Web site may someday include worldwide trails
Anyone who enjoys the canyons surrounding Logan can find local trails in Utah, the nation and someday the world, thanks to trailbrain.com. Jacob Roecker, junior in speech communication and avid mountain biker, developed a trails Web site that runs off the same software as Wikipedia to help make trails more accessible.
“The idea is to give people the best understanding of the trail so they can decide if they want to go,” he said.
Roecker, his wife, daughter and two sons love to go mountain biking, but trails that accommodate their child trailer and 5-year-old daughter’s skills are hard to find in a book.
“The trail books are usually out of date. Even the ones here in Cache Valley are out of date as soon as they are published,” Roecker said.
He related a scenario of a tree fallen down on the trail, and the hikers just left it there. Roecker said those kind of things increase the technical difficulty of the trail, and “you can’t get that kind of stuff out of a book.”
Roecker started searching on other Web sites which were good, but they weren’t good enough, he said.
“I couldn’t go back on and tell someone, ‘I can ride this with a trailer,'” Roecker said. He couldn’t add to the Web pages, and it frustrated him. So he decided he wanted something else.
With his Web site, users can log on and update the trails they have been to. They can describe the trail, upload photos and video, discuss trails with others and add a link to a map. Users can also type in restrictions and give directions to the trail head, which most sites don’t have, he said.
“The problem with (the other sites) is people are only focusing on usually their favorite activity and in their regional location,” he said.
His Web site features a five-star rating system to assess the difficulty of the trail for different sports. Ten sports are listed, and Roecker said he wants to expand it even more. Sports with ratings are: hiking, jogging, horseback riding, biking, motorbiking, all-terrain vehicle driving, snow shoeing, cross-country skiing and snowmobiling.
“I realized I don’t just like mountain biking. I like hiking and climbing and all sorts of other activities,” he said.
The Web site has been running since August and features some trails in Connecticut, Idaho and Montana, but most of the trails listed are in Utah.
“There is no national database for trails,” he said. Many Web sites about trails are available, such as Mountain Bike Reviews (MTBR.com), Utah Mountain Biking, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Forest Service and the National Parks Service, but Roecker said they are extremely underfunded.
Fifty Web sites similar to trailbrain are out there, and Roecker said, “It’s only a matter who’s gonna come out on top in five years.”
As of this week, the site has 16 members and 306 Web pages, each featuring a different trail.
To get involved, visit the site at www.trailbrain.com.
Roecker eventually wants the site to expand, not only throughout the nation, but throughout the world.
“There’s no reason not to,” he said.
-ranae.bang@aggiemail.usu.edu