LA’s Best Hikes by Modern Hiker iPhone App Review

Two days ago, Modern Hiker, one of the best hiking sites for Southern California, released an iPhone app spotlighting his 27 best hikes. As a reader of the site I figured I needed to pick it up and support what he is trying to do as well as see how the app worked. I have a lot of travel apps so I have seen both the good and the bad, so I was interested to see where this one fit in that spectrum. Read on for my full review.

The App

The app itself is one of the better ones I have seen for ease of use. As soon as you open it it asks if you would like to allow it to use your location, then when you confirm that it shows you a map with all of the associated hikes in the app placed on the map.

From there you can simply select any of the trail heads and it will show you what the hike is. The numbered ones simply mean that there is more then one hike in that area.

The page that it takes you to lists all of the information from Modern Hiker’s site in terms of what the hike entails, where it is and how to get there. A huge plus for these are the directions button that will send the coordinates to the iPhone maps application and allow you to get your own directions right to the trail head. I know how difficult it can be to have the iPhone recognize areas and to find specific addresses for trail heads, so just this alone is a huge help. They also have a phone number if there is an associated rangers office with that hike that you can click to call.

The app also allows you to buy additional guides that you can add in if you are interested in restaurants and other things associated with the area but not with Modern Hiker. While I think this is a cool idea, it looks like it will get expensive fast as the guides all cost at least 1.99 each, so I am not a huge fan of that. Also, I really hope to see more of the hikes from Modern Hiker added into this app.

For just the directions functionality and the 27 hikes that are in there currently, the app is easily worth its $1.99 price tag. If they add more of the hikes from the website and update the app with them this becomes an extremely valuable resource that many SoCal hikers will be using on a weekly basis. If you want to grab the app for yourself you can get it here or directly from the Itunes App Store. The site also says there is an Andriod version on the way. If you download it make sure to comment on this post with your review of the app as we would love to know what you think about it.