The 5 Must-Have Apps for Wild Camping
Do you want to embark on an adventure but don’t know where to go? Or maybe you already have a destination in mind but need more information? Or perhaps you're just curious about which apps could enhance your wild camping experience? You're in the right place!
Today, we're bringing you a list of the top 5 apps that every wild camper and bivouacker should download and have on their phone for the best bivouac experience. These camping apps help you discover hidden camp spots, equipped facilities, and useful information for a safe bivouac. Here’s our top 5!
Wildhood – Discover Hidden Bivouacs Near You
Wildhood is the go-to app for discovering new and adventurous bivouac spots. Thousands of wild campers share new camp spots daily, providing updates on fixed bivouacs, precise coordinates, and short reviews about the location and how to reach it. This allows all campers to always have new bivouac spots to explore safely.
Wildhood is a very young app (launched in June 2023) and minimalistic, but it does exactly what it promises: it gives you the chance to discover new places you would never have found on your own. Wildhood is rapidly growing, with a highly active development team working on numerous improvements requested by users.
Moreover, Wildhood is the first true community of wild campers—people seeking an extraordinary night outdoors, whether in a bivouac or a tent. Wildhood is also known for promoting and organizing events to restore and improve mountain bivouacs. These events are called Bivacco+, inspired by the idea of leaving a positive impact on the places we visit, always leaving them better than we found them.
In short, if you're passionate about wild camping and bivouacking, Wildhood is the app that you absolutely must have on your phone!
2. Peak Finder: Discover What Surrounds You
Peakfinder is an incredibly handy app that allows us to see the names of all the surrounding mountains using our phone—even without an internet connection. To make the most of this app, you need to select two key parameters: the display mode and the observation point.
Peak Finder offers two display modes:
Classic Mode, which clearly shows visible mountains and their names. It’s perfect for checking mountain ranges even from home, helping you preview what you'll see from the summit.
AR Mode (Augmented Reality), which overlays Peak Finder’s information transparently on your camera view. This mode allows you to take stunning and informative photos.
The second parameter to select is the observation point, which can be:
Your GPS location, useful while hiking to identify the surrounding peaks.
The summit of a chosen mountain, allowing you to preview the view from the top.
A specific point on the map, though this requires an internet connection.
A manually selected coordinate, offering full customization.
A saved landmark, which lets you revisit a previously marked location.
Peak Finder also includes an extremely useful Sun & Moon feature. This allows you to see the relative sunrise and sunset times based on mountain silhouettes. These details can be invaluable, for example, to predict when sunlight will hit your tent in the morning, waking you up naturally.
Peak Finder also has a web version, which you can use for free on https://www.peakfinder.org. From a computer, I often use the export function, which lets me generate a 360-degree silhouette of the mountains from a specific point. This image can then be uploaded into astronomy programs like Stellarium, allowing for perfect planning of astrophotography sessions.
Peak Finder costs around €5 as a one-time payment, with no recurring fees. We highly recommend purchasing it, as it's an incredibly useful app that proves its worth on your very first outdoor adventure. And in the meantime, you can try it for free on PC!
3. Mapy.cz: Find your way
Mapy.cz is one of the best digital maps for hiking. You can access it through the official website or download the mobile app. The app features a clean and simple interface while offering incredibly useful premium features—all for free.
IThe first standout feature of Mapy.cz is its outdoor map, which highlights:
Clearly marked trails in red, though they lack CAI numbering.
Names of mountains, bivouacs, and refuges, all clearly indicated.
The second major advantage of Mapy.cz is the availability of free offline maps for any part of the world. The maps are divided by region, allowing users to download only what they need and delete them when necessary to free up space on their smartphone.
Two other very interesting features to highlight are:
Smart search function: Not only can you find a specific location, but you can also search for elements within a specific category around you, such as water points, mountain huts, or parking areas.
Distance calculation between two points, which can be easily done by tapping the map with two fingers.
The biggest downside of Mapy.cz is GPX track management. Uploading GPX files is inconvenient because it can only be done from a computer. Additionally, the app reads each segment of the route as a separate file, making it difficult to follow complex GPX tracks outside of standard trails, such as ski mountaineering routes.
4. Fatmap: Never Get Lost Again
Fatmap is an outdoor app that provides detailed 3D maps, weather conditions, and avalanche risk information for hikers, skiers, and mountain bikers. It also allows users to retrace hikes shared by others.
The Fatmap feature that interests us the most is the flat layer, which highlights flat areas on the mountain in green. This feature is useful for finding a potential spot to pitch a tent, though other factors such as exposure, proximity to water sources, terrain quality, and possibly the testimony of others who have been there should also be considered.
Fatmap offers a free version accessible on both mobile and desktop. It also has a Pro plan priced at €30/year, which is aggressively promoted every time the user opens the app. Recently, Fatmap was acquired by Strava, and soon a single subscription will be available for both apps.
5. Stellarium Mobile: Discover the magic of the starry sky
Watching the stars before going to sleep in your tent is one of the most exciting activities of wild camping. There are many apps to help us observe the universe, but the most well-known, with the cleanest and most minimalist interface, is Stellarium
With Stellarium all you have to do is point your phone at the sky, and you'll immediately start seeing: constellations, stars, planets, galaxies, deep-sky objects, and satellites. If you're interested in a specific deep-space object, a planet, a star, etc., simply use the search tool, and Stellarium will guide you to its location with the sniper mode.
By clicking the bottom left, you’ll open many viewing features that we recommend exploring each time. When outdoors, the first thing to do is activate night mode and lower your phone’s brightness to the minimum. This way, your pupils will be less disturbed by the screen (which is red and dim), and you’ll be able to better observe even the dimmer objects.
Stellarium is a free open-source software for desktop and web. The mobile version is also mostly free and offers all the functions needed for casual stargazers. If you're passionate and start using binoculars or a small telescope, it's recommended to purchase the pro version for €19.99.
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