[Bootpathguy]

It's a dumb topic

[Nancyann]

Interesting! However, probably what you are not going to experience on NWHikers is endless scrolling through multiple trip reports on the same popular trails just to get to something interesting. No offense to WTA, they are a great resource.

[ejain]

The premium feature of NWHikers.net are the NWHikers ;-) WTA's more structured format makes it a far better resource for reporting and checking trail and road conditions, but not a good choice for posting your epic, off-trail trip reports.

[Kim Brown]

Epic off trail reports are fine for WTA's site. But like on NWHikers, you'd have to stumble upon them while browsing. At least with WTA's site, you could do a search for the most logical trail name(s) and skim them to see if there are any epic off trail reports. Well I guess NWH has a search function too, doesn't it! Anyway, on WTA's site you can do a list of criteria to get you closer to what you want. I did a criteria search for the max in length and elevation and got lots of reports to choose from. Found some interesting ones in the Pasayten! SOme were off trail, some not, and some half&half. I enjoy the old reports - I think the first report was in 1997. search their site for Kindy Creek and Kennedy Hotsprings to compare oldest and newest reports; Middle Fork Cascade report from 2002 is from a trail crew (me) who worked the trail, and one from 2006 (Slugman) discusses the poor condition of the trail, and then the burned trees (burned since the 2002 report was written). Milk Creek has a few reports that talk about trail crew logging it out and it being brushed out (I remember the Great Brushing Out summer!). The last pleasant trip report for Milk Creek was Oct 15 2003 by Janice Van Cleve; the next was Nov 9th from MtnMike after the floods wiped out the road. So that kind of thing is searchable and you get a good story of a trail that way. I like their new format

[nordique]

I use both WTA and NWHikers.Net regularly, as I try to come up three hikes a week, for a group of over 150 senior-citizen hikers. Much as I love NWhikers.Net trip reports and Trail Talk, I need to easily access trip reports, for the most recent hiking conditions, to propose our next hikes--and WTA is far superior for my needs. My modest hike photo collection: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nordique/collections/72157594587368098/ Now, as usual, it's time for me to check NWHikers!

[gumby]

"WTA Replicates NWHikers" is a bit deceiving... Looks like they just added support for more pictures? Technically I'm new to NWHikers (although I've been lurking for a few years). The difference I see is that NWHikers has an active community (i.e. forums/threads + strong engagement with others) whereas WTA is basically a place to gather updates on trail conditions. Both valuable in my eyes.

[Ski]

There are all kinds of differences: nwhikers.net will not email you every couple of weeks asking you for money. nwhikers.net allows members the opportunity to bloviate endlessly about meaningless trivia, argue with other members about global warming for nine years, and if you can't find the right thread to post some completely useless nonsense totally unrelated to anything else in the galaxy, you can find it here. Unfortunately I can't point out all the wonderful features on the WTA website, because I haven't been able to log in for about 10 years. No idea what that's all about.

[Tom]

Good for them, although needs work. It's not very mobile / bandwidth friendly to embed a bunch of bloated ~300KB images into the body of a report. The images in the report appear to be 1048 px wide shrunk to fit the screen, but displayed no wider than 667px even if your screen is bigger. You can't click to embiggen them to 1048 px. The leading and trailing images display a little wider (up to 1000px) with a magnifying glass to embiggen... but when you click on the magnifying glass they display smaller.

[joker]

I think they "stole" the idea from about a zillion web forums on a variety of topics, including many that predate nwhikers... lol

[Matt]

Actually it's more like WTA has adopted the format used by summitpost or cascadeclimbers, but without the separate album links and larger photos available in summitpost. What nwhikers does differently is what Tom already pointed out, storing only the thumbnail on site, so that much larger versions can be able to click on without overloading the available storage or size of the trip reports.

[Kim Brown]

[rossb]

The big thing that WTA did was standardize their trip reports. Unlike more free form websites (like this one) you have to pick a hike based on your trip. This has some advantages. You can quickly tell where a person went (no purple prose in the title, only to discover they went to Mount Si). But more importantly, it connects up easily to a hike description. This makes it very easy to figure out where the heck someone went. Just click on the title, then read the trip description. There is even a map -- albeit a Google Map (it would be much better with a GMap4). It is pretty easy to browse through the trip reports, and then read one, quickly figure out where it is, then go back to reading the report (if I'm interested). The big drawback to this approach is that off-trail wandering -- or failed attempts -- are often lumped in with the nearest trail. I have read several reports that start by stating "This isn't really a hike to Mount X, but that was the nearest trail" or "I didn't make it to the lake ...". Sometimes it is better to have a more free form system, and sometimes it is nicer to standardize. Ultimately, it is still an organizational website, not a user driven resource, like NWHikers. There is no way to start a conversation about a hiking issue, or ask a generic question. They lack a lost and found (which is really a big issue) as well as the ability to send a private message. The results are clunky, as comments are tacked on to trip reports, for want of a better place. With all the new work, it really isn't that different than the old magazine that started it (Signpost).

[Pyrites]

I had recent conversation with someone at WTA who has been involved on discussions on trip reports and content. Among his comments were that WTA does not want to compete with what NWHikers can do better. Longer, more detailed reports, and discussions that follow. And the heavy duty off trail, mountaineering diaries. A little wandering up the hill at Golden Lakes would fit fine. A route up the Queets, across the river, up a side ridge to the Skyline. Then several decades of experience that discuss that route. This was not something they want in their channel.

[puzzlr]

I don't see the point in treating this like a competition. Multiple hiking sites helps to prevent overcrowding on certain trails following a report with a spectacular set of photos, or something else that catches attention of a lot of people. A "feature" of nwhikers that I like is that it's NOT overly structured. If I decide to post a report about a sensitive area that's not well known, I'm confident it will scroll off the first page within a day or so. After that the information is there for anyone searching for the right term, but that may not be obvious. For me it's the right balance of sharing hiking information and not having a big neon sign on the internet to lesser know places.

[Kim Brown]