Trail “Karma” is the New Outdoor Achievement Score
Well, we all shine on / Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Right you are, come on!"
What do John Lennon and PeakVisor have in common?
We’re no good at writing pop songs, but we wanted to try our hand at Karma regardless. After all, we could all use a bit of good Karma!
With everything happening throughout the world, PeakVisor decided to introduce Trail Karma, which gives users a score based on their hiking and contributions to the app. You can get points for tracking your activities and uploading photos of your hike! It’s an excellent way for mountain enthusiasts to gauge their achievements as the years go by.
What is PeakVisor Karma Score and How Does it Work?
The PeakVisor Team is an eclectic gang of programmers and topography nerds, so it’s only natural that we would want to quantify our outdoor achievements. The Karma score serves to measure all your mountain activity into one crisp number. That means tracking adventures, uploading photos, and completing challenges and check-ins will all earn you points.
You’ll get Karma for adventures any time of year, whether you’re using Summer Mode for hiking or Winter Mode for ski touring.
How to Earn Karma
We all need to work on our Karma. Unlike the real world, we can easily measure Karma at PeakVisor. Here’s the scoop:
Simply sign in, and voila! Your first +5 karma!
After that, your Karma is:
- Check-ins: +3 for each, and +10 if it is a Pioneer Check-in (the first one at that place). Venture from the beaten path to improve your Karma faster!
- Photo submissions: +1 for each photo and +3 if there was no photo previously. Be the first to photograph a place!
- Adventures tracked: +3 for each hour of tracking and an additional +3 if you make this trail public for others to explore
- Monthly challenges: +5 for each level achieved (they usually consist of 3 levels each month)
Of course, there are still plenty of steps you should take to improve your “real life” trail karma as well. Please Leave No Trace and leave any outdoor place the same, if not better, than when you arrived. Don’t take natural objects as souvenirs; follow all rules and regulations, and respect other recreationists. We can’t quantify that in the app, but it will improve the trails for everyone!
Earning Karma Contributes to the PeakVisor App
All you “Karmaphiles” out there may be wondering how the Trail Karma score contributes to the greater Karmic ecosystem. Sure, getting a high score is personally fun and rewarding, but how does it benefit others?
In fact, every time you track an activity, upload a photo, or check in at a location, you’re contributing to making our app better for everyone!
We use this information to recommend the best trails to our users, especially with the new Discover feature. For example, we can see the most popular trails and offer prospective hikers a photo of the route.
What is our new “Discover” feature, and what’s so great about it?
The Discover feature allows you to view the best hikes in your current area, according to the PeakVisor app. It can be your current location or any location in the world that you choose to explore. That means you can find the best hikes around your home or check out routes from that vacation rental or mountain hut you’ll be visiting this summer.
- Scrolling through every hiking possibility can be time-consuming. The Discover feature allows you to quickly filter a few of the best hikes or itineraries in any given area.
- The PeakVisor app analyzes many factors in deciding which trails to show you, including popularity, points of interest, summits, and attractiveness of the route—that’s where the Trail Karma comes into play. We use your input to gain insight! The app also prioritizes loops over out-and-back trails and itineraries that include mountain huts.
- We select the best photos from each trail so you can get an idea of the scenery!
- You can use the Filter feature to remove too long or strenuous hikes by setting your maximum vertical gain and the number of hours you want to hike for.
- If you’re not ready to hit the trail yet, you can save the trail in your profile for the future or share it with friends.
If everybody is discovering the best trails and racking up their Karma, our recommendations will only improve and encourage more users to take more adventures…and together we will achieve Karmic glory!
You Know What Else Improves Karma…Feedback!
As always, we will continue to work to provide a better user experience for our loyal mountain enthusiasts. That means we need your input! Did you enjoy our new Karma feature? How could we improve this achievement score?
More generally, what other improvements would you like to see in the app? What tools would you find useful in the mountains? Please let us know; your feedback is a tremendous help in building the app. Contact us with suggestions and questions at peakvisor@routes.tips.
Every day we have in the mountains is a gift of the karmic universe bestowed upon us by the positive energy and beings that came before us. Let’s do what we can to ensure that this is the case in the future. It's time to go out and work on your karma!
