Best Trip Report Websites

[Love the Sierra]

Most of you may know by now that I am a tech dumbbell. (Not really, I just have no patience.)
Anyway, NOTHING better than HST. However, I can almost never find what i am looking for. Would anyone like to give me tips at using the search feature. Somehow, just putting in the location i want doesn't do it well enough.
Thanks and happy thanksgiving!

[rlown]

maybe provide an example of what you're looking for? sometimes it isn't about just the location but the area.

[Harlen]

Hey Russ, I too have difficulty using the Search function, to the point where I have largely given up. For example, I tried typing in "TR Bear Basin," and "trip report bear basin," and it did not lead me directly to Bear Basin trip reports. I also tried "bear basin," and got quite a lot of references to "bear" and "basin," and sometimes "Bear Basin," but it isn't a direct path to information on Bear Basin. I too am better with a shovel than a computer, but how can I get to site information more readily? My backpacking partner just joined HST, and has been trying to locate the various trip reports for the trips he was with us, and he too finds it difficult. I have given him the exact titles of several TR's, and that works, of course, but if I wanted to read a trip report by oldhiker, it would be nice to be able to Search: "trip reports by oldhiker." Could trip reports be linked to the original poster?

In the past, several of us asked about creating the ability to group one's own posts (not replies to other posts)-- how hard would that be? I honestly don't know. Likewise, it would be nice if other HST members TR's were grouped together. This would greatly narrow down a search for a trip report on an area of interest.

I appreciate the work you and the other HST gurus do for us, helping to sort out these issues, Cheers.

[rlown]

Next to the search area, there is the magic wheel so you can refine your search down to authors and beyond to narrow the field. did you mean "oldhiker" or "oldhikerq?" oldhikerq didn't have a base post as a TR on Bear Basin from what I read.
Don't count on getting a TR list by author anytime soon. If you saw a TR in the past from someone, you could PM them. oldhikerq didn't have enough posts to get lost in a lot of pages of review. I entered oldhikerq as the author and bear basin as the keywords.

Sometimes, one needs a bigger shovel to get through the keywords, especially like bear.

[TurboHike]

A specific website can be searched using the Google search engine. From Google search, type "site:", then the domain name, then your search words.

As an example, copy and paste this into Google...

site:highsierratopix.com Bear Basin

[Harlen]

Thanks to rlown and Turbohike,

I have been learning how to use both of your fine suggestions. Russ, with your "magic wheel" trick, I have found that I can finally organize all of my TR's (and I assume, anyone else's) by Searching: "trip report," and then, in the "magic wheel" advanced Search,"adding the TR author's name, and then, under "Search within," checking the box for "Topic titles only," I get my TR's all on the same page in chronological order. The Google trick worked well too, thanks Turbo.

[Sierra_Summits]

Here is one website I have looked at mostly for off trail routes that I have considered. This guy has done some pretty cool stuff in the mountains, most of it is probably to hard for me but there were some trip reports that looked pretty doable as well.

http://peaksforfreaks.blogspot.com

[Harlen]

Sierra_Summits writes:

This guy has done some pretty cool stuff in the mountains, most of it is probably to hard for me but there were some trip reports that looked pretty doable as well.

Don't know about that; aren't you the guy who cowboy camps at 13,800?! Respect.

[JosiahSpurr]

As we head into winter, it’s time for 2022 backpacking planning to commence! What are some of your favorite websites to use as inspiration in terms of trip reports?

A close runner-up to HST would be, IMHO, the "SummitPost". It's just Trip Reports (I think), whereas, here, we mix it all up with TR's and forums and RECONN...

I'm writing a page for x3153 at http://summitpost.org .... they over there aren't as humble as we are over at HST. Their tag line is "The Premier Mountaineering Website," and their slogan is "Definitive resource for mountain info & climbing beta." Did they scour the Internet for resources that had info that they don't have on their website, and incorporate what they were missing to claim to be "definitive?" I think NOT. It's just posturing, however, SummitPost does have a tremendous number of pages. I chose that site for x3153 because it has a database feel to it. My plan is to scour the Eastern Sierra for all those "x" peaks (the ones with x1234 markers that tell the elevation in meters because the peak hasn't been named), and write up each one at SP. That sort of project doesn't fit so well on HST, although HST does have a 14'er and I believe a 13'er section. *

[bellaedward]

HST and the search feature are the best combination I have tried.