From Geekzone
Building TrailTreks: NZ Topo Maps
Not sure why it took me a year to post this here, but better late than never!
I know plenty of geekzoners share my love of the outdoors — hiking, mountaineering, climbing, mountain biking, hunting, fishing, camping, offroad adventures, you name it. At the end of 2022, I made the move to the mecca of outdoor activities: the South Island. My ambitions scaled up fast, and I quickly found myself juggling two or three different apps just to plan and navigate my adventures. The frustrations were consistent across all of them — ads, paywalls, bloated feature sets, and UX that just didn't feel right.
So I decided to build my own.
The Original Goal
All I wanted was something simple: official LINZ topographic maps, auto-caching of tiles for offline use, and an app that was fast, reliable, free, no ads and no-nonsense. I built it, installed it on my Android, and tested it across a few multi-day hikes. It worked exactly as I'd hoped.
It Spread
A few mates wanted in, so I had them sideload it — worked a treat. Then came the requests. Suddenly everyone had ideas for what would make it "perfect" for their use case: GPX track imports, DOC tracks, huts and campsites on the map, and weather updates (that last one was my own request too, honestly). It had become a proper thing, so I decided to do a real release on the Android store. Beta tested, released — success!
Growing Pains and Going Cross-Platform
More users meant more feedback, more bug fixes, and a genuine side project to chip away at on evenings when the mood struck. Then the iPhone users started asking. The Apple developer annual fee was a sticking point — hard to justify for a free app — but eventually I gave in. The iOS version dropped in the last quarter of last year.
Where It's At Now
The feature set has come a long way:
- Weather forecasts for high peaks, and for each DOC hut, campsite, and track
- Full offline support once data is fetched
- Offline MBTiles packs for the North and South Islands (raster) and all of NZ (vector)
- Hillshading and a range of optional layers (these don't cache offline yet to save space, though that may come)
- Cloud sync for saved tracks and markers via Google/Apple ID login, backed by Firebase
- Live track recording
- Search across tracks, places, coordinates, and more
- Accessibility-friendly design
- There're no many users (around 240+ on Android and 200+ on iOS), but it's growing.
Give it a go, let me know what you think:
And it's still completely free, with no ads and no plans to change that.