Finding the latest, local, hep eatery online is a piece of cake nowadays, thanks to sites like Yelp, but what if you're not interested in the best fish tacos in town? What if you'd rather just know where to catch the halibut that went into that tortilla?
AllTrails seems to be trying to fill that void. Although also a social networking site (because we all know there aren't enough of those around), at its core, AllTrails is a comprehensive search engine for places to do various outdoor adventures such as hiking, skiing, surfing, kayaking, climbing, or fishing in your area. It allows you to search by activity, distance, difficulty, dog-kid-horse-friendliness, features (waterfalls, etc), and a few other things. You can't yet search for if your activity is clothing-optional or cocktail-friendly, but I'm sure they'll fix that ASAP.
Once you've found what you're interested in, you can catalog your various adventures, rate them, review them, etc. While I find reviews useful, I probably won't be cataloging my kayak trips. I'm just not that OCD. Then again, it once took me a full 30 minutes to find a razor in my medicine cabinet and another time, I lost an 8' longboard in my kitchen, which isn't much longer than 8', so maybe I'd benefit from that kind of organization.
At this writing, AllTrails is fairly new, so member reviews of the various trails, beaches, etc are somewhat thin, but eventually that'll probably become the soul of the site. My daughter asked me to take her to a waterfall recently and I was able to find a kid-friendly short hike at San Antonio Falls, but there were no user comments and I'm not really interested in schlepping my brood 50+ miles to Duarte if the waterfall looks like something I could recreate on our front stoop with a garden hose.
I do, however, plan on checking out the Dawn Mine in Altadena because 1) mines are cool and 2) they featured this helpful tidbit from member Paul C:
Good long hike along the river. The mine is sort of hidden on the left hand side behind a big boulder, so keep your eyes open. The mine is usually ankle deep water, so bring appropriate shoes. And watch out for the 50' deep hole where the tunnels converge.50' foot hole? Ya don't say? Thanks for that tip!
(via Lifehacker)
Thanks for the recommendation, sounds like a great site to checkout. My girlfriend and I like geocaching and nature walking/hiking, and it'd be great to find others in our community who share in our interests. Social media for the win! Especially in Los Angeles, a city so widespread, the sense of community gets really lost and less cohesive. I have high hopes that this will get more people active!
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