By: Sam Fader
From the North Cascades to Mount St. Helens, from the Hoh Rainforest to the Snake River, the state of Washington is a hiker’s paradise year-round. Millions of people — including myself — use Washington Trails Association’s site to find the perfect trail and plan their hikes. This year, WTA launched a new version of their Hike Finder map (built with GL JS) to help hikers enjoy and advocate for Washington’s natural beauty. I caught up with Loren Drummond, Digital Content Manager at WTA, to learn more about their implementation.
Why are maps important to WTA and your members?
As a nonprofit organization, WTA works to reduce barriers between people and the trails, with a broader goal of supporting the protection of trails and wild lands. People will protect and champion the places they love to hike, from local parks to remote wilderness. Maps are often the first step a hiker takes on their journey towards becoming a steward for public lands. We have thousands of trails in Washington, running across so many different kinds of public lands — within cities, on county lands, in state parks, on national forests and parks. The Hike Finder map gives hikers a visual way to explore the possibilities.
What inspired the new map?
As more people discover the joys and benefits of hiking, we’ve seen a small number of popular trails experience a dramatic spike in visitation. We wanted to make it easier for hikers to discover alternative trails in their favorite areas and plan their hikes safely. Mapbox tools enabled us to add interactivity and improved map layers that make under-used trails easier to find.
We also wanted more control of topographic layers, and more accurate maps of national forest roads and land management boundaries — experimenting with Mapbox tools let us do this. We integrated a layer showing active wildfire perimeters to alert hikers of potential wildfire hazards when planning a trip.
How do your users like the new map?
An incredible volunteer built our original Hike Finder map, and it is one of the most popular resources on our website — we’ve heard nothing but rave reviews. The new map is now more mobile friendly, and we’re finding that people are spending about 14% longer on the page. I think a number of new features on the map encourage exploration, which in turn helps surface trails and natural features that may have been overlooked before.
How was the experience of building your map?
Donations from our members make all of our work possible, so we’re careful when we invest in technology. We want to make choices that will have the most significant impact. There are so many cool things we can do with Mapbox, but we need to stay focused on features that can affect the most change.
It has been great working with Mapbox because the team shares our goals and values. And individuals at Mapbox have also invested a ton of time into supporting us — we’d especially like to thank Sam Matthews, who is also a WTA member and volunteer, for mentoring our team through this process.
What’s next?
Maps and visualizations are powerful tools, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. We want to play around with storytelling visualizations to support our advocacy campaigns like our Lost Trails Found campaign. As people use our Hike Finder map to explore the statewide trail system, we also want them to call on policymakers to adequately fund trail access and maintenance.
We’re excited to continue improving the mobile experience for users, especially when they move out of cell range and want to continue having access to maps offline. Down the line, we’ve got some ideas around how we can improve the trip planning tools, too.
Check out the WTA’s Hike Finder map. If you find a new favorite trail, remember to be a good steward and pack out what you packed in. Enjoy the map and want to learn more? Visit our Community page.
Get outside with the Washington Trails Association was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.