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The Florida Trail Guide is also an app! Teaming up with Far Out Guides – who produce apps for the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Colorado Trail, John Muir Trail, the Camino De Santiago, and more – we’ve taken the contents of our guidebook, added interactivity that’s impossible inside a book, presented it on a accurate map of the Florida Trail, and made it an interactive experience for planning your hikes.
Formerly known as Guthook Guides & Atlas Guides, the company has rebranded. You’ll find our Florida Trail app – as well as a new standalone for the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail, which includes all land trails in the Florida Keys – in both the Google and Apple app stores as part of the Far Out Guides app. In addition, browser-based versions of all three apps are available.
Download FT App Download OHT App Download ECT App
We do the Legwork
Every hiking season, we’re out on the trail collecting updates for the app and guidebook. We do not rely on free government resources for our GPS data: we hike the trail. That’s the only way we can bring you thousands of waypoints with personalized notes and photos across more than 1,400 miles of the Florida Trail and its connected side trails.
We are fortunate to have a good rapport with local volunteers and with the Florida Trail Association staff, who make sure we get updates for significant relocations of the trail during the year, and we’re thankful to be able to immediately pass those on to the programming team at Atlas Guides to splice them in so the location of the trail inside the app stays up to date.
We then go out and hike those changes to the trail as our schedule permits. We do a big push every fall, before thru-hikers hit the trail in the winter, to gather together all of the emails, messages, notes, and feedback from hikers to push updates out about services and campsites. We also contribute a portion of the profits back into the Florida Trail, both through the Florida Trail Association and the Florida Trail Hikers Alliance.
They do the Tech
The programming wizards for Far Out built incredible functionality into their apps. Some of the key features include waypoint commenting – a blessing for hikers to leave notes for each other on current trail and services conditions – as well as social sharing to a broad or narrow audience, the ability to set up and plan routes, and to record your own GPS track as you hike.
Take a peek under the hood
Scroll through these screenshots to see some of what the app can do.
Grab Yours
The Florida Trail app inside the Far Out Guides app is free. It comes with two free segments, Blackwater (45.4 miles) and Okeechobee East (57 miles) so you can try out all the features, and take a hike in one of our favorite areas. Other regions vary in price from $2.99 to $7.99, or you can buy the full “thru-hiker” set for $36.99, a 30% savings off purchasing the regions individually. Once you make a purchase, you receive future updates at no extra cost.
Two brand NEW regions – which tie to the Florida Trail but are not a part of it – are the Florida Keys Overseas Heritage Trail, largely followed by cyclists, and the Florida Eastern Continental Trail connector, connecting the FKOHT with the Florida Trail for ECT hikers. The ECT route is included in the Florida Trail thru-hiker bundle.
Florida Trail regions include:
SOUTH FLORIDA: Big Cypress, Seminole, and Okeechobee West, from Oasis Visitor Center to Okee-tantie. 150 miles.
FREE Okeechobee East: The eastern route around Lake Okeechobee, which can be used in lieu of or together with Okeechobee West to loop the lake. 57 miles.
OCEAN-TO-LAKE: Side trail connecting from Okeechobee East to the Atlantic Ocean, a great backpacking trip for Southeast Florida. 61 miles.
CENTRAL FLORIDA: Kissimmee and Orlando sections, from Okee-tantie north to Clearwater Lake in the Ocala National Forest. Includes loops at Bull Creek and Tosohatchee. 262 miles.
CENTRAL FLORIDA WEST: Also known as the Western Corridor. Roadwalk from Three Lakes to Green Swamp, Green Swamp East & West (includes Bigfoot BSA camp and other loops), Richloam, Croom, Citrus (including loops), Withlacoochee State Trail, Cross Florida Greenway, and Ocala West. 240 miles.
OCALA NORTHEAST: Includes the Ocala and Northeast Florida sections, from Clearwater Lake north to Deep Creek trailhead at the north end of Osceola National Forest. 185 miles.
SUWANNEE BIG BEND: Includes the Suwannee River section, private timberlands, Aucilla, and St. Marks NWR. 190 miles.
EASTERN PANHANDLE: Includes the Apalachicola National Forest, Altha Trail, Econfina, Pine Log, Nokuse, and connecting roadwalks. 178 miles.
WESTERN PANHANDLE: Includes Eglin Air Force Base, Yellow River Ravines, and Seashore. 131 miles.
BLACKWATER: The official connector trail of the Florida Trail to the Alabama border, part of the larger Eastern Continental Trail. 45 miles.
