We Heard You: Faster Loading "Find a hike"

Nobody likes to wait. Not you, not us, not anybody. Whether it's at a restaurant or online, we expect fast service.

Up until recently, finding a great hike on Trailvoyant involved a bit of a wait that looked something like this:

Providing the absolute best data on local hiking trails means that you're going to have a lot of it. Every line that makes up a trail consists of dozens or even hundreds of connected points. Each point, with it's unique latitude and longitude coordinates, has to be loaded from a database onto the map.

That's a lot to do, and it's also why the trails load faster when the map is zoomed in, because fewer trails (and the points that make them up) need to be loaded to display that portion of the network.

We've tried to make that wait bearable with a lighthearted series of messages, but we understand that speed is better than humor.

As a result, we are happy to announce that we've made a significant improvement to the load time of our "Find a hike" section.

With some technological wizardry, we've now made it possible to pull up the most comprehensive map of local hiking trails and begin your search for the perfect hike almost instantaneously. No "Loading" messages.

For now this update only impacts the "Find a hike" section and there will still be a short wait to process a search, but we're constantly looking for ways to speed the whole site up and improve the entire experience, so stay tuned.

We want to hear from you!

What do you think of the upgrade? Is it as helpful as we hope it is? Tell us in the comments.

Also, what's next? Do you have a suggestion for how we can make Trailvoyant even better?  Please use our contact form to tell us what you think.