TerraTrek Explorers

17/08/2026

TerraTrek [Build 48] is here— this version is quite a bit.

Form a crew. Create your team. Explore together—or challenge another team to a 5v5 Versus expedition and fight for every newly uncovered piece of the map.

Build 48 also introduces daily expeditions, exploration journals, new Discovery collections, National Battlefield badges, smarter random destinations, upgraded leaderboards, and major privacy and usability improvements.

The world isn’t a backdrop anymore. It’s the game board.

Build 48 enters testing this week. Apple testers now, Android testers in two days.

Unveil the Unseen.

22/07/2026

TerraTrek features tests at Wilson’s Creek Battlefield. We added all 66 National Parks to the app with boundary lines (plus Wilson’s creek for testing). Upon entering a park, the app notifies user of discovery. On the Discovery Page is hexagon shaped badges that appear blurry until discovered. As you explore, the blurry badge fills in with color showing your progress of exploration within the park. Wilson’s Creek Battlefield added so I could test this feature, as it’s the closest park to me.

More to come:

World Landmarks (Great wall of China already added)

Teams Feature currently underway. Group Expeditions and tracking your team while out in the wilderness.

And a Pinterest style photo/video to share adventures.

EchoNav- basically bat sonar for the spelunkers

12/04/2026

It is finally time for beta testers.

For those of you who’ve been following this little adventure we’re building, thanks for being patient. We’ve finally hit the point where both Apple and Android users can test TerraTrek.

If you want in, message me your email and I’ll add you to the list.

Now, fair warning: this may sound a little confusing at first. But here goes.

TerraTrek users are not like users of other exploration map apps. And yes, there are several. The difference is TerraTrek users own their digital data.

When you download the app and start exploring, your GPS data points are encrypted and stored in a format that does not allow any individual, admin, or anyone inside TerraTrek to directly track you. That matters to me.

Inside the app, every GPS point becomes an orange-outlined hexagon punched through a dense fog layer. As you move, those hexes connect together and create the snail trail of your exploration. Only your exploration is visible to you.

On the bigger picture level, all of that collected data is helping rebuild a digital version of the planet. Right now that’s based on GPS data, so TerraTrek tracks latitude, longitude, and elevation. The live community map also has a time delay built in, because again, I take safety seriously and there is no point in making a platform where people can stalk each other.

Yes, the app tracks your movement hard. Probably harder than most. Maybe not harder than Google, Meta, or the government, so let’s not get carried away. But nobody on our end is sitting around following you. That is not the goal.

The goal is to get people out of their comfort zones and exploring again.

The vision:

I believe there is still untouched ground on this planet.
I want us to prove whether we’ve truly found it all or not.
Also, yes, I would love to prove the flat-earthers wrong. Or right. But mostly wrong.

The bigger long-term play is this:
One day, the explored data TerraTrek users create together could be licensed to major companies that can actually use it. But here’s what makes TerraTrek different: every owned hex has 1,000 shares tied to it. You might own one share in a hex, or all 1,000, depending on how much you explore.

As the app grows, more people will share ownership in pieces of this digital planet we are building together. And when parts of that map are ever licensed, the users connected to those areas would benefit directly.

That means TerraTrek is not built to be just another app that gobbles up your information and sells it off while you get nothing. The goal is to help fund more adventures, more road trips, more hikes, more floats, more memories with your friends and family.

So yes, it’s a little weird.
Yes, it’s ambitious.
And yes, we’re building it anyway….I hope you join me.

Steve

13/01/2026

Milestone moment with Terratrek App. It’s been two years coming of learning to code and a lot of assistance, but we have Version 1 (maybe actually version 11 with all the different tests we have done) coming out soon. Check out this video. Ask questions, I’m happy to answer them. It’s an exciting day for the TerraTrek team (it’s just me right now, I’m the team 🤣)

26/02/2025

https://terratrekapp.com/explorers/

This is a “hidden” page on the website. The app developers I was using couldn’t figure out what I wanted or how to make it work, so I’ve been working on a proof of concept to show live functionality.

The idea is simple: your GPS icon is a flame, you are the light that shines through the darkness of the fog that has fell upon the planet, get out there and explore to reveal the world around you.

