Keeping a hiking journal - how to record every hike

Why keep a hiking journal?

When you only hike a few times a year, the details fade fast. Was that the tour with the afternoon thunderstorm, or the other one? How long were we really out for? A hiking journal answers questions like these - and gives you an overview along the way: elevation gained across the season, your finest tours, the summits you have already stood on.

The difference from a pure tracking app: recording only captures what sensors measure - distance, elevation, pace. A journal holds on to what made the tour special: who you were out with, what the weather was really like, what you experienced along the way. That is what you will want to remember years later.

What belongs in a hiking journal?

You don't have to log every little thing. These details have proven a good foundation:

• Date and destination - the bare minimum. When, and which summit or route.
• Distance, duration and elevation gain - make hikes comparable.
• Weather and conditions - heat, fog, snow. Explains later why a tour felt exhausting.
• Company - solo, with friends, with the club.
• Photos - the view, the hut, the signpost at the saddle.
• A short note - a sentence or two on how the tour was. Often the most valuable part.

Paper, spreadsheet or app?

The classic notebook. Nicely analogue, needs no battery and makes a wonderful keepsake. But: it isn't searchable, photos don't fit inside, and after a few years everything is scattered across several books.

A spreadsheet. Calculable and searchable, but tedious to maintain - especially on your phone while out and about. Photos are hard to embed sensibly, and with every season the spreadsheet gets more unwieldy.

An app. Combines both: quick entry on the go, photos right with the tour, searchable and analysable. Many hiking apps, however, are built above all for planning and navigation - the journal is often just an afterthought there. For more on why pure tracking apps hit their limits as a journal, see the article What Strava can't do.

A journal for hiking - and everything else

That is exactly the gap Tourtagebuch was made for: a digital tour journal in which you record every hike with precisely the details that matter to you. Only three fields are truly required, everything else is optional. At your desk in the browser, on the go as an app on your smartphone - the same tours, automatically in sync, even offline in a dead spot.

• Log hikes with date, destination, distance, duration, elevation gain, weather, company and rating.
• Photos right with the tour - even offline, they upload as soon as you're back in range.
• Filter by period and favourite plus free-text search, so you find every tour again.
• Yearly and seasonal breakdowns - including your personal bests for distance and elevation.
• Bring in existing routes via GPX import from your hiking app.

The big advantage: you don't only hike. Cycling tours, running rounds, motorbike rides, canoe trips or cross-country skiing all land in the same journal. One account, all activities - instead of five different apps. And the data stays yours: database on a German server, no public feed, no ads.

In short

Keeping a hiking journal costs two minutes per tour and, over the years, gives you a real treasure: elevation gained, favourite tours, memories with pictures. Paper is lovely but not searchable; spreadsheets are tedious; pure tracking apps aren't built for it. A digital tour journal combines quick entry on the go with analysable data - and keeps hiking, cycling and everything else in one place.