When I’m out on trail, whether it be a couple miles or a day hike, I like to track my time and distance. Having record of your hikes is both fun and helpful; I can look back on trails I’ve done before, what date I completed a certain summit, track how my time changes with difficulty to project times for my next hike, and share with friends and family what I’ve been up to. Here’s the setup I have to accomplish all of that.
Smart Watch: Garmin Forerunner 45
I purposefully sought out the lowest, high-tech watch I could find. I chose not to pair my phone or use it for fancy things beyond its GPS feature because I wanted to use this for its tracking technology and not to get notifications on my wrist. This watch has an excellent battery life, charges quickly, has reliable connectivity to sync to my phone, and is the smallest face I could find in a smart watch. The only thing it’s lacking in my opinion is the arrhythmia detection. While this would have been a nice to have for me if it is a need to have for you I highly suggest the Apple Watch.
Before a hike, I make sure my watch is charged. I like being able to look down and see how long I’ve been hiking or how many miles I’ve completed. When I’m done with the hike, ended the activity on my watch, and I’m back in cell phone range, I’ll sync it with the Garmin app on my phone to see in depth summary. It shows my heart rate over time, my speed over the hike, total calories, miles, whether I’ve done that hike slower or faster before, and more. I’ve configured the Garmin app to also upload directly to Strava so my friends and family can track my hikes and look at the photos I upload with them.
Strava
In the past, I used to track my hikes directly with the Strava app on my phone. This was incredibly wasteful of battery life. In the cold weather especially, my phone battery would drain even before the hike was over and it became a trade off of tracking my hike or saving battery life for a potential emergency call. Well, that’s pretty much a no brainer so I quickly found a way to track on a device that wasn’t also my only method of sending out a call or text if need be.
AllTrails
AllTrails is an app that is incredibly important to me for selecting trails, reviewing trail conditions, and planning hikes in general. They have a feature in app where you can record as well. While this is helpful because it keeps your trail map right up on screen so that you can ensure you’re on course, much like Strava, it does drain your battery life. Instead, I choose to download maps and save trails so that I can pull them up even without service to physically track where I am on the map without having to record my activity.
The Wild East 