Here are some suggestions to improve your user experience at YourHikes:
1. Set-up a member account and track your backcountry hikes. It’s free and you’ll earn points that you can exchange for free gear.
2. If you forgot your user password or want to change your user ID, click to our member services for more information.
3. When you add a new hike, type it in a Microsoft Word document, then copy and paste it at YourHikes. This gives you a back-up copy if the server times out and you will not lose your work.
4. If another member has already posted your hike, just enter a trip report for it. There’s no need to add the same hike again to the website (unless you took a different route to the summit, waterfall, etc.)
5. Go to the website of the National Park Service (www.nps.gov), U.S. Forest Service (www.fs.fed.us), or a City/State Park Service (www.discoversouthcarolina.com/stateparks/parklocator.asp) for directions to trailheads, contact information and hike summaries. Since tax payers fund these sites, the details belong to the public domain and are not copyright protected.
6. Non-government (or commercial) information on the web may be copyright protected, so make sure anything you submit is your original work.
7. When you add a new trip report, keep in mind that there is an 8000 word or character limit on the journal entry. Consider making a new trip report for each day you were on the trail – especially for trips of three or more days.
8. You can add five photos for each hike and for each trip report at your hikes. So, share as many as possible. There is a size limit to the photos – so keep them to 1 meg or less.
9. Stagger landscape and portrait pictures. They look better displayed this way.
10. If you have a topographical or profile map, add it with the “Add A New Image” button. Keep in mind these maps must be in JPG format to load onto our server.