The app · Plan it. Walk it. Remember.

Why we build Hike5

An app for people who hike for days on end: plan your own stages, follow your route on the map, and get the story of your day in the evening. Made by two hikers who missed it themselves.

Free for the hiking community

In the stores from spring 2027. Leave your e-mail and you hear it first. Keep me posted ›

It started on the trail

We are Mark and Malou. In 2022 we hiked the GR 5 and in 2023 from the Algarve to Andorra, and of every stage we wrote a story on our blog: more than two hundred in all.

Every story took hours in the evening: thinking back, picking photos, writing, checking. And during the day you hiked differently. You thought “I must remember this” and “that could go in”, instead of just looking.

We wanted to turn that around. On the way you capture what strikes you with one tap: a photo, a note, a spoken sentence. Then your head is empty again. In the evening the story of the day is ready, with your photos in the right place, the map and the numbers beside it. You read it through, change what you like and put it online. Checking instead of writing.

Your day, your words

Hike5 makes nothing up. The story comes from what you captured that day: your memos word for word, your photos at the moment you took them, the places you passed, the weather there was. What did not come from your day does not go in, and what is looked up about a place carries its source.

How much help you want is up to you: write it all yourself, your own words put in order, or let Hike5 shape the story. Every version is kept, so you can always go back.

By hikers, for hikers

A guidebook describes a trail; a hiker tells how a day really was. Every day someone puts online hangs on the stage and the trail they hiked. Whoever plans the same way reads what that day held: the weather, the climb, the bed, the bakery that turned out closed.

Add to that what only hikers know. How the bed was where you slept, from hikers themselves, above Google’s stars. What you cook on a stove, in Hiker Hunger. And what you met on the way that the next hiker should know.

Under it all lies the network: more than two thousand long paths of Europe, from the E-paths and the GRs to the caminos, on one map, stage by stage, in one direction of travel. The lines come from OpenStreetMap, and where they are wrong we lay them right ourselves.

The app is free for the hiking community, and reading is always free, without an account. What you make stays yours: your plan is private, nothing is online before you press “Put online”, and your photos remain your own. Your data lives in Europe.

How it works

Plan it

A hike starts with inspiration: a trail you read about, a dream. Pick it from more than two thousand long paths of Europe, or make your own trek in the app, from one place to another or along your own line. Say how many hours a day you want to hike and Hike5 cuts it into stages, each ending where you sleep: your air mattress in a tent, a hut, a hostel or a bed in a room. Then the details of the stage you really hike: viewpoints and picnic benches, steep climbs and the weather ahead, a shop and a place to eat along the way. The plan stays yours alone.

Walk it

Your map, enriched: the elevation profile with you on it, the weather along the stage for the hours ahead, warnings where the path asks for care, and beds, water and shops along the way with what hikers before you found there. You always know where you are and when you will arrive; a nudge if you drift off the route. A photo, a note or a voice memo with one button, each with its time and its place. Hiking together? Pair the phones and the day belongs to you both. So you hike the stage you prepared with care without a worry, open to what you meet, and everything you notice becomes part of your story.

Remember it

In the evening you tap “Make my story”. Your memos are written out, your photos put in order, the map, the numbers and the weather added, the facts checked. You read it through and put it online: a page per day, a trek in chapters, on your own place on hike5.app, where family reads along and the next hiker finds it when planning that stage. Later as a printed book too.

Where we are

Hike5 is growing. We hike with it ourselves and make it better along the way; everything on hike5.app was put online from the app. In spring 2027 the app is in the stores, free for the hiking community.

This is what the pages look like: our trek from the Algarve to Andorra, 116 days.

Take a hike. Make some stories.

Soon you make stories like these

On the way you capture what you see: photos, notes, voice memos. In the evening Hike5 writes the story of your day, with your photos, the map and the numbers. Soon you can do this with your own hiking days. Leave your e-mail and you hear it first; never more than one mail a month.