HikeTracker

Hiking is safer when somebody knows where you are. HikeTracker records your route, shares it live with the people who care, and tells them if you do not come back when you said you would. RECORDS THE WHOLE WALK Start a hike and put the phone in your pocket. The route keeps recording with the screen off, for four hours or eight. You get the track, the distance and the time when you are done. WORKS WHERE THERE IS NO SIGNAL Most hikes cross dead zones. Everything is written to your phone first and sent when signal comes back, so a valley with no bars does not put a hole in your track. You can see what is still waiting to send. SHARE A LIVE LINK Send one link to whoever is waiting at home. They open it in a browser, see where you are on a map, and watch it update. No app to install, no account to make. IF THINGS GO QUIET Tell the app when you expect to be back. If you are not finished by then, the contacts you chose are emailed your last known position and a map link. If the phone stops reporting for longer than you set, they are told that too. Both work on a free account. RAISE AN ALARM Hold the alarm button and your contacts are emailed straight away, with where you are and when you raised it. No signal? The app offers to send it as a text from your own phone, because voice and SMS often work where data does not. HAZARDS OTHER HIKERS MARKED Drop a pin for a washed-out path, a closed gate, a water source, a good viewpoint. Other hikers see them; you see theirs, and get a warning when you are heading toward one. Download an area before you set off and the warnings still work with no signal. WHAT IT COSTS Recording hikes, alarms, overdue and gone-quiet alerts, hazard warnings, your full history and GPX export are free. Always, on every account. R240 a year buys one thing: a live tracking link, so somebody at home can follow a walk as it happens. Every new account gets 14 days of it, starting at your first hike. A link you have already sent keeps working to the end of that hike even if your subscription lapses. Nobody watching a mountain should see "subscription expired". WHAT IT DOES NOT DO It does not call mountain rescue or any emergency service, and it never will pretend to. It tells the people you chose. There is no offline map and no turn-by-turn navigation. BACKGROUND LOCATION HikeTracker uses location in the background to record your route while the app is closed and the screen is off. A notification is visible the whole time it is recording. Without it the track stops the moment your screen turns off.