The Outdoor App Racket (And the Guy Who Got Fed Up)

I don’t want you inside my phone.

I don’t want you listening to me. I don’t want you tracking where I hike or what trails I look up or how long I spent at which campsite on which night. I don’t know what’s in your app’s terms of service and I’m not reading forty pages of legal text to find out. What I know is that every free app has a business model and if you can’t figure out what you’re paying with, you’re paying with your data.

I’m not a target demographic. I’m not a consumer persona. I’m a regular guy who loves being outside — trail running, van life, camping in places nobody else is camping, swimming in water that doesn’t cost fifteen dollars to park near. I just want to go outside. I don’t want to be monetized while I’m doing it.

The outdoors is the one place that’s supposed to be free from all of that. And somehow we let it become a subscription service.

How It Happened

AllTrails is the obvious example — we’ve written about them directly — but they’re just the most visible piece of a larger pattern.

Trail maps: subscription. Dispersed camping locations: paywalled. National park reservations: $10 nonrefundable transaction fee on top of the entry fee on top of the camping fee on top of the taxes you already paid — the full breakdown is here. State park campgrounds in popular states now require a lottery system that opens six months out. A lottery. For a campsite on public land.

The information about where to go exists. The Forest Service has it. The BLM has it. The USGS has it. It lives in government databases that are technically public record. And it is so poorly organized, so buried in outdated interfaces and disconnected systems, that most people give up before they find it.

So a company comes in, scrapes the public data, organizes it nicely, and charges you a subscription to access information that belongs to everyone. That’s the racket. It’s legal. It’s clever. And I had enough of it.

The Gear Version of the Same Problem

The app racket has a physical version and it’s called the outdoor gear industry.

I’m not immune to it. Nobody who loves the outdoors is completely immune to the pull of a new piece of kit. But when I actually think about what I use — what I reach for every time, what makes the trips better — it’s a short list.

Two pairs of running shoes. A pack. A jacket. The dogs. Coffee in a thermos.

That’s most of it. Everything else is negotiable.

The outdoor industry wants you to believe that you need a $600 sleep system to car camp in September. That you need a four-burner camp kitchen and a 12-volt refrigerator and a solar panel array that would power a small house. That going outside requires a significant capital investment before you can begin.

It doesn’t. The most fun I’ve had outside has been with the least gear. Think of it like backpacking but in the car — everything you carry has to justify its weight in enjoyment. I have a battery-powered fan for air circulation. I have a charging brick so my phone is alive in the morning. That’s about where the gadget list ends.

The $150 cassette toilet. The titanium cookware set. The GPS watch that does everything except the actual running. I’ve watched people spend more equipping themselves for the outdoors than it would cost to take three real trips. The gear became the hobby instead of the outdoors.

I would rather spend that money on gas. Gas gets me somewhere worth going. A refrigerator just means I have cold drinks in the same place I was already sitting.

What I Actually Built

In 2015 I was trying to plan a camping trip. I spent two hours jumping between five websites to find a trail, a free campsite nearby, and some idea of what else was in the area. Five tabs. Two hours. One trip.

I built a site called OutsideMyWay to put that information in one place. Technical problems killed it before the 2020 camping explosion. I lost the site. I watched the problem get worse — the paywalls multiplied, the booking fees appeared, the apps got more invasive.

So I built Trek4Free.

It is not perfect. It will never be finished. It is always going to be evolving because the land changes and the data changes and the needs change. I built it because I needed it to exist and because I was tired of the alternative.

Here is what it is not: it does not have ads. It does not require your email address. It does not have a premium tier with the real features. It does not track you. I don’t want your data. I’m not building a profile on you. You open the map, you find where you want to go, you close the laptop and you go there.

Here is what it is: national forest dispersed camping, BLM sites, trailheads, swimming holes, hot springs, ancient sites, local outdoor events — all on one map. Free camping by state. Every listing links to nearby trails, swimming holes, and what’s happening within 8 miles. The information that’s technically public anyway, organized in a way you can actually use.

I’m Just a Regular Guy

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way. I know because I met Amy and she feels it too. I know because everywhere we camp, we meet people with the same philosophy — they’re out there because they want to be outside, not because they want to document being outside, not because they want to optimize being outside, just because the outside is where they want to be.

If Trek4Free works for you, I’m glad. If it doesn’t fit how you do things, that’s fine — everyone does the outdoors differently. My feelings aren’t hurt.

If you’ve got a site that should be on the map, tell us. If something’s wrong or out of date, let us know. I’m not a corporation with a ticket system and a three-day response time. I’m a guy with a laptop and a van and two chihuahuas and a lot of feelings about booking fees.

I hope to see you on the trail.

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Trek4Free: no login, no paywall, no ads. Open the map → | Browse free camping by state →