Everything the log measures is here to download. One CSV holds every published hike, one row each, in the units the log stores. Each hike page serves its GPS track as a GPX file. Both are licensed CC BY 4.0: use them for anything, name HikeAlong and link back here.
In the Files
What Is Here
One File
The Spreadsheet
One row per published hike, oldest first, with a header row. Values are the numbers the log stores: meters, seconds, Celsius, kilometers per hour and hectopascals, never the rounded imperial figures the pages show. A cell is empty when the value was not measured; nothing is estimated to fill it. Fields are quoted the RFC 4180 way (only when they hold a comma, a quote or a line break, with quotes doubled), lines end in CRLF, and the file is UTF-8. It is rebuilt from the source files every time the site is published, so it always matches the pages.
| Column | Unit | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
date | YYYY-MM-DD | The morning's date, local time (America/New_York). |
trail | slug | The trail's identifier, the last part of its page address: hikealongtours.com/trails/<trail>/. |
trail_name | text | The trail's name as the site prints it. |
distance_m | m | Distance walked, the summed great-circle distance between GPS points. A map estimate on a route drawn after the walk. |
gain_m | m | Elevation gain after the filter named on the hike page. The two methods are not comparable with each other. |
loss_m | m | Elevation loss, same method as the gain. |
moving_time_s | s | Moving time. Any stretch slower than 1 km/h counts as stopped and is dropped. |
elapsed_time_s | s | Start to finish as the watch recorded it, stops included. |
sunrise_local | ISO 8601 with offset | Sunrise at the trail's sunrise spot on that date. |
civil_dawn_local | ISO 8601 with offset | Civil dawn at the same spot. |
temp_c | degrees C | Air temperature at the sunrise hour, from the Open-Meteo archive (2 m above ground). |
cloud_cover_pct | % | Total cloud cover from the model, every layer, as Open-Meteo reports it. |
sky_cover_pct | % | The cloud cover figure the site uses: the low and middle layers combined, 100 * (1 - (1 - low/100) * (1 - mid/100)), rounded. Falls back to cloud_cover_pct when a layer is missing. |
cloud_low_pct | % | Low cloud fraction, the layer that hides a sunrise. |
cloud_mid_pct | % | Middle cloud fraction. |
cloud_high_pct | % | High cloud fraction, the cirrus a sunrise lights up. |
wind_kmh | km/h | Wind speed at 10 m. |
humidity_pct | % | Relative humidity at 2 m. |
pressure_hpa | hPa | Surface pressure at the site, not reduced to sea level. |
color_index | 0 to 100 | Color index of the photograph that fronts the hike page, version 1 of the formula on the methods page. |
palette | 5 hex colors, space separated | The five dominant sky colors of that photograph as #rrggbb, the one covering the most pixels first. Empty when the photograph carries no palette. |
has_photo | true or false | Whether the entry has at least one photograph. |
photo_taken_local | ISO 8601 with offset | Capture time of the photograph that fronts the hike page. |
url | URL | The hike's page, where every number above is shown with its method. |
avg_hr | bpm | Average heart rate. Filled only where the entry publishes it; empty otherwise. |
max_hr | bpm | Maximum heart rate, same rule. |
Heart rate is private by default. The avg_hr and max_hr columns are always present so the header never changes, and they are filled only in rows whose entry publishes it (none today). Gain and loss depend on the elevation method named on each hike page, and a route drawn on a map after the walk has map estimates for distance and elevation and no times at all; those rows keep moving_time_s and elapsed_time_s empty.
