Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about TrekWeather
TrekWeather is built and maintained by Bret and Bricelyn. Every update is made with care to help you plan better outdoor adventures. Thanks for being here!
About TrekWeather →TrekWeather is free to use! Basic forecasts, hourly weather, and search all work without paying a thing. If you want premium features like snow totals, ensemble forecasts, AI summaries, and point forecasts, we offer a premium membership to help support the project.
Running TrekWeather costs about $1,300 per year (and increasing) to keep online: hosting, databases, weather data APIs, and domain names. It is built and run by Bret, with support from Bricelyn and our dog Milton :) The price is kept as reasonable as possible.
Not at this time. Building native apps for both platforms takes significant resources, and right now it is just Bret, with Bricelyn helping here and there. That said, TrekWeather was built from the ground up to work great on mobile devices. The site is fully responsive, loads fast, and is designed to feel natural on your phone. You can also add it to your home screen for quick access, just like an app.
Yes! I love feedback and I want to work with my users to build what they actually need. This is not some faceless corporation making decisions in a boardroom. If you have an idea, a feature request, or something that bugs you, send it my way. I read every message and it genuinely shapes what gets built next.
bret@trekweather.com
OpenSnow is great. They're an excellent team of meteorologists and engineers, and they've built something wonderful. Go check them out. They are a team. I am one person, with Bricelyn helping me here and there.
What I will say is that I love what I do, I am passionate about it, and I want to build a great product too. Different scale, same care.
OpenSnow team, if you are ever hiring, my email is doucette.bret@gmail.com :)
AllTrails is great for finding trails. Their trail database, reviews, photos, and offline maps are best-in-class, and millions of people use AllTrails to plan hikes.
That said: AllTrails is majority-owned by Spectrum Equity, a private equity firm that took control in 2018. Permira added a $150M investment in 2021. When a product grows up that kind of cap table, decisions start serving shareholders.
TrekWeather is independent. No investors, no PE, no ads.
TrekWeather is also built to answer a different question: once you know the trail, what is the weather going to actually do up there? Most trail apps give you a generic forecast for the nearest town. TrekWeather gives you point forecasts at the trail's elevation and coordinates, multiple weather models, and ensemble spread so you know how confident the forecast is.
Use AllTrails to pick the hike. Use TrekWeather to know if you should go.
TrekWeather is built by one person, Bret Doucette, with support from my loving partner Bricelyn and my dog Milton. We live in a cabin at 9,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies. No company, no investors, no ads, no AI-generated slop. Just a real human building a real tool for a community of like-minded people who love being outside. TrekWeather exists to serve that niche, not to scale or sell. Read more about the story.
Head to the Explore Map, where you can drop a pin on any location and save it. TrekWeather covers any point in the US, not just named trails. If it has coordinates, you can get a forecast for it.
Regular weather apps give you forecasts for towns and cities. TrekWeather gives you forecasts at the elevation and coordinates of the actual trail, peak, or campsite where you're headed. A trailhead at 10,000 feet can be 20 to 30 degrees different from the town at the base. You can click anywhere along the map to get a forecast near that trail for different points along your route.
Yes, and this is where TrekWeather really shines. You can switch between different weather models (like GFS, HRRR, NBM, Canadian GEM, and European models) to see how each one forecasts your location. Premium members also get access to ensemble forecasts, which show you the range of possible outcomes so you can see how confident the models are.
On top of that, TrekWeather uses AI to summarize the Area Forecast Discussion, the written analysis that NWS meteorologists publish about your region. Combine all three and you can really dial in your understanding of what the weather is going to do at your specific spot.
Currently, TrekWeather focuses on the United States. Canada and broader international coverage are possible if enough people ask for it. If you would use TrekWeather outside the US, let me know where. We already source weather data from American, Canadian, and European models, so the underlying data is in good shape.
Search for a trail, peak, or campsite, then tap the heart icon to save it. You can also drop a pin anywhere on the Explore Map and save that. All your saved spots show up on your Favorites page as well as the tab when searching.
Your saved locations are not publicly searchable or listed for other users.
The one exception is intentional: if you share the TrekWeather URL for a saved location, anyone with that exact link can view that forecast, including the label you gave it. The link uses a random ID, so people will not discover it by browsing or searching, but you should treat the URL like a share link.
Premium users get additional features like snow totals, wind forecasts, and more detailed elevation data.
Yes. Premium members can tap the Customize this forecast card at the top of any forecast page and toggle any of the cards on or off. Your choices are saved per location type, so ski areas, trails, peaks, campgrounds, natural areas, and towns can each have a different default layout.
Saved locations get their own settings on top of that. Your house and your favorite trail can show completely different cards, even though they share the same underlying weather data. Free accounts see the default set of cards on every page.
Shoot me a message and let's go on a hike!
bret@trekweather.com