(Not really frequently asked but we thought you might want to know...)
Peakist is a labor of love from an avid hiker and my home region is the Catskills where I do most of my hiking. The concept for Peakist is to add additional data sets for many different regions. If you have suggestions for future areas feel free to reach out
We reviewed many sources for lists and peaks to be included. Some are universally agreed upon lists and some have different variations depending on the list authors. We had to make a call and we picked what we found reasonable. List criteria, where warranted, is found in the app by pressing the information button on top of the list. If you have questions or suggestions on improving lists let us know.
The intent of the Peakist app is to let you keep track of your visits to the peaks so you can complete your lists and get those sweet, sweet certificates and patches. There are many great apps already available to help you navigate and adding those features to our app, frankly, seems like a waste of effort.
It's easy to implement and it's free to use. Sure there are other places to source map data but most of those cost money. Since we are not intending to be a navigation app we'd prefer not to have to pass on the cost of using other map services or data to you. We reviewed the available options and none of them provided enough gains to be worth implementing. We provide the ability to copy peak location data which can be pasted into other apps for navigation.
Yep. On the peak detail page you will see a few buttons just below the visit information. The copy button in the center of the toolbar will copy the coordinates of the selected peak. If your app supports gps location data you can paste that data into the app.
The icon on the right will allow you to navigate to a peak or more typically a parking area directly from Apple Maps. To navigate to a parking area, select the parking icon for the area you are interested in then click the map icon This will load Apple Maps with that parking area as your destination
Mostly because I don't have the data for every single little side of the road parking spot. Sure, there are lots of places to pull over and start walking from but the parking areas we show are from lists provided by New York State and should actually exist and most importantly not upset a nearby landowner and be completely legal places to park.
Parking locations are only shown where official parking areas are found and where data is readily available. Some lists may not have associated parking areas displayed. In addition, parking is not shown until you zoom into the map a bit so as not to clutter the map.
If you find something that is incorrect let us know.
If you know of another list we should include AND can provide us the data to create the list let us know. We would be happy to include additional lists but we need the peaks, locations, etc in order to do so. It doesn't have to be just peaks as we already include the fire tower challenge list and one of the towers is practically in a parking lot. If you have a detailed list of waterfalls, for example send it along.
It takes time and effort to write applications and while this was initially created to scratch a personal itch, I've put a lot of time into it and would like to continue to update the app. Sure, you can find some of this information in books and online but I know I wanted a nice clean way to keep track of my visits to the peaks and maybe you do as well. If all apps were free there would be no apps. Free apps are rarely truly free. They are selling something. If it's not clear what an app is selling, it's selling you. Your data is valuable to people who want to sell you more things. We would prefer you just pay us a few bucks so we can keep improving our apps and write more. And we don't collect any of your data.
No. I hate that and won't do it. The app uses your Apple account via iCloud to sync data between your devices. Apple will send us some anonymous crash report data but that is the extent of the data we see.
Ah, a fellow code geek. The app is written in SwiftUI. Apple says this is the best way to develop apps for their platforms right now. Really, I saw a slide at WWDC 2023 that said just that. I can't say it's best but it's not too bad. Some things are like magic and some things are quite tricky or near impossible right now. I can say that there would not be a Mac version if not for how easy it is with SwiftUI. Is it a perfect Mac version, no it's not but it does let you review your peak data on the Mac and it's worth providing it.
Me. I'm Patrick McConnell and I run a software consulting shop, Squirrel Point Studios,. In addition to developing apps, we do all sorts of consulting work. If you need some software written there is a good chance we can help you.
If you can pay for it I can create any custom version of this app tailored to your needs and it's probably not that costly. Are you a tourist board or chamber of commerce that wants to showcase of list of locations in your region? This app would adapt very well for that and in fact we already have prototypes for just such use cases. Feel free to get in touch to discuss your ideas.
If you have a question not addressed here drop us a note.