Technology

Thanks to the Park Record for mentioning both HikeUtah and Utah High Points. Happy trails, Park Record readers!

David Day has always been mobile, having seemingly walked on every trail in Utah and most of them in Colorado, but now he’s gone electronic as well, with the recent launch of the iPhone app, “Utah’s Incredible Backcountry: Zion, Bryce and Capitol Reef,” now available in App Store. If you’d like to try out Dave’s great collection of printed guides, as well as his free online trail guides, check out his website.

After spending some time in the Pacific Rim, Day moved with his family to Provo, Utah in 1991, and since then he has focused on photography and hiking guides for Utah and Colorado. In all, he has published 10 books. Hikers from all over have used Day’s guides to find their way around the canyons and mountains in the Intermountain West.

In January I approached Dave about putting his great hike info on mobile devices, starting with the iPhone. He warmed to the idea, and recommended that we start with a group of 15 hikes in Zion, Bryce and Capitol Reef. You can find out more about those hikes here. The emphasis is on the backcountry in each of these parks, away from the 100-yard snapshot crowd.

What’s next? Finishing out Utah’s national parks with a guide for Arches and Canyonlands, with some classic hikes in the Moab area. If all goes well, this next guide will be available by April.

The team at FeedTheHabit, a popular blog about that has covered outdoor sports since 1999, recently reviewed HikeUtah. They said our app “shows promise,” and we agree. Find out more about what they said here. We worked hard on the first version, and believe it will help people plan their outings in Utah.

So, what’s the promise? We’ll do the following

• Listen to what you have to tell us about what you’d like to see in HikeUtah
• Work with hiking authors to make more hikes available to you in the app
• Enhance HikeUtah so that you can purchase bundles of hikes by popular outdoor authors.

What about other places besides Utah? We’re working on it. If you’re an outdoors writer and would like to see your hikes in a mobile app, please drop a line to phil@talkingrockies.com.