Plate 2 — Field desk
The filter that matters.
Every app lets you search by name. ReckonTrails lets you search by how it hikes — how long, how steep, how much climbing. Move the sliders:
Counts and examples are live from the actual dataset — Colorado's 45,878 stitched trails. The other 50 jurisdictions are in the map's menu, same deal.
Plate 3 — Legend of symbols
Built like the map nerd made it.
Because one did.
Pitch view
Every trail recoloured by its local grade — the wall at mile three, visible from the couch.
Elevation profiles
Measured on the USGS 10-metre DEM; scrub the chart and a dot walks the trail.
The good USGS maps
The lithographed 7.5′ quads — benchmarks, mines, pack trails — plus modern topo and imagery.
1-meter LiDAR
Rocky Mountain NP and the Grand Canyon at ten-foot contours, rim to river.
Camping corridors
MVUM & BLM roads where dispersed camping is legal, minus the locked gates.
Offline, actually
Download a region; map, GPS dot and trails keep working in airplane mode.
3D terrain
Tilt the map; raise the exaggeration until your knees object in advance.
Trailhead driving
Minutes to the trailhead from wherever you actually are — the hike starts at the car.
Plate 4 — Graphical scale
Truthful at any zoom.
Control data — verified against the dataset at press time · remains true at any zoom
Plate 5 — The situation
Hiking used to be the free thing.
The trails were free. The map was a paper quad that cost four bucks. The only subscription was the weather.
Then the apps arrived, and somehow looking at a map of land you already own started costing $35.99 a year. The features didn't get better — the paywall did. Every improvement shipped behind a bigger tier, and the tier you bought last year quietly became the bad one.
Here's the part nobody puts in the ad: the data was never theirs. The trails come from the USGS, the Forest Service, the BLM, and state parks — public data, collected at public expense. ReckonTrails is that same data, built into the tool we actually wanted to use.
The receipt below is the entire checkout. Everything else on this sheet is the feature list.
reckontrails.com
* OFFICIAL RECEIPT *
| TRAILS (408,503) | $0.00 |
| ELEVATION PROFILES | $0.00 |
| STEEPNESS (PITCH) VIEW | $0.00 |
| USGS HISTORIC QUADS | $0.00 |
| 1M LIDAR REGIONS | $0.00 |
| OFFLINE MAPS + GPS | $0.00 |
| CAMPING CORRIDORS | $0.00 |
| DRIVING TIME TO TRAILHEAD | $0.00 |
| ACCOUNT | NONE |
| PASSWORD | NONE |
| EMAIL HELD HOSTAGE | NONE |
| ADS | NONE |
| VC FUNDING TO RECOUP | $0.00 |
| TOTAL | $0.00 |
NO RETURNS — NOTHING TO RETURN.
Plate 6 — Cautions & notes
Fine print, printed large.
There isn't a catch. But in the interest of being the only honest landing page on the internet, here's everything:
- It's one person. Built and maintained by a human who hikes. If a trail is missing, the public data hasn't caught up — or I haven't.
- No account means nowhere to sync. Your downloaded regions live on your device. The upside: nothing to hack, leak, or "sunset."
- It needs the internet for first loads. Basemap and elevation tiles stream from public CDNs. Download a region and that stops mattering.
- It's not a social network. No feed, no followers, no kudos. You're welcome.
- If it ever disappears, the data was public all along — USGS NTD and 3DEP, USFS EDW and MVUM, BLM GTLF, COTREX, OpenStreetMap. Take it. It's yours.
Plate 7 — Departure
The map is the app. It's already open.
Open ReckonTrails →free as in trails · reckontrails.com/map.html