Geotrekking

Geotrekking is a term that describes the activity of recreational navigation, typically on land, with the aid of a GPS (Global Positioning System).

A Brief History

Since the removal of the Selective Availability restrictions on GPS systems by former President Bill Clinton on midnight, May 1st, 2000, the accuracy of consumer grade GPS systems went from approximately 100 meters (330 ft) to approximately 20 meters (66 feet), or less depending on the quality of signal that the GPS unit received and the number of satellites that it could "see".

This allowed the general public overnight to use the GPS systems that they had already purchased to locate their position on Earth with far greater accuracy that was previously allowed by the Federal Government.

The Birth of a New Community

The benefit to people who enjoyed outdoors activities like hiking and biking was that it allowed them to not only know where they were at with a much greater degree of certainty, but it also gave them the ability to record their routes, since the increase in accuracy made it possible to retrace their steps.

They connected their GPS systems to their computers at home and started to share their routes with other people over the Internet.

The term Geotrekking grew organically from the community of people who were using their GPS systems to share routes, to share the locations of points of interest, and to share the locations of geocaches (see Geocaching - a sort of a GPS based treasure hunt).

The Commercial Angle

Geotrekking has given rise to new avenues of commerce as well. Companies are designing tourism and travel packages around the Geotrekking concept, selling and renting GPS equipment, and offering vetted waypoint maps as travel aids.

ee also

* [http://www.tierrawiki.org/ TierraWiki] : Project to build a digital outdoor trail database.