[archerid]

Hi All,
As some of you may know, I've been working on a website that allows people to map out mountain biking and hiking routes, and share them with others. The site allows you to create your route right on an image of the trail map that is overlayed onto Google maps. So far, I've put all of the preserves that are part of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District (MROSD) on the site, but if you have other locations you'd like to see, let me know.

I need help from all you mtb enthusiasts to populate the site with your favorite routes. I'm hoping that this site becomes a useful tool for all of us, so let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or problems with it. Here's the link:

www.trailbait.com

Thank in advance for your help!

 

[imjps]

Trailbait?!!?

Aren't those some of those cuties I see riding for the local High School team?

 

[CHUM]

Trailbait?!!?

Aren't those some of those cuties I see riding for the local High School team?

i was eatin' an apple when i read that....you almost killed me....and now i have applesauce in my sinuses :nono:

 

[Rex_Skidmore]

Good job. I like it. Itsa lotta work making everything work on a site.
Suggested additions : Tahoe, Coe, Demo, Annadel, and all the usuals that are discussed on the NorCal board. How far do you intend to cover?

 

[archerid]

Good job. I like it. Itsa lotta work making everything work on a site.
Suggested additions : Tahoe, Coe, Demo, Annadel, and all the usuals that are discussed on the NorCal board. How far do you intend to cover?

Thanks for the feedback/suggestions, Rex. I'd like to put as many locations as people are interested in. The tricky part is finding park maps that I can put on the site. I'm going to add a GPX import/export feature this week so people can upload routes from GPS units, but I'd prefer to have the maps available so that the routes are more accessible for everybody. I'll look for maps of the locations you suggested.

 

[slide mon]

Hey, I've played around with GIS and GPS for 8 years or so and built a few tools like this as well. This looks like a pretty cool site. Took a quick look, looks like the old Topo! but web enabled, pretty cool.

The problem with a lot of these sites now is that people are posting poaches and illegal trails. It'd be great if you could make an effort from the beginning to keep those trails off of your site. Maybe a note on the homepage to only post legal trails and a "report this trail" link on the trail page... My $.02 anyway, maybe some of the other sites will follow your lead (wishful thinking.)

-slide

 

[imridingmybike]

Hi All,
As some of you may know, I've been working on a website that allows people to map out mountain biking and hiking routes, and share them with others. The site allows you to create your route right on an image of the trail map that is overlayed onto Google maps. So far, I've put all of the preserves that are part of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District (MROSD) on the site, but if you have other locations you'd like to see, let me know.

I need help from all you mtb enthusiasts to populate the site with your favorite routes. I'm hoping that this site becomes a useful tool for all of us, so let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or problems with it. Here's the link:

www.trailbait.com

Thank in advance for your help!

Interesting site, Arash. I hope it works out.

It appears to currently cater to south bay. I am sure each location listed took a while to load and configure. As it grows, I'll be sure to add what I know.

 

[archerid]

Thanks. Yeah, I live in Half Moon Bay, so I started with the areas I bike most. Actually, once I have a digital version of the trail map, it only takes about an hour to map the trail segments and make the map available to people. I'm going to fill in some of the missing parks and preserves on the Peninsula, then move out to the locations in the East and North Bay.

 

[archerid]

Thanks Slide. That's a great suggestion. I'll add something on the home page.

 

[Rex_Skidmore]

- The screen is really wide. When you click on a comment in Firefox, I have to scroll all the way to the right to read the comment. It's been frustrating.

I've seen this before on other sites, but I'm using Firefox and I don't have to scroll left/right to read. Stripes, where are the comments that require scrolling to read?

 

[Moto'n'PushBiker]

That's a great tool!!!

It's kind of like this KLIMB ( http://klimb.org/klimb.html ) but for MTBs. I hoped somebody would do that.

A nice thing would be if you could get a larger printable map with directions (left on trail X, continue for Y miles, right on trail Z,...)

 

[Velodromed]

this is really cool- thanks for sharing. I'll use it

Hi All,
As some of you may know, I've been working on a website that allows people to map out mountain biking and hiking routes, and share them with others. The site allows you to create your route right on an image of the trail map that is overlayed onto Google maps. So far, I've put all of the preserves that are part of the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District (MROSD) on the site, but if you have other locations you'd like to see, let me know.

I need help from all you mtb enthusiasts to populate the site with your favorite routes. I'm hoping that this site becomes a useful tool for all of us, so let me know if you have any comments, suggestions, or problems with it. Here's the link:

www.trailbait.com

Thank in advance for your help!

this is really cool- thanks for sharing. I'll use it

 

[Fast Eddy]

i was eatin' an apple when i read that....you almost killed me....and now i have applesauce in my sinuses :nono:

I didn't blow beer out my nose until I read your response.

On a related note: it took me about a month to get my kids to stop using the 'prostiteens' euphemism after I mistakenly repeated and explained it.

 

[morganfletcher]

Cool site. Check out the pdf maps at http://ebparks.org/resources/resources_maps.htm.

It would be cool if the uploaded routes were downloadable as .gpx or .crs files, so others could put them on a gps and follow them. Can you sync with http://motionbased.com somehow? Maybe link to the trail reviews here?

Morgan

 

[archerid]

Thanks for the link to the East Bay trail maps site! That is the mother lode of maps. I wish every area had their maps available online like that, because it would make it a lot easier to put them on my site. That's one of the reasons I did the MROSD parks first; they have high quality maps of all of their preserves on their website.

I'm hoping to enable GPX upload/download this week. Also, I like your idea of being able to link to external sites. I'll have to give some thought to how I can implement that. Thanks again for your feedback.

Arash

 

[archerid]

stripes, thanks for the feedback. I was afraid the screen layout would be too wide for people with smaller screens or low screen resolution. I have an idea for displaying the segment comments in a popup window right on the map, so that should alleviate the problem. I should have that in place soon.

As for the audience. Initially, I'm targeting mountain bikers and hikers, but there's no reason that other trail users can't use it. That's why I mapped the multi-use parks. I'll probably add additional types into the Route Type field so that people creating routes can identify which activities are appropriate for the route.

 

[archerid]

Yeah, a buddy of mine just sent me a link to KLIMB today. They are similar.

On the Route Detail page, there's a link to a printable version of the route. I tried to make it fit a whole 8.5'' X 11'' sheet of paper, since that is what most people have in their printer. As for the directions, the route creation tool allows people to include information for each segment of the route, so I'm hoping that people will include directions there.