Beta opening soon

iOS beta · Android on the way

Find your next hiking partner,
or become someone else’s.

Trailmates is a missions board for hikers. Post the walk you want to do, see who’s up for it, and sort out the details in the group chat. The trail is the context — the people are the point.

Beta opening soonSee how it works

Free. No ads, no payments, and no feed to scroll.

Where it fits

Three apps get close. None of them solve the actual problem.

Finding a hike is easy. Finding someone to do it with, this weekend, at your pace, is not.

Not an events platform

Meetup is organiser-heavy and built around standing groups and RSVP lists. On Trailmates anyone spins up a one-off mission in a couple of minutes — no group to run, no committee.

Not a trail database

AllTrails is route data first, with a social layer bolted on afterwards. Here the trail is context for the mission. You already know where you want to walk; you need someone to walk it with.

Not a workout log

Strava is social about the hike you already finished. Trailmates is social before and during — it is about who you go with, not what you posted afterwards.

How it works

Three steps, and none of them are “build an audience”.

  1. 01

    Post a mission

    Give it a title, drop a pin on the trail, and say how firm your plans are — a specific day, that week, that month, or simply anytime. Set a group size between 2 and 20, tag the difficulty, and pick the vibe.

    A plan like “Routeburn, sometime in May” is a real plan. Missions do not need a start time to exist.

  2. 02

    Choose who comes

    Open missions take requests to join, and you approve each one yourself. Flip on Mates Only and it stays with the people you invite directly. Every profile shows their experience level and the reviews they have picked up.

    Nobody joins your hike without you saying yes.

  3. 03

    Sort it out in the chat

    The moment someone is in, the group chat opens — realtime, with reactions and read receipts. Where exactly to meet, what time, who is driving: that is a conversation, not a form field.

    Afterwards, everyone can review the people they hiked with.

What is in it

Small app. Very specific job.

Everything here exists because the core loop needs it. There is no feed, no follower graph and no algorithm, because none of those help you get up a hill with good company.

A map that searches itself

Pan and zoom, and missions load for whatever you are looking at. Busy regions collapse into clusters so a popular valley stays readable.

Dates that admit uncertainty

Pick a specific day, that week, that month, or anytime. Most hikes start as a rough intention, and the app lets them stay that way until the group settles it.

Trail vibes, not just difficulty

Chill, Energetic, Technical, Scenic, Social, Dog Friendly. Pace and mood decide whether a hike works far more often than the grade does.

Mates Only missions

Not everything should be open to strangers. Flip one switch and the mission is restricted to people you invite directly.

A chat per mission

Realtime group chat with reactions and read receipts, scoped to the hike. No sprawling DM inbox, no group chat that outlives the plan.

Reviews that say something

After a mission, rate the people you hiked with and tag what was true: great pace, punctual, navigates well, good communicator, safety-minded, friendly.

Notifications worth allowing

Someone asked to join. The host said yes. A message landed in your mission chat. That is the whole list — there is no engagement loop to feed.

Light and dark, properly

Built for 5am starts and headtorch finishes. The app follows your system theme, or you can pin it either way.

Trust & safety

The whole product rests on a stranger saying yes to a stranger.

That is the risky moment, and it is the one worth designing around. These are the mechanics doing that work today.

The host approves every single joiner

There is no open door. On an open mission, people request to join and the host reviews each request against their profile and review history before saying yes.

Reviews are public and specific

After a hike you rate the people you walked with and tag what was actually true of them. That history sits on their profile, visible to the next host deciding whether to approve them.

Missions are screened before they go live

A mission’s title, description and cover photo are checked automatically before anyone else can see it, so the board does not become a place to post whatever you like.

The exact meeting point is never published

A mission carries a pinned area, not an address and a time to turn up. Where precisely to meet gets agreed in the chat, between people the host has already approved.

Questions

The things worth knowing before you join.

What does it cost?

Nothing. There is no paid tier, no advertising and no payments anywhere in the app, and none are planned for the beta.

Will there be anyone near me?

Honestly: maybe not yet. The app works anywhere in the world, but it is only useful where other hikers are, so the beta is being seeded one region at a time. If your area looks empty, posting a mission is the fix — a posted mission is the thing the next person finds.

Is there an Android version?

The Android build exists and the app is cross-platform, but the public beta is iOS-first through TestFlight. Android testing follows once the iOS beta has settled.

Do I need to be a serious hiker?

No. Profiles carry an experience level from beginner to expert, and missions carry their own difficulty, so a gentle waterfall loop and an alpine traverse are both first-class here. Matching pace is most of what makes a hike enjoyable.

What happens with my location?

A mission carries the point you chose when you posted it. Your device location is used to centre the map on you and to help you drop a pin when creating a mission — the app does not track you, and there is no live location sharing during a hike.

Who is building this?

One person, on nights and weekends. That is why the app is deliberately small, why the beta is invite-paced, and why the roadmap in the trust section above is written honestly rather than optimistically.

There is a hike this weekend you would rather not do alone.

The beta is small and deliberately slow-growing. If hiking with people you have not met yet sounds good rather than alarming, you are exactly who it is for.

Beta opening soon

TestFlight places open in batches. Check back shortly — the link lands here first.