# An app for hiking, trailriding, or general off road activities

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 9, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373 "2011-07-09T01:48:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MareIt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ea666f/32.png) [@MareIt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MareIt)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373/1 "2011-07-09T01:48:07Z")

</div>

Despite all of my well intentioned thoughts, I am not likely to be hiking or mountain biking anytime soon, but I do go out on trail rides with my horse and our friends. We tend to stick to the same set of trails turning one way to stay in the shade and the other way to get in a good gallop on our retired racehorses… Infinitely preferable than actually hiking those same places on my own two feet 😉  
We’ve been relying on one person’s Droid and the MyTracks app to tell us how far and how fast we went. Most of the time is seems to be reasonably accurate, but every once in a while, it tells us that we had a peak speed of 2000mph and finished our ride in Aiken SC after starting out in Purcellville VA; all in a mere 85 minutes!  
I have finally joined the smart phone craze and now want a similar app to MyTraks but the iPhone version seems to have crappy reviews and I just get overwhelmed with the 2000+ options in the iTunes store.  
Things it must do: Measure time and distance with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Things I want it do: Upload to googlemaps or similar thing so that we can see where we went.

Things I don’t want it to do: Cost more than $5 or so.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373/2 "2011-07-09T02:25:39Z")

</div>

Use MapMyRide/Run, it’s free and works quite well. You may still get occasional odd outliers, but I used it until I got my Garmin watch.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373/3 "2011-07-09T10:02:49Z")

</div>

I use the free version of RunKeeper. It’s great! Sometimes I even use it for driving. Haven’t tried it while flying yet.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Petek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/petek/32/1590_2.png) [@Petek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Petek)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2011, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-app-for-hiking-trailriding-or-general-off-road-activities/588373/4 "2011-07-09T15:03:28Z")

</div>

I like [MotionX GPS](http://news.motionx.com/category/motionx-gps/). Maps can be imported into Google Maps or Google Earth. Costs $2.99. Distances are accurate. I recently used it to track a drive. MotionX gave total distance as 260 miles, car odometer gave 261.