The vast majority of overlanders have embraced the digital age, relying on apps like Gaia GPS, OnX Off Road, CalTopo, or Garmin devices to map and track their adventures. With Gaia GPS’s acquisition by Outside Inc. in February 2021, the experience has been a mixed bag. While features like the Overlanding map layer have been welcome additions, the app continues to suffer from occasional slowness and bugs. Despite high expectations for significant improvements, Gaia GPS hasn’t evolved as much as many of us had hoped, especially with OnX making aggressive moves into the off-road and overlanding space.
Enter Goat Maps. This new contender was founded by Jesse Crocker and Anna Hentzel Johnson, both co-founders of Gaia GPS, and is bolstered by Gaia GPS veteran Ashli Baldwin and world-renowned geospatial professional Gretchen Peterson. Goat Maps aims to deliver a simple yet powerful mapping app tailored to outdoor adventurers—whether alpine trekkers, day hikers, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers, or overlanders. The team’s vision is clear:
Goat Maps aims to provide powerful yet intuitive tools for crafting custom routes, navigating offline, and exploring the backcountry. The focus is on supporting adventurers who create their own paths and need reliable tools for remote exploration.
As longtime fans and users of Gaia GPS, we’ve experienced its strengths and shortcomings firsthand, and the emergence of a credible competitor like Goat Maps is exciting. Although the app is still in its early stages—it launched only a few months ago—it already includes many key features we value. These include adventure tracking, GPX and digital mapping file imports, route planning, and various map overlays. However, Goat Maps is currently limited to iOS users and lacks a desktop web application (which we hear is in the works).
Despite its stripped-down nature, Goat Maps shows immense potential. We’re optimistic that the team behind the app will recognize overlanders as a significant customer segment and develop features specifically tailored to our needs. For now, we’ll be keeping a close eye on its evolution and rooting for its success.
If you have an iOS device, you can find https://apps.apple.com/us/app/goat-maps/id6499279582?platform=iphone.