There are lots of places online to get conditions for outdoor recreation.  Unfortunately, there are too many places.  And the information is often out of date or hard to find.

Besides, how many people do you know who only do ONE outdoor activity?  I don’t know anyone like that.  Everyone I know is involved in a bunch of outdoor activities.  And no matter which activities we enjoy, we share a common playground: the great outdoors of Alaska!

To me it makes sense to have one gathering place to share information.  I don’t want to check five different websites when I am deciding whether to go for a bike ride, a run, a hike or a ski.  A trail report posted by a mountain biker could also be useful to a hiker, runner, or skier.  

Or lets say you are going to the Kenai Peninsula for the weekend and you want to know if you should bring your bike, or your skis, or your raft, your hiking boots, or maybe all of them!  Now you can check one site to find out. 

Definintely not.  Clubs are the backbone of our outdoor community.  From the start, the intent of the Outdoor Reports has been to allow clubs to provide greater service to their members.  The Reports have been specifically designed so that they can easily be embedded into a club/organization’s website and customized for their interests within a few minutes.  See www.crosscountryalaska.org/trails for an example.

This lets club websites focus on providing information that has a longer shelf-life (club info, trail descriptions, events, etc.) while we provide the recent reports that are only useful for a few days - no maintenance required!  By separating the timeless and time-sensitive information, you don’t have to wade through a year of outdated reports to find what you are looking for, be it trail length or the conditions from last Saturday.

Yes, but in my experience, these methods don’t work well.   

In a forum, you have to dig through a bunch of pages to find the latest information.  Forums are great for having multi-person conversations and saving them for future reference, but not so great for quickly finding the latest information on a specific topic.  

Email lists can clog your inbox and make it hard to find the information you really need.  

The success of the Outdoor Reports is based on its one goal: to quickly provide you with the up-to-date conditions information you need to have a successful outing.