
Show HN: Topophi.com – find trails, camps, photos of national forests and parks - thecaddy1
https://www.topophi.com/?origin=hackernews
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thecaddy1
Topophi stack for those curious: Front end: martyjs
([https://github.com/martyjs/marty](https://github.com/martyjs/marty)) Back
end: nodejs koa webserver
([https://github.com/koajs/koa](https://github.com/koajs/koa)) DB: postgresql
Devops: Docker and Tutum for deployment on AWS

~~~
icecube
Martyjs is a flux framework that allowed us to easily write isomorphic
javascript. We were able to get React to render all pages serverside. The
stores would get serialized and sent to the client where the client would then
boostrap itself.

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philipov
I would use this. How long until the northeast states become available? Needs
state/local parks to really be useful, though.

~~~
thecaddy1
The hardest part for us has been accumulating data and trying to make it
coherent. A problem with a lot of the East coast in general is the data is
controlled by the states and each state has multiple districts that manage the
parks.

Unfortunately we aren't able to commit to anything meaningful other than to
say, we are working on data every day.

Right now most of what you'll see is Federal lands.

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vwcx
For me, the state and sub-agency control of information about their own parks
is what makes it valuable to me. While planning a recent week camping in CO
and WY, I learned that most of the aggregated information I was finding from
general hiking sites (even stuff like trails.com) was outdated. Surprisingly,
the National Forest Service sites ("optimized for IE 6!") contained
information accurate to a few weeks.

I'm also a little thrown off by Topiphi's heavy focus on "Permits" on each
National Park page. For every park I'm trying, it points me to the "America
the Beautiful" annual pass. Sure, while that pass would get me through the
entrance gates, there are numerous other one-day, one-week, senior citizen and
corporate passes that also given me access to the park. The majority of casual
users aren't likely to be looking to buy each family member an $80 NPS annual
pass, so I'd like to see more info there.

~~~
thecaddy1
Working on this the past couple months there has definitely been a lot of
conflict over what is valuable or not valuable.

As a backpacker myself, the most frustrating part was not knowing where to
start looking for this stuff. When we started using topophi ourselves to find
the rangers and forests we needed to check for regulations, thats when we
thought, well maybe someone else will find this useful.

But back to your comment, totally agree, we need better information.

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jadlimcaco
Really cool. Just posted this to Product Hunt :)
[http://www.producthunt.com/tech/topophi](http://www.producthunt.com/tech/topophi)

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cconcepts
How would one go about contributing to this with New Zealand data?

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icecube
We do not yet have a way to accept and display user submitted data. That is
one of the many things we will be working on next.

Going internationally is another challenge in and of itself and right now we
have been focusing strictly on the US.

Send us an email at info at topophi.com and we'll talk.

~~~
cconcepts
I confess that I don't have much curated data to share but have often thought
about this, even from a safety perspective. I was in a serious storm once that
tore my tent apart and I spent 48 hours in serious cold with little shelter -
I later found out that there was a very large overhanging rock that provides
great shelter less than 1km from where I had been. It's only a marginal
feature so not worth including on maps but a potential lifesaver in certain
circumstances.

A quick scan of your kind of site prior to heading into a certain catchment
could result in less incidents and more people safely experiencing the
outdoors and thus becoming more informed voters about our resources.

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dayquant
Pretty cool. I typed "Illinois" into the search bar and I was directed to a
page about Angeles National Forest, you might want to look into that.

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skanga
Need the ability to search by zip code. I tried that and it didn't seem to
work.

