Best Apps for Hiking at the Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is an ancient historical engineering marvel. The Great Wall consists of a series of small walls stretching up to 5,500 miles from one end to another. It was built over 2,000 years ago to protect Chinese borders against territorial invaders. The Great Wall has become one of the world’s most famous hiking routes, and hikers from every part of the world challenge themselves to walk on the walls. You can hike at the Great Wall of China by downloading an app on your phone. Backcountry Navigator is a navigation app that allows you to save maps of places around the world that you want to explore. This app provides a topographic map of the areas of the wall allowing you to plot out your speed over the ground. You can also use the app to find your location on the wall. 

In addition, the Gaia GPS Hiking app is another navigation app that you can download to explore the Great Wall of China. Whether you are going on a tour or for fitness reasons, Gaia GPS lets you pinpoint specific areas of the Great Wall you wish to explore. Download maps of your chosen routes for offline use when you get to the wall. You can select your preferred hiking routes by difficulty, length, or star rating. This app also uses your device’s GPS to tell you your location on the app. You can take and save photos of your hike to your external photo gallery. Gaia also allows you to share tracks you’ve navigated with friends on social media. 

In addition, another app that can come in handy on a hike to the Great Wall of China is the iNaturalist app. Beyond the military fortifications and strategic constructions of the Great Wall, you can also learn about the unique plant species along your hiking routes on the wall. Also, iNaturalist helps you observe and identify plants and animal species along your hiking trails. This app connects you to a community of over 400,000 scientists and naturalists who will educate you on everything you need to learn about the flora and fauna of the Great Wall of China. Recording unique observations on your hiking trails also make you a contributor to quality research and nature conservation.