One File for Scripts
The JSON
The same log as one JSON array, one object per published hike, oldest first, for a script or a page that would rather not parse CSV; the site's own compare page reads it. It carries the main columns of the spreadsheet plus the paths of each morning's photograph and route map on this site, so a page can show them. Numbers are the stored SI values as in the CSV, a value that was not measured is null, the object keys never change, and heart rate is not in the file at all.
| Field | Type | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
slug | string | The hike's identifier: the date and the trail slug, which is also the last part of its page address. |
url | URL | The hike's page, where every number below is shown with its method. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | The morning's date, local time (America/New_York). |
trail | object | The trail as { slug, name }; the slug is the last part of hikealongtours.com/trails/<slug>/. |
distance_m | number or null | Distance walked in meters, the summed great-circle distance between GPS points. A map estimate on a drawn route. |
gain_m | number or null | Elevation gain in meters after the filter named on the hike page. The two methods are not comparable with each other. |
moving_time_s | number or null | Moving time in seconds. Any stretch slower than 1 km/h counts as stopped and is dropped. Null on a drawn route. |
sunrise_local | ISO 8601 with offset | Sunrise at the trail's sunrise spot on that date. |
sky | string or null | The sky in one word from the low and middle cloud together: clear, scattered, broken or overcast. |
sky_cover_pct | number or null | The cloud cover figure the site uses, in percent: the low and middle layers combined, 100 * (1 - (1 - low/100) * (1 - mid/100)), rounded. |
cloud_low_pct | number or null | Low cloud fraction in percent, the layer that hides a sunrise. |
cloud_mid_pct | number or null | Middle cloud fraction in percent. |
cloud_high_pct | number or null | High cloud fraction in percent, the cirrus a sunrise lights up. |
temp_c | number or null | Air temperature in degrees Celsius at the sunrise hour, from the Open-Meteo archive (2 m above ground). |
has_photo | boolean | Whether the entry has at least one photograph. |
drawn | boolean | True when the route was drawn on a map after the walk: distance and gain are map estimates and there are no times. |
hero | path or null | The photograph that fronts the hike page, built 960 px wide, as a path on this site. Null when the entry has no photograph. |
hero_alt | string or null | That photograph's alt text. |
map | path or null | The route map as an SVG path on this site. Null when the entry has no track. |
color_index | number or null | Color index of the fronting photograph, version 1 of the formula on the methods page. |
palette | array of 5 strings | The five dominant sky colors of the fronting photograph as #rrggbb, the one covering the most pixels first. Present only when the photograph carries one. |
One Per Hike
The GPX Files
Every hike page with a track has a download link under its route map, at /hikes/<id>/track.gpx, where the id is the folder name in the url column: the date and the trail slug. The file is the track as the watch exported it, GPX 1.1 with a latitude, longitude, elevation and UTC timestamp for every point, the numbers untouched. A route drawn on a map after the walk is served the same way and carries no timestamps.
Heart rate is not in the files. The watch writes it into every point as a Garmin TrackPointExtension, and the served copy has that extension and the app's own summary elements removed, leaving only the elements the GPX 1.1 schema defines. An entry that publishes its heart rate (publish_hr in the log's source) serves the export whole instead, extension included, and says so beside its link.
Example: 2026-09-13-stone-mountain-cherokee.gpx (1003 KB), the September 13, 2026 track, 9,469 points.
Use It
License and Citation
The CSV and the GPX files are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Copy them, chart them, publish work built on them, commercially or not; the one condition is credit. Name HikeAlong and link to https://hikealongtours.com/data/ wherever the data appears, and say so if you changed it. The photographs are not part of the data set and are not covered by this license; they remain all rights reserved.
The weather columns come from the Open-Meteo historical archive, itself CC BY 4.0, so work that uses them should credit Open-Meteo as well. Sunrise and civil dawn are computed, not observed. The methods page lists every source and the known limitations.
A suggested citation, with the date of the last morning in the file at the time you took it:
HikeAlong (2026). HikeAlong hiking log, mornings through September 13, 2026 [data set]. https://hikealongtours.com/data/. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
Entries can be corrected after they are published, a trimmed track or a re-fetched weather block for instance, and the files are regenerated every time the site is. If a number matters, take the url column to the hike's page, which shows the method behind it, and check the method changes before comparing across versions.