EveryTrail

This weekend was the 4th July holiday. In Boston the river was closed to sailors as motorboats streamed in to view the fireworks. I decided to use the opportunity for an extended ride out of the city into Central Mass farmland.

A couple of weeks ago I tried using TrailBehind to find local hiking suggestions. Basically this app pulls in content from a variety of websites and presents it in a mobile format. However, I found the content on the websites themselves to be far better and the search features of this app to rather insufficient. Sorry!

So, this time I decided to try EveryTrail, which appeared to be one of the main sources used by TrialBehind. The EveryTrail mobile app allows you to search for nearby routes or track your own. A search of roadbiking within 10 miles produced 259 results - probably better search results than the website itself produced! The tracking features of the app gave somewhat more mixed results.....

The idea is simple.... turn on the route tracking function, cycle along, take pictures where relevant, record notes etc and bingo you have a wonderful record of your adventures! It got off to a bad start when the app kept crashing if I tried to take a photo while tracking. Humph. I checked the app store for upgrades and found a new version which solved that problem. So, off I set into the wilds of Central Mass, past Thoreau's birthplace, Concord and towards the other Harvard. Somewhere near the other Harvard I paused tracking to look up some facts about a nearby Shaker settlement. When I checked back into the app I could not find my previously recorded track. Deaaaaam!

Well, that turned out to be my own stupid fault and soon we were back in business recording another track. It was all going fairly well then until my iPhone battery died (it managed about 5 hours of tracking) somewhere near Wachusetts Mountain.

Back at the ranch I was able to piece all the bits together and to painfully recreate some sections. My route is now uploaded with the 259 others entitled "IceCream and Jelly Sticks - a Ride through Central Massachusetts".

In summary, here's what I liked and displiked about the app

The good bits
- Access to a vast store of tracks and routes
- Ability to upload to your profile and turn the route into an official "guide"
- Photo tagging
- A good balance of features and simplicity

The bad bits
- Drained battery pretty quickly (although you can change GPS settings)
- Less information on speed, relief, calories etc than fitness tracking apps
- Need to pause tracking and resume when you leave/re-enter the app
- Search functions for different routes could be more advanced - distance, difficulty, start point etc (it's always surprising how many different things people are looking for)