We should all be spending more time outside and offline鈥攐r, in contemporary terms, . The slang phrase emerged (somewhat ironically) on social media in recent years as a means of letting someone know they need to unplug and reconnect with the real world. Now, there鈥檚 an app for that.

Studies that time spent in nature can boost your mood and overall sense of well-being while lowering stress levels, , and attention span. In short, the best way to counter the effects of your screens is to step away from them and into the world.

is a fairly straightforward way to ditch your phone, laptop, or Netflix queue for a bit of fresh air. The app encourages users to physically step outside, find a patch of grass to touch, and perhaps even enjoy a walk, the elements, or a combination of the two. And听so far, we’re a fan; Emma Veidt, editor of our sister publication听叠补肠办辫补肠办别谤,听has been using听the app for months. “It has genuinely improved my doomscrolling,” she says. (She also ranked it among her she’s used this spring.)听 So, I decided to give it a try for myself.

(Watch the video above to see our senior health editor show you how to touch some grass.)

How Does the ‘Touch Grass’ App Work?

Touch Grass is sort of like a digital lock box for your phone, or at least your most distracting apps. The impetus to trade a few moments of scrolling for a quick jaunt outside comes as soon as you open the app (currently available for download exclusively via the Apple App Store) or visit its eponymous website. As a welcome, prompts calculate your daily screen time, which, if you’re anything like me, is a chilling stat to have thrown in your face.

According to , excessive screen time is linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety, not to mention eye, neck, and shoulder strain鈥攁ptly called “tech neck.” Studies have also to substance use disorders and early-onset dementia.

According to the app’s calculator, at my current rate, I am likely to spend 2,007 hours, or approximately 83 days, online this year. That鈥檚 nine years over a lifetime.听

Clearly, I need to go touch grass.

After a few introductory lines about the perils of spending your day staring at screens, the app links up to Apple Screen Time for stats (your daily screen time is listed on your profile). It then requests that you grant both camera (for the grass touching part) and location access (allowing you to set your app limits to align with sunrise and sunset). Finally, the app听asks you to set a goal; options include things like 鈥淐onnect with People鈥� and 鈥淏e More Present.鈥�

Next, you can select up to two apps鈥攎ore, even entire categories like 鈥済ames,鈥� if you upgrade for $5.99/month or $49.99 annually鈥攖o block until you physically go outside and听touch grass.

Blocking Addictive Apps

Block options include 鈥渜uick break,鈥� which can be adjusted from 15 to 60 minutes, and 鈥渕edium break,鈥� from 30 to 120 minutes, along with 鈥渟mart break,鈥� which uses sunrise and sunset times to block based on time of day. 鈥淩est of day鈥� blocks your chosen apps until midnight. You can toggle between block options and disable the more intimidating ones鈥攊t鈥檚 all very choose-your-own-adventure.

Once an app is blocked, you鈥檒l notice that the icon looks faded out鈥�the way an icon looks when it’s not finished downloading to your phone. A tiny hourglass symbol听on said icon also indicates its blocked status.

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When you attempt to open the app, Touch Grass prompts you to head outside and put your hand in the green stuff. Once the in-app camera verifies that you have, in fact, touched grass, you will have access to your app for your designated amount of time and are free to re-block when you鈥檙e done.

What Happens If You Can鈥檛 Touch Grass?

This was one of my biggest questions, and since the app dedicates a slide to it during its setup process, I am obviously not alone.

You Have to Pay to *Not* Touch Grass

A 鈥渟kip鈥� option allows you to bypass the grass mandate, but there鈥檚 a catch鈥攜ou only get one skip for free. After that, skips cost whatever price you鈥檙e willing to pay between $0.99 and $9.99.

If you鈥檙e wondering why you would choose to fork over money, it may help to know that 50 percent听of Touch Grass鈥� revenue goes to planting trees and various rewilding charities in the UK.

My Experience Using 鈥楾ouch Grass鈥�

While I would love to block all social media for hours at a time, my profession dictates that I stay relatively plugged in. (I want to blame my screen addiction on my day job, but time spent using Touch Grass reveals that my social media habit is a personal problem.)

At First, It Made Me Anxious

Getting started with Touch Grass gave me instant anxiety. The unease that comes with blocking a well-used app (in my case, Instagram) for any amount of time, even while in full control of the choice, is definitely a sign of a greater problem. As I select Instagram as my to-be-blocked app, I am struck by an irrational fear that I will never be able to access it again.

