What this is

OurHike is a free, open-source, offline-first map inspired by the Appalachian Trail and built from five trail organizations' own published data — made by volunteers, for the places where a map that needs signal is no map at all. It exists because the tools trail communities depend on keep getting bought, closed, or shut down, and the answer to that is a tool the community can own outright: source open, data formats open, and the whole thing designed to be handed to a trail club and survive.

OurHike is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy or any trail club — it exists to serve them, and everything about how it is run is written down in the open.

The nine values

Every design decision in this project is argued against nine written values. The short reading of each — the full document argues them properly:

  1. Hike your own hike. Accurate information and good tools, then we get out of the way. No streaks, no scores, no "right" way to hike.
  2. Built by the community that built the trail. Volunteers cut the first mile of the AT in 1923 and have maintained it since. Conditions and corrections come from hikers and maintainers on the ground.
  3. Open by default. Open source, open formats. If OurHike ever disappears, any club can fork it and keep going — that is designed in, not hoped for.
  4. Trustworthy above all. People decide which way at a junction with this. Honesty about uncertainty beats polish, every time it is a choice.
  5. Free for every hiker. Conditions, closures, hazards and the map itself stay free, forever. Safety never sits behind a paywall.
  6. Belongs to the trails, not the platform. Exporting your routes, reports and maps in open formats is a first-class requirement, not an afterthought — a club can take its data and walk away from us. We design against vendor lock-in, including our own.
  7. Built to be inherited. Every decision is tested against one question: could another trail club pick this up with minimal friction?
  8. Sustainable, not just launched. Boring, well-supported technology that survives its builders losing weekends.
  9. Be magical. And after all of that — the moment the map draws in a dead zone should still feel like a small miracle.

Privacy: position never leaves the phone

Where you are on the trail is the most sensitive thing this app could know, and the design answer is that it never leaves the device. The map, your position, your plans and your trip log live in the phone's own storage. No analytics follow you down the trail, and no background location runs when the app is closed.

Some things you can choose to send — a trail-condition report, a shared photo — and sending is always your explicit act, never a background one. The privacy policy is written in plain language rather than lawyer's.

Where the data comes from

The trail centerline and facilities come from five organizations' published GIS layers: the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference, NY State Parks, Mohonk Preserve, and NYS DEC. The topo background is USGS US Topo; elevation is sampled from USGS 3DEP survey data. Water sources draw on © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and the National Hydrography Dataset.

Those sources are not equally certain, and the app says so instead of flattening them: an ATC-surveyed shelter and a crowd-mapped spring are labelled as what they are, and anything unverified is marked unverified where you read it. A confidently wrong answer is more dangerous than an honest unknown — that rule is written into the project and it outranks looking finished.