

Show HN: I'm building a social network around hiking and backpacking - kaiuhl
http://wenthiking.com

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subpixel
Great idea, kudos. Here are some random thoughts, as I'm totally part of your
target audience:

• There are people/couples/friends who avidly hike on their own, on a regular
basis, and then there are people who want to hike, but are novices and/or
seldom get around to it. The latter group is something like 10x the size of
the former. I'd encourage you to reach out to them.

• Meetup is AFAIK the only game in town when it comes to finding other
hikers/groups and it totally sucks. Meetup is about 'joining' and 'persistent
groups' and mailing lists and discussion boards and...a lot of crap. People
just want to hook up with other hikers, easily see who they're dealing with in
terms of experience and potential flakiness (big issue in my experience) and
plan a trip.

• For people looking for information to use in planning their own trip, the
ability to download GPS data shared by previous hikers could be great.

Best of luck!

~~~
sandmansandine
I agree completely with the GPS data. I love backpacking/hiking and the
ability to grab GPS data from previous hikers is pretty crucial for me.

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kaiuhl
Hi friends,

This is a project I've been working on in my free time for the last year. The
idea stemmed from the huge amount of outdoors-related blogs that are out
there, and my frustration with the fact that all of the data is unstructured
and thereby unsearchable.

Went Hiking is an attempt to be a better platform to post your outdoors-
related content (starting with hiking) so that it can be structured,
searchable data. It's running on PostGIS and more geospatial tools and search
options will be added over time.

I'd love your feedback!

~~~
marklabedz
This is great. I've found a couple of sites similar in the
mountaineering/climbing sector, but not for hiking/backpacking.

As a data point for you, one of the tools I've come to love is the split map
available on Hillmap.com (Not sure if Ryan is on HN, but maybe worth getting
in contact.)

~~~
micro_cam
Yep I (Ryan from hillmap) am on here. I also follow kaiuhl's went hiking
project on github and think its great that he is tackling the social aspects
of outdoors sports in an open source way. I may open source hillmap at some
point but the code is pretty idiomatic/functional and somewhat optimized
javascript and isn't exactly documented or particularly reusable at this
point. (My real job is in cancer research...I use hillmap as a place to
experiment with things like client side image processing to do slope
analysis).

This area (outdoor mapping) is really interesting as there are such segmented
user groups. Hillmap's biggest user group is geeky backcountry skiers which
generates consistent but not heavy traffic. I've thought about trying to make
a comercial go of it but the cost of things like the arcgis layers means it
makes more sense to be an ad-free hobby site.

Matt at caltopo has another open source project target at SAR groups and has
done some great map layers from usgs and fs scans.

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tnorthcutt
_Join the 204 members and add to the 1626 trips already recorded._

Good job showing me that it's an active community and that people are
obviously actually using the site (8 trips per user sounds impressive - makes
me think "ok, people come back to this multiple times, it must be good").

I like the map graphic at the top. HOWEVER, when I click the "map" link in the
header, I see... a big empty map. Huh? The graphic on the home page showed a
bunch of pins, so now I'm confused. Ok, I see "draw path" so I click on that
and try to draw, but the map moves. Ok, I click a point, then another and
another. Now what? Ok, stop drawing. Now what? I'm stuck here. And my only
escape seems to be the back button, since I don't see any nav.

 _I'm not asking ou to tell me what to do, merely suggesting you make it MUCH
more clear how that page works._.

~~~
kaiuhl
Thanks for the feedback!

The map has zero instructions which I agree is totally opaque. The idea is for
the map to be used to plan trips with others; someone can zoom in or search
for the area they want to take a trip in, trace a route over the topographic
map, and then copy and paste the pushState-updated URL to their friend. Here's
an example of the trip I'm taking this weekend:

[http://wenthiking.com/map?lat=44.87548303572588&lng=-122...](http://wenthiking.com/map?lat=44.87548303572588&lng=-122.02617168426514&zoom=14&map_type=topography&trippath=%7Bc_qGdrtgVbEfFnDs@E%60KxAz@fBfJhDbOtDdBj@bD~EpK%3F%60CtEfC%60Lr%5DfJxh@~A%7CD%7CDdXpFhKxB%7BDbDpCzEoBPpGdCXoAfFxBjD_KzO~JvMoT%3FrN~LeR%60@w@nB%60NdFaFbHiDzRaBtPlMdf@vD%7CPaFaDeCa@)

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mattmillr
I like it. I'm going backpacking tomorrow, and would love to discover new
trails.

I had trouble with the signup/login process.

* After I registered, it showed the form again instead of a success message or the homepage.

* So I filled it in again, thinking I'd done something wrong. The error "already taken" that popped in under my email address could be improved "It looks like you've already created an account with that email address, do you want to reset the password?"

* The registration and password reset emails went into the spam.

* When I got my password reset (I guess I fat-fingered it twice on the first signup form) and logged in, I got a login form under the "welcome" message. I hacked the URL to get to the homepage.

Great concept though, and you're off to a great start. I'm looking forward to
seeing what all you do with it.

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mille562
I like the interactive map at the top but it's annoying when the pop-up bubble
moves the pin offscreen. I suggest increasing the size of the header/map (w/
sliding open animation) when a pin is clicked to allow the pin and pop-up
bubble to show at the same time.

~~~
kaiuhl
There's a little arrow on the left to expand the map, but it should definitely
happen automatically. Thanks!

~~~
draggnar
I was going to make the same comment... that button is way small I didn't see
it, and was looking for it! Very cool app.

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scribblemacher
I joined your site. As an avid backpacker/canoe tripper, meetup has been
basically useless. It's very hard to gauge the experience and skill of people
on that site. I've had a few bad experiences, such as people flaking out, not
being able to walk more than a 5 miles in a day, not knowing how to pitch a
tent, etc.

The feature I really want is the ability to find future hikes, know the skill
and reliability of the people going, and how I can join them. I don't have any
friends that backpack, and my wife hates when I go it alone. I actually
_don't_ want to spend much time on your website. The reason I'd be going there
is to get away from my computer and go outside :)

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peterwwillis
Suggestion: Don't call it a tool.

Nobody wants to go to a "tool site" and use it like they would an app -
because they have an app for that. People do like community, though, and would
probably be fine with going to a site just to say hi to other hikers. Make
like Facebook and emphasize pictures/videos, and a forum component, and that'd
be a pretty handy site.

(Feature request: make a climbing section and stuff for niches like crack
climbing or slacklining!)

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evilbit
Thanks for storing the password in clear text and sending it to me in the
registration email!

Seriously, WTF? Have you slept through the last 20 years of information
security research?

~~~
kaiuhl
Your password is not stored in clear text. It's salted and SHA-256 hashed.

Your password email was generated during the initial save to the database. It
was not logged and is now gone from the server. Besides, this is hardly
national security—this is hiking.

~~~
evilbit
Being dismissive/flippant does not help engender the trust that was already
shaken by emailing me my password in clear text.

Where can I unregister my account?

~~~
kaiuhl
There's no place in the UI yet—send me an email at kyle@wenthiking.com and I'd
be happy to remove you!