What if something glitches and I鈥檓 locked out forever?

This does not happen. Instead, the small hourglass that appears on the now-faded Insta icon serves as a visual reminder that that mindless scroll is currently off limits. Though subtle, these visual cues are effective, deterring me from several unnecessary scrolls throughout the day.

Then I Realized Just How Much I Missed Being 国产吃瓜黑料

Once my late afternoon slump hits, I convince myself that I’ve earned some Instagram brain rot. I tap the app, acknowledge Touch Grass’ pop-up, and head into my backyard to find some grass. I touch it, the app scans the photo, and Insta is unlocked. But then I notice the lilac tree blooming overhead, and I smell those blossoms instead of scrolling. I tilt my head up to feel the sun on my face. I stand outside for 20 minutes, listening and breathing and noticing.

I don’t scroll through Instagram; when prompted, I ditch my “short break” settings to “smart break.” Even though I don’t make it until sunset, the intention was there. Baby steps.

Want more of听国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚 Health stories?听.

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After I got home from a run in November of last year,听I typed into my phone a list of things I鈥檇 seen on my run and added it to my Strava post. I thought I might keep doing it, as an exercise in noticing things. It was nice, having a little visual journal of the ordinary sights and sounds of my afternoon jog.

Of course, I couldn鈥檛 take it seriously, and the very next run, I wrote a short poem, and put that on Strava. It went like this:

Procrastinator鈥檚 5K

I would like extra credit

for the calories I burned

sliding around in the snow

thank you

I just kept doing it after that, every single time I recorded an activity: Short poems, long poems, none of them with any sort of real structure, but poems, about the things I see or think about when I鈥檓 out running, or hiking, or skiing. I don鈥檛 listen to music or podcasts when I run, so I have plenty of time to think. I assume there must be at least a few other people who do this same thing (Strava has 95 million users after all), but I have only heard from one other person.

When I scroll through my feed, I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to. But I really enjoy seeing what my friends are up to when they take the extra 15 seconds to use that Strava space to add in a joke, whether or not it has anything to do with what they just did on their run or ride or ski. And I think that鈥檚 a nice thing to put out into the world.

Are my Strava poems any good? I assume they are not (but maybe someone with an MFA could provide some clarity). Is this what Strava is for? Most people would say no, it is not. I don鈥檛 even know if more than a few people who follow me have noticed that I鈥檓 doing it, despite my having kept it up for almost four months now. But I鈥檓 committed.

Here are a handful of them. If you鈥檙e on Strava, you can听.

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I鈥檓 Kelsey Barnes, the membership retention manager at 国产吃瓜黑料. My job is to keep our 国产吃瓜黑料+ members informed about and engaged with our core benefits: Read, Map, Watch, and Learn. Personally, I鈥檝e never been able to just do one hobby or sport. Like many 国产吃瓜黑料 readers and 国产吃瓜黑料+ members, I love learning new things and generally spending time outdoors鈥攏o matter how I鈥檓 doing it. My interests range from mountain biking in our beautiful trail systems where I live in the Pacific Northwest, rock climbing, backcountry snowboarding, and bike packing. How often I do any one of them ebbs and flows year over year.

When I joined the team in 2021, we set our sights on building a product that served those with the passion that all of us here at 国产吃瓜黑料 have for nature and the unique ways each of us chooses to experience it. That includes the road cyclist, mountain biker, backpacker, triathlete, meal plan extraordinaire, outdoor-curious, and everyone in between. We had an ambitious roadmap to bring our publications, which cover a range of activities and subjects in the outdoors, all under one roof.

You, our readers, told us our content was difficult to navigate from site to site鈥攅specially for our 国产吃瓜黑料+ members, who have unlimited access to all of our content鈥攁nd we listened. Here are some of the exciting features our team has worked tirelessly to create in our first iteration of our 国产吃瓜黑料+ app. And stay tuned, because there are more to come later this year!

! Not a member? Join today.听听听

Fill Your Feed with What You Love

We want you to see what you鈥檙e most interested in, so your feed is customizable and can adapt over time the more you interact with content. What you engage with and select in your activity interests will only create a more tailored experience for you.

Check Out Trending Articles and Videos

You can scroll through our popular long reads, breaking news, gear reviews, buying guides, opinion pieces, training plans for all levels, yoga practices, recipes, meal plans, and more. Plus, play award-winning video content from 国产吃瓜黑料 Watch.

