5 Apps That Make the Outdoors Easy

New technology makes heading into the wilderness as easy as staying indoors. Nowadays, you don’t need to worry about getting lost, finding the perfect trail, or knowing which famous landmarks are around you. With the best outdoor apps, you make camping look easy.

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1. PeakVisor

Witnessing a majestic mountainside can leave you speechless for minutes, but eventually you’ll want to know what it was called. With PeakVisor, you can have that opportunity. Simply point your phone at the natural formation you’re curious about and using VR, PeakVisor will label the formation and surrounding landmarks.

It can also pull up different types of maps like birds-eye and topographical for walkthroughs of the surrounding area. With over 1 million mountains, over 2,000 waterfalls, and over 11,000 mountain huts, you’ll learn more about the natural formations in your area.

2. Gaia GPS

The Gaia GPS is an outdoor app that is highly respected among outdoor aficionados for its robust map options. You get to use maps like topographical, satellite, road, cycling, and national parks to name a few. Trips to the backcountry can use the app to download offline maps for guaranteed directions. It’s also nice to be able to track your hikes and synchronize data from other apps.

Gaia has an intuitive interface that’s easy to use and they do more than just maps. They help you find campsites, day hiking, hunting areas, mountain biking sites, and they even track your fitness stats. With camping sales alone up 31% in June of 2020, more and more people will need this help.

3. Cairn

Not every outdoor trip is going to go as planned so when things awry, it’s nice to have an app that can get help for you. Cairn tracks your phone as you hike to different destinations and sends that information to a chosen friend so they can see exactly where you are at any time. It’s a great resource for helping campers or backpackers.

If it did just that, the app would be helpful. But it also sends instructions on how and when to contact the local search and rescue if you’re not finished with your hike at your pre-appointed time. Another unique feature is the cell phone coverage map that’s based on crowdsourced data that tells you where on the trail you might have service.

4. Alltrails

What makes Alltrails special is the millions of hikers around the world who have recorded and mapped their outdoor outings onto the app. Completely sourced from user data, Alltrails is the best resource for finding hikes in your area and getting in-depth reviews. Along with a ton of pictures, from people just like you, of the trails.

You can use filters to find your perfect hike and favorite your high-priority ones. Just like others before you, record your hike from start to finish and share it with people on social media or just on the app. Alltrails is great when you’re planning a road trip and want to find several places along the drive you can stop by.

5. Star Walk

For the ultimate celestial experience while camping, Star Walk is the best outdoor app for viewing the night sky. All you have to do is point your device towards the skies and the app will show you the exact position of the constellations in the sky. It will even outline it for you making it easier to identify.

You can read about the constellation’s history to learn more about its past as well as see the constellation in the past. The app has a slider you can toggle to see what the stars looked like in the past compared to today.

Camping Made Easy

With new technology, we never have to worry about suffering in the outdoors the way generations before us did. Now, we can know exactly what landmarks are around us, see which constellations we are looking at, and let our loved ones know where we are at all times. Camping has never been this easy.

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Holli Greaves: Meet Holly, our versatile freelance journalist and featuers writer who has a passion for dissecting the ever-evolving landscape of business and technology. Your guide to understanding the forces driving our digital age with insightful perspectives and in-depth storytelling.