ATC did a while back and the density of their data is not consistent.
I get around this issue on most parts of the trail by using nearby features to get things lined-up, but on this part of the trail all of the features with GPS coordinates are > .1 miles from the trail.
Thanks for your interest!
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2 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Thanks for the idea! I agree that photos could be a useful feature when wanting to research parts on the trail. The tricky thing with pictures is that I would need to build a mechanism for flagging inappropriate pictures in case someone links to something that they're supposed to. It's certainly do-able. I'll take a look the next time I make an update to the site. Thanks again! -Matt
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey, thanks for your interest in wikitrail!
This is something I considered when I first built the site. I built it so that each trail has its own units system. The AT is the only trail in there now - and it uses imperial units. New trails can use metric when appropriate. Having more than one unit system for a given trail means extra data on the site and in the PDFs (something I'd like to avoid considering the amount of space available on mobile devices) but it also means the community can refer to more than one set of numbers. I like it more when users can refer to a given point and have it be unambiguous.
Thanks, again, for the idea. It probably will not be implemented but I sincerely appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
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3 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey Adam,
Yes, I know what you're looking for now. I remember having issues with the GPS data that I had found. I had to do a bunch of doctoring of the data, but I also came-up with a system that auto-scaled the elevation data based on the locations (and known distances) of points nearby the trail. Some parts of the trail data would be super fine-grained but others would have less detail. When I correlated the coordinates to the locations of known features, I was able to down-scale the elevation that so that it would be consistent within a given section. That's what you see in the elevation profile (both on the site and in the PDF).
Are you looking for the elevation numbers themselves (GPX) or the rendered elevation charts? Building a GPX file of the auto-scaled elevation data is more work than I want to do (unless it's a popular idea), but if you're just looking for the charts, you can hit the elevation URL for each of the sections you're interested in - and then put them together. For example, http://www.wikitrail.org/sections/profile/at/3001 is the profile from the first section, http://www.wikitrail.org/sections/profile/at/3002 is the next section and so on. (The charts are SVG, so if you want to turn them into something with fixed dimensions, you'll have to screenshot them.)
Hope this helps!
-Matt
An error occurred while saving the comment Hey, thanks for the suggestion! I don't have gpx files (and would rather not build them), but you can find elevation data either in the Trail Guide PDFs or on the page for each section (e.g. http://www.wikitrail.org/sections/view/at/3001/springer-to-neels-gap - click 'Elevation Profile').
If you really want the information in gpx format, I would suggest checking out this website: http://guymott.com/atgps.html
Thanks again!
-Matt -
1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Yeah, the planner is not perfect. You'll get slightly different numbers on different parts of the trail or at different speeds/day lengths. The algorithm behind the planner does a pretty complex simulation where it has to balance a few different goals (e.g. resupply needs and days that aren't excessively long). It tries to schedule the zero days for places where there's a hotel/hostel. If there's a long distance between beds (e.g. Maine), it doesn't do an awesome job of placing a zero day at the interval that you give it.
Thanks for being interesting in how the wikitrail planner works! It tries hard to make people happy. Feel free to add in additional zeros.
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1 vote
An error occurred while saving the comment Hello! Thanks for sharing your idea.
I considered this when I was building the site but ultimately decided against it because I thought that it would clutter-up the guide with too many icons. (i.e. if there's an icon for mountain, should there also be one for gaps/notches/valleys or monuments or famous trees?) My approach then became: the feature types available should be the ones which are practical or will effect how someone plans their hike. So, for mountains, gaps, etc, I've always tagged those as either 'other' or 'view' (if there's a good view).
Thanks for your interest! Some of the towns do have shuttle information. If you're aware of a shuttle and it's not currently on the site please feel free to add it (more info here: http://www.wikitrail.org/faq#editing). For parking, wikitrail.org does not have a place for in-town parking - but it does have info for on-trail parking (http://www.wikitrail.org/features/at/0.0/2189.1?lt=trailhead). Thanks! -Matt