Share Your Favorite Content

With just a couple of taps, send your favorite articles and videos to your adventure buddies.

Are you an Android user? Don鈥檛 worry: we love our Google Play friends! to get early access to our Android app once it’s available.

We are so stoked to be able to introduce the to you all, and we appreciate our members who make it possible for us to continue to support our mission in getting everyone outside.

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国产吃瓜黑料 editors started out the year strong. We tested out some healthy habits, stubbornly stuck by a few bad ones, published five new long reads, and looked back at the best disaster movies of all time. 国产吃瓜黑料 of work, we kept up with some of the best new films, read poetry inspired by nature, contemplated our acoustic environment, and learned a few new skills to take into 2023. Here is everything our editors loved in January.

What We Watched

The Banshees of Inisherin

Drawn in by an adorable donkey, the Irish brogue, and the verdant landscape of the Emerald Isle, I watched The Banshees of Inisherin, which has been nominated for nine Academy Awards this year, including best film. The premise, as you may have heard, is that one of two longtime friends鈥攁 musician named Colm (played by Brendan Gleeson)鈥攄ecides he no longer wants to have anything to do with his neighbor Padraic (Colin Farrell, whose expressive eyebrows may likely secure him the best-actor win). Colm threatens to cut off his own fingers one by one if Padraic continues to bother him with conversation. Even watching this play out, I was baffled as to why a fiddler would do this. But once I learned that this entire black comedy was a parable of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, all facets of the tale made more sense. In fact, I loved having to rethink the plot points and actions of the characters with this history as a background, and I’d watch it again just for that reason. 鈥擳asha Zemke, associate managing editor

The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist

In 2008 and 2009, a group of teens in L.A.听started robbing celebrities like Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, and Audrina Patridge. They’d wait for a big event that they knew the victim was attending or for the target to post on social media that they were away from home, and then they’d go try doors and windows. Surprisingly, they often found one unlocked, so they’d go inside to steal cash, jewelry, and clothes. I remember this being all over the news 15 years ago, and a film about it premiered in 2013, but I had never known the details of exactly who the robbers were, or that the entire case became intertwined with a reality TV show when it went to court. The new Netflix docuseries “The Real Bling Ring: Hollywood Heist” speaks directly with two of the teens, so we hear firsthand听how and why they stole from some of the biggest names in Hollywood. It’s a binge-worthy series that I couldn’t stop watching. 鈥擜bigail Wise, digital managing director

The Fabelmans

Watch first, then read. As someone who loves films and film reviews, and has written and studied them, I usually view and then peruse to see what others got out of a film and whether or where we agree.

I went out to see Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, then home and of course onto Rotten Tomatoes. And, after that, found an account of which parts of this “semi autobiographical” film were accurate. (I do that, too. You’d be surprised, for example, which sections of the excellent Captain Phillips really happened.)

One true-to-life sequence is what many reviewers naturally focused on, the moment of shock when the teenage protagonist, representing the young writer-director Spielberg, realizes through the filming he so loves that his mother is having a love affair with his father’s best friend. Both Sammy Fabelman and Steven Spielberg keep鈥攌ept鈥�the secret for years.

The scenes that moved my friend and me the most, though, are those of the adolescent Steve/Sammy filming his entire Boy Scout troop in enactments out in the Arizona desert. The shootouts and battle scenes delight the young Scouts (and presage other scenes in later Spielberg greats). In one, Sammy directs a youth on how to feel upon arriving to a scene of gory defeat. Sammy evokes anguish in both his young actor and, to his surprise, himself; and then sees his audience weep, and understands the power of film. 鈥擜lison Osius, senior editor

Watch:

What We Read

Felicity, by Mary Oliver

I’m going through a Mary Oliver phase, and I expect it to last the rest of my life. Her poetry is soft but sharp, simple but complex, and nearly always holds the natural world at its center. (Oliver’s process involved taking walks in her local woods until a poem came to her, then scrawling it down with one of the many pencils she stowed in the crooks of trees.) I read this 2015 collection in January, but it’s perfect for Valentine’s Day season鈥攙erses full of longing, delight, sensuousness, and love that are perfect for reading aloud to your sweetheart. Take Oliver’s tack and tell them they are more beautiful than the trees and kiss like a flower opens, and you’ll have them swooning. 鈥擬aren Larsen, podcast producer

Ocean of Sound, by David Toop

Experimental musician, sound artist, and author David Toop first published Ocean of Sound in 1995. On its face, this work is marketed as a history of ambient music鈥攁 misleading and limiting label. In 2023, when most of us hear the term 鈥渁mbient,鈥� we jump straight to the relaxing musical genre, pioneered by Brian Eno and now delivered to us through YouTube algorithms, Spotify playlists, and sleep apps. Ambient sound, as presented by Toop, encompasses a much wider range of experience.

