COTREX App

[Riotcake]

Hello everyone,

I apologize in advance is promoting is not allowed or I'm posting in the wrong spot, please move this post or delete if necessary.


As some of you may know, I work for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. I will be helping out the trails department through the end of the year.

CPW just dropped their big trails app for the state, Colorado Trails Explorer, or, COTREX. It is intended to be a comprehensive guide to all of Colorado's trails; this means hiking, biking, OHV and full size trails.
I have done some exploring on the desktop version of the app and I have to say, it is pretty neat! I can definitely see it being a useful resource in the field as it can use your phone's GPS to keep you on the right trails without having to use cell service or busting out the paper trail maps. You can even plan routes that include multiple uses; for example, a 4wheel trail which gets you to a place to camp which connects to hiking trails.

I know the developers of the map system are looking for a lot of feedback (I think it's technically in like a soft launch period). So if anyone wants to check it out and post their thoughts here I can pass them along. Or you can right click anywhere on the map or on a map feature to add feedback. There is a desktop version of the app, as well as mobile apps for Iphone and Android, all free to use.:)

Another thing I would love some input on:
COTREX has some 'Featured Routes' which are advertised on the home screen for people to check out. These trails change periodically. Knowing my interest in 4wheeling, my supervisor asked me to put together a few featured routes for 4wheeling. Ideally these would be 'easy' trails, something that stock vehicles could do (read as "stock 4WD vehicle", i'm not trying to cater to someone in a sedan). We don't want to be responsible for someone getting their Subaru stuck up on Radical Hill or something. If anyone has some ideas for easy trails that lead to a destination (like a lake) I would love to hear them! Also, If you have any pictures from these trails (I can look at the old trail run reports for pics as well if you just have the trail name) that would be very useful, although, if anyone's vehicle is in the picture, I think I will need their consent to use it.

Link to desktop app:
https://trails.colorado.gov/

Thanks!

Happy Wheeling!:D

[Tom]

Just downoaded onto my ipad. I like it, but the ui only fills about 1/4 of the screen. Would be more useful to fill the entire screen.

Lots really good on my android cell though. I like that one can down load maps and that it is gps enabled.

[Riotcake]

Just downoaded onto my ipad. I like it, but the ui only fills about 1/4 of the screen. Would be more useful to fill the entire screen.

haha, Yes that would be a lot better. Just out of curiosity, are you sure your Ipad is up to date for IOS? It seems like a silly thing for them to overlook Ipad comparability, but it's definitely possible they did!

Thanks!

[Tom]

Easy 4x4 trails. Switzerland trail, yankee hill, argentine pass at least to the mine.

I noticed feature routes. It would be nice to sort/filter base on users location.

[Tom]

haha, Yes that would be a lot better. Just out of curiosity, are you sure your Ipad is up to date for IOS? It seems like a silly thing for them to overlook Ipad comparability, but it's definitely possible they did!

Thanks!
Yes it updated yesterday. After I posted I noticed the arrows in the right hand corner. Click it expands to ui but only to about 50% of the screen size,

[Riotcake]

Yes it updated yesterday. After I posted I noticed the arrows in the right hand corner. Click it expands to ui but only to about 50% of the screen size,


I looked into it, I guess they don't have Ipad support for the IOS app yet. So to have it full screen you would have to use the desktop version. I think it's something they want to have in the future though!

[Spieg]

Interested in this. Is there any ability to use satellite imagery with this app?

[Tom]

I looked into it, I guess they don't have Ipad support for the IOS app yet. So to have it full screen you would have to use the desktop version. I think it's something they want to have in the future though!
Thanks. I put it on my android phone and it looks great in every way. I use the phone off roading anyway so a perfect match.

[Riotcake]

Interested in this. Is there any ability to use satellite imagery with this app?

I don't believe so. I actually had a meeting with the guy in charge of the project yesterday. He was playing around with COTREX and never turned on imagery.

He did tell me that the ability to combine trails and save planned routes is in the works. He showed me a cool feature, if you use the measure tool it will snap to the closest trail and you can plan out routes along multiple trails in this way. You just cant save them, yet.

[Tom]

Easy 4x4 trails. Switzerland trail, yankee hill, argentine pass at least to the mine.
I noticed feature routes. It would be nice to sort/filter base on users location.

I noticed the featured routes depend on the area of Colo you are viewing. This meets my suggested spec of sorting feature routes based on location.

I also posted a trip report for a hiking trail near fruita I visited a few years ago. Once enough users get some reports on the site that will be a nice feature.

Tell your guy, from software engineer, NICE JOB.

[Tom]

I have been looking at this on and off for the last few weeks and have an issue. No where near enough map is shown.

I am using an ipad. Being 67 years old my eyesight is not what it once was.

That said I find the text portions of the ui too large. If one used a smaller font everywhere much more room would be avaiable to the map. In particular the name of the route should not even appear on the map since its predominant as the first line of text anyway. It makes the top 1/3 of the map useless.

Not complaining but it sounded like the dev team wanted feedback. I have done quite a bit of ui work in the last 25 years.

[Riotcake]

I have been looking at this on and off for the last few weeks and have an issue. No where near enough map is shown.

I am using an ipad. Being 67 years old my eyesight is not what it once was.

That said I find the text portions of the ui too large. If one used a smaller font everywhere much more room would be avaiable to the map. In particular the name of the route should not even appear on the map since its predominant as the first line of text anyway. It makes the top 1/3 of the map useless.

Not complaining but it sounded like the dev team wanted feedback. I have done quite a bit of ui work in the last 25 years.

Thank you, I will definitely pass that along to the developers. This is the first attempt, so hopefully it will only get better! I know they have some cool features they are still working on.

[Max]

Bumping this up! I haven't installed it on my phone or iPad yet, but it seems like it could be cool.