Hiking Map Project

Post by **tekewin** » Tue Feb 04, 2025 2:51 pm

I've been geeking out on a new hiking map over the last couple of months. I'm as excited about the tech as I am about the map.

I created an interactive map of my hikes (https://ironhiker.cloud/hikes) using the powerful Datasette tool by Simon Willison. The result was an intuitive, easy-to-use map that links each hike to a full report on my blog. Many interesting technologies are at play. The main database (All_Hikes) has everything. Then, there are subsets for my Favorites, Ultras, Sierra Club lists, and my personal Iron Mountains CA list. The hardest part was getting all the lat/longs for each summit.

If anyone is interested in the details (probability: very low), the underlying database is sqlite3, a self-maintaining SQL compliant standalone database. The mapping functionality is provided by a datasette plugin, and it was deployed to Google Cloud Run as a service, then mapped to a custom domain (ironhiker.cloud). Google Cloud Run automatically scales your application instances as needed, but is a scale to zero service, meaning when it is not in use, all instances are killed and no charges are incurred.

I know, it's a lot of work for a map, but I wasn't happy with a custom Google Map. I wrote a more detailed article about it (https://symbols.hashnode.dev/interactiv ... ogle-cloud), and I'd be happy to help anyone else set up their own maps.

I'll go crawl back in my nerd hole now.

Nate U · Post by **Nate U** » Tue Feb 04, 2025 7:44 pm

This is super cool! Both the map and the scope of your peak bagging...

I love how it groups hikes and counts them in proximity to one another depending on your zoom level.

Is there a way to see your GPS tracks on the map? That would be great. And is it possible for the map to be topographic?

This is kinda like my master google earth archive. I really love being able to have the GPS tracks visible, but of course its not available to others online.

Post by **tekewin** » Wed Feb 05, 2025 1:32 am

I am not sure about adding GPS tracks since that would have to come from a different data source (GPX files vs the CSV data imported for the hikes).

The map is using a program called Leaflet via a plugin called datasette-cluster-map (https://datasette.io/plugins/datasette-cluster-map). A topographic layer can be used instead of the standard OpenStreetMap layer, but it might have to be one or the other. I'll experiment with that.