Trail Map Now In Beta!

Roam is already excellent for capturing and sharing your off-road adventures. Simply open the app and hit "record." It's a class-leading experience that we are incredibly proud of and look forward to sharing with more and more people in the coming months.

However, most adventures don't start at the trailhead. They start days or even months before you pull up to the trail and start airing down. It's no secret that these days most trail users are leveraging technology for discovery, planning, and en-route navigation. Roam is now enabling these use cases with the first ever open-source Trail Map.

Why build another trail map?

It's true that there are already many great sources of trail information out there on the internet. Some of the best are decades old and contain rich wisdom about the trails. These are excellent and free but often out of date. The newer trail databases contain up-to-date information and high fidelity GPS tracks but are usually paywalled behind a rather expensive yearly subscription fee.

Our vision for trail data addresses the pain points with existing trail databases:

1. Trail information should be free and public, enforced with a license to keep us honest (i.e. if we ever take it private, the last version can still be used to make a competing database). This is how Wikipedia operates. We have settled on the CC-4.0-SA license.
2. It should be up to date and easy to keep up to date by trail users. Some of this freshness comes from the platform itself--Roam can repurpose anonymous trail use data to let others know a trail is open. Roam is also publicly editable, like Wikipedia, so anyone can contribute today.

These are the principles that led to the creation of the Roam Trail Map. We think it will benefit trail users--increasing safety, accessibility, and responsible use of our precious natural resources.

How does it work?

Accessing the Trail Map is easy--if you are viewing this post on roamhq.com simply click "Map" in the top title bar. If you are in the Roam app, click "Explore" on the bottom tab bar. The trail map will automatically focus on your location. This may or may not be a location with trail data currently. Pan around to find trails near you, and tap or click on anything that looks interesting.

Adding trails

If you are on a web browser (a laptop or desktop works best, with mouse and keyboard) it is trivial to create your own trails and contribute to the map. Click the "Create Route" button on the right of the screen. This will bring up a familiar route building interface. Simply select "draw" and then click on a starting point. Then click on points along the desired path. A route will automatically be connected along routable paths for you. Name the trail and click "Submit." That's really it!

Any registered user with a verified email address can create and update Trails.

Updating trails

Trail conditions often change--here in Colorado at the beginning of the season many trails are impassible due to a persistent snow drift or a washed out road. Sometimes land use authorities simply don't open a road for the season. If you happen to be out and discover an impassible trail, simply click the "edit" button on the trail detail page and add the closure information.

Any information about a trail can be edited by any registered user with a verified email address. Remember, this is public information so be responsible about what you put in the description fields. Don't include any personally identifying information about yourself or others and keep in mind your audience is a fellow trail user just like yourself.

Current status

The trail map is currently in Beta. This means you can expect to find bugs with the interface and even some interface that is not fully implemented yet. We felt it important to release this feature early and iterate in public to gather feedback about the feature. If you want to chat with the developers--join our Discord!

A few other notes about the current map:

• New route creation is only available in the US (including AK, HI, and territories) More are coming soon--join us in Discord to voice support for your region.
• There are only a couple dozen trails at the time of writing. Contributors welcome!

Most of the current trail information is focused in Colorado outside Boulder, where the developers are intimately familiar with the trails and have added their own knowledge.

This is just the seed of creation for what we hope will become the best off-road trail database ever created, the first to belong entirely to the public. Happy trails!