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Trail status is AI-generated from recent trip reports and may be wrong or out of date — always double-check wta.org before heading out.
The basics
- Each card and map marker is a Washington hiking trail. The colored pill shows its current accessibility:
Open,
Snow gear,
Closed, or
Stale (no recent reports).
- Use the filters up top — Status, Region, Length, Elev, Difficulty — and the search box to narrow the list; pick a sort order in the Sort List control below Recent updates.
- Click a card to zoom its marker on the map. Toggle the Camps and Stops layers to show campgrounds and rest areas.
- Recent updates lists trails whose status changed in the last 7 days.
Add a new trail
- Type the trail name in the search box.
- Click "Search wta.org for …" below the results (it appears whether or not local trails matched).
- Click Add next to the trail you want. We fetch the trail, pull its recent trip reports, and summarize them — this takes about 20 seconds, then the map refreshes with it included.
Difficulty & default sort
Difficulty is computed from the trail's length and elevation gain using the
standard Shenandoah hiking-rating formula: score = √(2 × gain_ft × length_mi),
bucketed as Easy (< 50), Moderate (50–100),
Hard (100–200), Strenuous (200+). Trails with no length/gain on wta.org show no badge.
Default sort combines a trail's rating and number of reviews with a Bayesian-weighted score:
(v × R + m × C) / (v + m), with C ≈ 4.5 (mean WA rating) and m = 50 (review-count prior).
A 5-star with 8 reviews gets pulled toward the mean, while a 4.7-star with 800 holds its rank — so well-loved, well-reviewed trails surface first. Other options: Most recent, Rating, Reviews, Name.
How often it updates
- Daily (~3am PT) — a quick pass re-checks trails that aren't currently Open (snow gear / closed), so newly-opened trails surface fast.
- Fridays (~3am PT) — a full refresh re-checks every trail plus the regional rankings.
The "updated" time in the header shows when the trail data was last refreshed.
Support & more
Questions, problems, or suggestions? Email
[email protected].
See About for how data is collected and what each icon means,
or the Changelog for a running log of trail/campground additions and status changes.
Get trail updates
Coming soon
Weekly email digest of trail status changes is on the way. Leave your email and we'll let you know when it launches.
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We'll email when trail updates launch.