About Aus Trails

From the founder

I love the outdoors. I've been lucky enough to have Aboriginal community knowledge around me to learn how to hike properly, and to be kept safe on days I couldn't have kept myself safe alone.

One of the times I got most lost, I was literally a few hundred metres from other hikers the whole time — close enough to have been found in minutes, if either of us had known. That stuck with me. It's the kind of gap that costs people their lives, and it's almost never about being deep in the wilderness — it's about not knowing, at the moment it matters, where you actually are relative to help.

I've always been affected by hearing about hikers going missing. Every time it happens, some of the same questions come up: did they have a real map, not just a paywalled screenshot? Did they know they'd left the trail before it was too late? Could anyone nearby have known something was wrong?

Aus Trails exists because the answer to those questions shouldn't depend on whether someone paid for a subscription. Offline maps, real elevation data, 3D terrain, live GPS position, off-route alerts — the stuff that actually keeps you safe — is free forever on this app. Not a trial. Not free-with-a-catch. Free, because it has to be.

That's also the direction everything else here is heading: real trail data that gets more accurate the more people walk it, and — eventually — a way for hikers with no signal to still get help, by relaying a distress signal through the nearest phone that has reception. See what we're actively working on on the homepage.

— Aiden Wood, founder