It’s a realtime gps tracker. It ONLY works on your local storage device. Phones is all that work so far, I haven’t tested a tablet, but laptops don’t seem to track 🤷‍♂️. Apple Users do seem to have a better experience than Android, that’s not a jab, just an observation. The Terratrek site DOES NOT TRACK YOUR DATA.

I cannot see where you are going, I don’t know who you are or anything else about you. Your gps tracking is only saving to your phones local storage. If you cleared your history or cached data it should disappear and you’ll have to start all over again. Which is fine! This is Beta testing and I need feedback! Tell me what you love and hate about it. And if you come at me in the comments about how I’m lying and I’m just trying to dupe you into a site to steal your data…well your rightfully allowed your opinion even if you’re incorrect. If you wish to take the time to prove yourself correct then by all means please do so prior to tapping those busy thumbs off with ignorance.

Thank you for coming along with me on this journey. It’s going to be fun!

Things I’m curious about. How does your map clear off, smooth lines, blotchy dots, does the size of the lines change based on speed (it should), looking forward to your feed back! Please share any screenshots here.

Visit the post for more.

14/02/2024

TerraTrek App update:

Latest version hiccups, disappointments and how we are working through it.

The original Artist Renderings for the proposed “look” of TerraTrek were above and beyond my expectations. As we got closer to to implementing the design concept to the dynamic clearing of clouds to expose the map below, it became clear that we could not. That’s the hiccup.
The disappointment is that the alternative option is to look just like two other map clearing apps (that admittedly, I didn’t know existed when I started this project…mine is still cooler).
As we work through this, the clouds are just a grey overlay that will clear out. Eventually it will be clouds, but for time sake getting a first version to test, these are the steps we take.

Currently I have a list of things that need to be edited. There’s some things that could be smoothed out. I’m hopeful that by May 1st a “completed” version is out for testing.

Stay Tuned for more! In the meantime go explore something.

05/12/2023

People ask me what I’m doing with this app I’m building, what is TerraTrek? One of the parts of TerraTrek is to log your adventures. Post a short blurb about what you did, what you saw, snap some pics and save them.

Meet Irina. She is a friend of mine. Recently hiked Cucamonga Peak. As she was describing it to me because I’ve never heard of it this is what she shared:

“I went to Cucamonga Peak, LA, which is 11.6 miles with 4219 feet of elevation gain. It took me 7 hours to walk it. The scenery along the way was breathtaking with beautiful fall foliage and the sound of a babbling brook, the descent was challenging with lots of scree and loose rocks”

This is what you do here. Go on an adventure and share it here for us all to be inspired to get out and see this planet ourselves. After the app is live and maybe a version or two later, there will be an option to share adventures directly to this page and the website….and whatever other social media we need to get our hands on.

In the meantime, find your own “cucamonga” wherever you are and spend the day on it.

01/12/2023

As the app works its way to the App Stores, I am left with a big question. How do I generate revenue? The app itself has its own methods of doing that with optional in app purchases to make your adventuring more interesting. But that option doesn’t get introduced into the app for a few versions down the road. In order to reach those versions (that will be awesome!) the TerraTrek app needs to generate funds. And the two options that lay before me both suck.

1) charge to download. $0.99?
2) free download and dupe my users with a free trial for a month to charge them some stupid dollar amount, OR
Free download and a plethora of annoying garbage ads?

I don’t like any of these options, I do believe that the app itself could be free, no ads, no charges and it can generate its own funding from faithful users that love the app for its purpose and truly use it as a tool in their exploration arsenal.

But the Big BUT of it, is that in order to reach that point the developers need to continue to be paid, and while things are basic at the moment, development is about to get wild!

So, what are your thoughts? Which is the lesser evil? Ads, charge a dollar download fee, combo of both? I’m not going to charge a subscription fee for the app.

Let me know your thoughts.

Steve

01/12/2023

App Progress Update- as of this morning Phase 2 has rounded completion. Onto Phase 3- Back End Development. This is where all the logic happens, connecting to servers and overall functionality. An actual working Beta app should be in my hands very soon.