Cairn: The Trail Safety App

Such a great idea so I decided to try this app out. Unfortunately, it just stopped tracking me in the middle of my Grand Canyon rim2rim hike. Not sure why this happened since I never let my battery die. I guess it was too good to be true. Subscription ended.

We had many deaths on the trails this year due to heat, no cell service, and a snake bite. I love that this app shows where cell service is available and notifies my family where I am.

I use a satellite communicator but wanted something that friends who don’t have one can use to notify their family as they hike or hunt or horseback ride which is what we do. If you begin your trip where there is cell service, this app will continue to work even if you go out of cell service! Also, SUPER great is you can try this app for free for 30 days with full Premium features enabled and no credit card needed. So with that, I say download the app and try it out. Even though we use a satellite communicator too, this app is well worth the $26 per year to keep track of your hike every few minutes and send it to your safety circle back home and they can watch your progress and know if your back safely or not. I am so surprised more people don’t use this. This is even great for our teen drivers when they go out with friends, it sends report every 30 minutes or so via text or email. You set it up how you want. Super recommend this trail safety app.

Cairn provides peace of mind for family when I’m hiking. The ability to “queue” messages until cell signal is established works well in areas of poor coverage. I’d give it 5 stars but the most recent version pulled the Watch app which I found really handy for sending updates.

After using several other outdoor apps throughout the years I’m finally settling on Cairn. Why it’s my favorite: 1. The safety features, when outdoors I don’t want to spend a ton of time on my phone except for photos and safety. Cairn has the right balance between engaging me when needed and not being too busy or distracting. It works well in the background to track and communicate my trip plans, location, battery life, and status to mom. It’s not the only safety tool but an important one. 2. The maps are great and good value for being able to download for offline. 3. Real-time ETA rocks. I like to see time, distance, elevation left and Cairn performs magic here. My state WA has a ton of trail coverage. Outside of the US, trails in the app are limited for ETA and stats, but app still seems to show most of worldwide trails on the map when zooming in.

Great app to keep track of your distance , elevation and duration

I’ve been using this app while hiking overseas and it’s fabulous! I don’t have too many worries about getting lost, since I can download offline maps, and it lets my family keep up on what I’m doing. I most definitely recommend the cairnapp!

My daughter lives in Australia and I live in the US. I’m in her safety circle and can track her progress real time with this app. Recently, I was tracking her progress and saw that she hadn’t reached her destination on the trail. I was able to check her battery life and see that her battery had run out which accounted for her lack of progress. Highly recommend this app for hikes.

Great for Washington state. Outside of that I’ve been disappointed with trail options. Also lacks ability to really define your own trails. However the Cell-service breadcrumbs are awesome for seasonal trails that have a different winter route than summer route.

Suddenly crashes constantly in offline mode. Moved on to better free apps because of this issue taking me by surprise in the backcountry. Luckily I had paper map backups!