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FAQ: Apps for Trail Management and Volunteers

Information on apps that can be used for trail management that would be suitable for volunteer-type organizations.

Question

Recently we asked trail experts to weigh in on this question - "I am with a mountain biking club and we are looking for a more structured approach to inspection and maintenance of trails. We have access to an app developed by a similar group near us but are interested in looking at some alternatives before spending a lot of time setting up baseline data and protocols."

The answers we received are as follows

"Unfortunately, without good structure put in place in the front end, the data you get is less than desirable. When we did our full system assessment, we looked all over. While apps like Avenza allow you to collect data points with good information , you are severely limited in the processing of the data on the back of end because it is not put into a specific format. For our purposes, assessing maintenance needs for a 1300 mile trail system split up between 56 State Parks, Survey 1,2,3 was invaluable because it allowed us to control the data quality we received back, to an extent. Without it, there would get been lots of data quality issues and lots of post processing to make it useful."

"Avenza. I use it daily and can share maps, GIS track's, etc. with my organization and volunteers. Set way points, measure mileage, it has it all."

"The Feds are using Avenza a lot lately. We also occasionally use Gaia GPS. Both have corporate, nonprofit, and bulk discounts for organizations!"

"They should speak with Colorado Mountain Club about the RIMS app. RIMS is a volunteer input app that CMC and the feds use to collect, report, store, and search for problems across many land management orgs and districts. It does exactly what they are looking for. https://www.cmc.org/RIMS.aspx"

"OSM tracker works really well. You can take notes, pictures, or even voice memos tied to GPS coordinates and then export them to Google Earth or Gaia"