Trailbot 4+

Great App, Couple of Recommendations

Love the concept to have all trail conditions in one location! Couple of recommendations:

1) When I click on link to Trailforks, MTBP, Facebook, etc. it opens in the browser, not on the respective app on my phone, not sure if there is a way to change this? I even click “open in app” prompt, but somehow it doesn’t recognize & I get “app not downloaded” error.
2) I see all the Northshore trails are missing (Jackpot, Splitrock Woods, Pincushion), would be awesome to have updated/accurate conditions since they are a longer drive for most!
3) The conditions feed still feels kind of clunky. It’s nice being able to filter by alphabetical/distance, but still gets cluttered with a lot of random small trails. Is there a way to maybe select trails only I want to see updates for, a “favorite” list? Realize this is probably complicated as it is a user specific feature. Or maybe be able to filter by region? (Metro, Iron Range, North Shore, Southern MN, etc?)
4) Don’t know how the conditions are updated, if it is only local trail managers who update, but is there way to submit updates/input on conditions based on first-hand rider input? A crowd-sourced format?

Keep up the good work, really like it so far!

Developer Response ,

Hi there, you can pin your favorite trails to the top of the list by selecting a trail and tapping the star icon at top right of the screen. If you tap the menu button and select 'Preferences' you can turn off specific regions. For Superior Cycling Association trails, please contact them and register your interest. Hearing from riders is the best way to get trails added. We are evaluating ways to offer riders a way to provide reports in the future. I'll look into the Trailforks app issue. Thanks for the feedback!

Preferred MORC trails app

Can pin trails, but the pinned ones are unsorted. All other trails are sorted by recency of updates which means you have to search for the “lesser” trails. MORC app was one stop shopping for a quick update. Not sure what they were thinking with this.

Update in response to the developer response:
Thanks for the response and didn’t mean to offend by “what they were thinking” as I literally couldn’t determine much advantage as compared to the one page view in the old MORC app. Really want to know what trails are open as the first priority of using these apps. A one pager was already great. I appreciate the later responses which help to get back to a more consolidated and sorted view. Adding a star for the response and support, but still can’t understand the initial app clutter and choice to sort based on recent trail reports. Start concise by trail and allow the user to expand to the trail reports would be my suggestion. The big advantage of this app is it covers more trails, so I can see how you went that initial direction.

Developer Response ,

Pinned ones are sorted by the same criteria used for the non-pinned ones. If you’re seeing something different, please email me hi@trailbot.com and I’ll look into it.

As far as “what were they thinking”: I am just a rider—like you—who wanted to try to make finding out when I can ride just a little easier. I do it for free, in my limited spare time. Negative reviews like this without you having even tried to get in touch to give me a chance to fix things really sting. I’m sorry this free community service is not up to your standards.

It happened!

I’m pretty familiar with Trailbot since I am a volunteer and have updated our trail status. It’s such a great tool for us volunteers to update and receive trail reports from riders.

Today I was riding elsewhere in the state at a trail I don’t follow (shout out Pincushion up on the MN north shore) and came across a downed tree. Pulled out my phone, found the trail, and filed a report with the location and photo of the tree all in about a minute.

One thing that may be nice is to make location sharing the default on reports? I assume it wouldn’t work if you didn’t have service at the time, but I had to remember to click the button. It’s helpful for trail managers to have that info.