By Sara Goodnick
Outdoor explorers, photographers, off-roaders, hikers, birders, and hunters—onX makes three apps that will tell you exactly what you need to know, from downloadable offline maps, trails, tracking, waypoints, and much more. You may not need all three, but you would probably enjoy the benefits of at least one of them.
onX Hunt
Have you ever seen a beautiful piece of land that you wanted to explore, but were unsure if it was public or private? National Forest, State Forest, State Land Trust, BLM, Native American Reservation? Would you be caught trespassing, fined, arrested or shot at?
If it was private, did you wish you might be able to contact the owner and ask for permission to photograph there, but had no idea who that might be?
The Hunt App is the one that will let you know to whom a given property belongs. Created for hunters to help them stay within public land boundaries, it is also useful to photographers. Maps can be downloaded and used offline. If you want access to all 50 states, it’s expensive—$99 per year. But if you only need one state, it’s $29 per year. There’s a free trial for a week as well.
onX Offroad
The Offroad GPS App helps you find over 550K miles of off-road trails, trail status, photo waypoints, and more. The Basic version is very limited, but completely free. The free trial gives you a week of access to the Elite version which will cost $99 per year if you decide to purchase it. This also features landowner names and property boundaries. The Premium version, at $29 per year, gives up those elite features.
onX Backcountry
The Backcountry App “… is the ultimate GPS navigation app for your outdoor pursuits”. It features trail guides, avalanche forecasts, landscape views in 3D, national park maps, 24K topo maps, customizable waypoints, map downloads for offline use, tracking, and slope angles.
They offer a free 7 day trial of their Premium version. Purchase price is $29 per year. But you can also just use their free version which offers topo, satellite and hybrid basemaps as well as local weather.
Protect and Preserve
The company’s policy is to protect and preserve wild lands, to protect access to public lands and to expand and protect open spaces. They are working to identify state and federal lands that are currently inaccessible to the public with the goal of finding ways to secure access to them for everyone for recreational purposes.
Here’s the link to their website: https://www.onxmaps.com
