How To Find Hiking Trails Near You - Refresh Financial

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How To Find Hiking Trails Near You

hiking

Hiking! It’s like the third most popular pastime for us Canadians after hockey and apologizing, and there are great reasons for that. We live in one of the most ruggedly beautiful countries in the world, and you could spend your whole life hiking near home and still find something new every day. Every Canadian has access to magnificent hiking trails, even if it means they have to drive an hour out of the city. How do you locate them, though?

I recently made the move to a new town in Canada and found the following tools to be extremely helpful in pointing out new hiking trails:

1. Wikiloc.com - The sheer amount of information found on this site in each trail listing is staggering. You almost don’t know what to do with it all. You can search your hometown or a town you might be visiting for nearby trails, and narrow down your results by difficulty, length and how you’ll be travelling on the trail. The listing for each trail has comments, suggestions, tips and other information such as elevation, whether or not the trail ends where it starts, as well as an incredibly useful interactive map with even more stats and info. Wikiloc could be the only tool you need to find trails near you. The only downside is that because it is a crowdsourced website (information is voluntarily submitted by users) information for smaller towns and remote areas might be missing or limited.

2. EveryTrail.com/ - This website has fewer features and less information than Wikiloc but it may include more or different trails for the area you’re searching for. It seems to be limited to fairly densely populated areas, though.

3. mapmyhike.com - It’s best to search this site by your postal code, as the search engine doesn’t seem to be accurate enough with smaller town names. On this website, hikers log hikes they’ve taken and add notes. You can see the different trails other people in your area have recently taken and what they thought of it. MapMyHike also comes as an app for your smartphone.

4. AllTrails - This is an app, so it already has a leg up on most of the other tools listed above. You can’t beat having the information in the palm of your hand, connected to your smartphone’s GPS. This app is free and comes with more features than I can count! Never get lost because this app will track your trail. It will also track the distance you’ve travelled, your speed, elevations reached, and tons more. You can save the hikes you loved and even share them with all the other hikers in your life. This app is limited to North America and gives you the option to purchase a premium package with even more features.

5. Another app - Ramblr, is great for journalling your hikes and other outdoor adventures. Share your hikes online with the use of photos, videos, audio clips and more. The app is free for Android and iOS.

6. Your local Visitor’s Centre - Most cities and towns, or regions, will have a visitor’s centre with loads of information about the area they represent. This info often includes a hard copy trail guide for hiking. At the very least, you’ll find some maps to take away with you.

If you’re choosing a staycation this year over an expensive trip abroad, you won’t regret incorporating some local hiking into your day-to-day activities. Hiking is good for you, it’s good for your family and you’ll never know what you’ll discover around the next bend. So, what are you waiting for? Go take a hike!

Do you know of any apps or tools to help hikers find great trails? Let us know in the comments!

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