What is the Trails Database?

We are working to launch a new hiking trail maintenance database linked to the FMCBC website to provide information for our members.   Most of our members hike and use various trail information sources.   Currently there are many information sources about trails including guidebooks, government websites and various trail websites however none of these really provide all the information that our members require.  Two of the most important things we would like to capture and inventory are:

  • Who is responsible for trail maintenance on each trail?
  • What work is needed?

The FMCBC doesn’t want to compete with mapping websites like AllTrails, GaiaGPS, Trailforks, Fatmap, etc.  The idea is to create a list of trails in the regions where we have people who are willing to work on trails as volunteers.  For those areas, we want to collect trail condition reports to give to volunteers.  The volunteers would check out the issues and see if they can be worked on by volunteers or if the issue needs to be referred to the land manager to resolve. We think that FMCBC members could write much better trail descriptions than websites such as AllTrails provide.

Trails Database Functions

Some of the important functions are:

  • Searching for trail, viewing the trail information
  • Adding a trail
  • Adding a trail condition report
  • Finding out who has adopted a trail as a trail champion
  • Adding a comment aout a trail
  • For areas or trails that are not in other mapping tools, this website can be a good place to get a description or store maps and photos.
  • Extracting a list of trails added

The FMCBC Trails Database is now ready for testing.  Please add your favourite trail if you can’t find it after doing a search.  We only have about 10 trails input so far in early March. We are sure there are more than a 1000 hiking trails in BC.

Volunteers Needed

There will also be administrator functions to review new trails and trail condition reports.  If you are interested in becoming a regional trails coordinator or seeing a demo please contact our trails team.