WTA's Driving Directions Will Get You There
When you can tell your phone to navigate you to almost anywhere in the city, it might seem quaint to rely on written driving directions. But head out for a hike and you might find yourself wanting WTA's ground-truthed driving directions.
When you can tell your phone to navigate you to almost anywhere in the city, it might seem quaint to rely on written driving directions. But head out for a hike and you might find yourself wanting WTA's ground-truthed driving directions.
Many trailheads — and the roads that lead to them — have little or no cell service. You might lose your directions right when you need them most. And, on forest roads in particular, navigation provided by certain global corporations can lead you astray.
Even in Mount Rainier National Park there are dead zones where cell service drops out. Photo by Christina Hickman.
That's why WTA's Hiking Guide includes written driving directions (and even how to take the bus there, if possible.) The directions are researched by real people who drove to the trailhead, so they reference useful landmarks you'll see along the way.
Which way?
Forest roads are notoriously hard to navigate. Brush grows over signs, side roads can be confusing and having on-the-ground expertise helps. WTA directions also often include information like how large the parking area is and whether or not a pass is required to park there.
Even on popular hikes, that lack of on-the-ground accuracy can lead folks astray. On more than one occasion, trip reporters have been turned around following Google directions to Barclay Lake because of a mistake in their directions.
Signage to Glacier Lake though — spot on. Photo by Rachel Wendling.
There's an app for that
Luckily, there’s a way to easily get driving directions — and our detailed hike descriptions — on your phone even when you don’t have cell service.
To save hikes to your phone, first, create a My Backpack account on wta.org and save the hikes you want to do. Then download our app — WTA Trailblazer (Android, IOS) — and you can access the hike information, including driving directions, offline. That way, if (or when) your navigation app punks out, you can access that hike's driving directions and hiking directions — even if you don't have cell signal or data.
This doesn’t mean we don’t recommend using digital tools to help you plan and execute your trip. After all, we've got an app and an online Hiking Guide with 3,900 hikes to pick from. We love digital tools, and navigational apps are really useful. Many WTA staffers use digital maps on hikes and research routes using Gaia or CalTopo.
Tech can absolutely enhance a hike. But skipping that at-loose-ends feeling when you lose signal a few miles short of a trailhead and are greeted with that "Google can't connect" message makes your hike a heck of a lot more enjoyable.
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