When we listen to music, we aren鈥檛 just hearing a performance, or a recording. We hear the room we鈥檙e in, the sounds of traffic outside, the people around us, even our own movements. The entire soundscape dictates our experience. Framed this way, Toop takes us through an array of anecdotes, interviews, and personal accounts, spanning through Javanese Gamelan music, free jazz, nature recordings, and nineties rave 鈥渃hill-out鈥� rooms (and yes, there鈥檚 some Brian Eno in there as well). His unstructured writing style mirrors the subject appropriately, though the free-flowing association of topics can be disorienting until you get where he鈥檚 going.

Some of the book鈥檚 early-internet utopian attitude has aged poorly (Toop addresses this in his author鈥檚 note in a new edition). But other observations about technology鈥檚 influence on our sonic lives feel even more true today than they did then. Taken as a product of its time, Ocean of Sound is one of the most extraordinary works of music writing I鈥檝e ever read. 鈥擩onathan Ver Steegh, digital production manager

The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li

The first book I read this year was Yiyun Li’s fantastic novel听The Book of Goose. It centers on two young girls, Fabienne and听Agn猫s, who live in rural France in the 1950s. Fabienne is the more domineering one in their friendship, and she convinces Agn猫s that the two of them should write a book together, as a sort of prank to entertain themselves. Agn猫s agrees to be the public face of the project, and the book becomes an unexpected success, catapulting her into an improbable life of literary stardom.听The Book of Goose explores their intense and complicated friendship over the many years that followed, told from Agn猫s’听perspective as an adult after she’s learned that Fabienne has died. There’s a lot of darkness in this book, but it turned out to be one of the best I’ve read in a long time. 鈥擬olly Mirhashem, digital executive editor

How We Learned

Khan Academy

I was a poor student when it came to physics and math鈥擨 wasn’t especially good at either of them, and had an inkling even in high school that they were probably not going to feature prominently in my career path. I survived both subjects with good enough grades to make it through school, then promised myself I’d never think about calculus again. Fast-forward to adulthood, and I’ve started to appreciate how critical physics and math are to understanding the world around me. The problem: I’m still terrible at both.

I’ve been taking remedial classes with Khan Academy, an educational non-profit that’s been making tutoring videos about everything from astronomy to American history since 2008. The lessons are simple, straightforward, and easy to follow along with. At night, it’s taken the place of Netflix in my routine; there’s something fulfilling about going to bed having learned something, instead of just having consumed whatever whatever the algorithm told me to watch. I’m working my way through the series on stars, black holes, and galaxies; once that’s done, I’ll grit my teeth and take my first swing at integral calculus since I was 18. 鈥擜dam Roy, executive editor, Backpacker

Korean American, by Eric Kim

In my eyes, the best cookbooks both make you want to cook and are eminently readable. This one by Eric Kim is one part memoir and three parts recipes, but the whole thing is a love letter to his upbringing in Atlanta, from his mother Jean’s kitchen to the local White Windmill Korean bakery chain. The food is interspersed with essays and snapshots from his family experience around food, be it fishing trips to North Carolina with his uncle or how his mother cooked on weeknights. Kim unapologetically fuses together his experienced food cultures into tantalizing and unexpected recipes (with mesmerizingly saturated photos) like gochugaru shrimp with roasted seaweed grits, kimchi-braised short ribs with pasta, and even “Judy’s Empanadas” which are a riff on a recipe his mom got from another Korean immigrant, who came to the states by way of South America. I know I’m inspired because I spent a small fortune at the local Asian market to get the necessary pastes, sauces, and spices to cook the recipes. I also bookmarked about 80 percent of said recipes as I read the book front to back. And, the kicker: I also have five pounds of salty, sour, sweet, fishy kimchi fermenting in the fridge. 鈥擶ill Taylor, gear director

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Search 鈥渨eather鈥� in the App Store and you’ll be bombarded with an endless scroll of options鈥攆rom radar imagery听good enough for meteorologists to an app that shows you a different picture of a kitten every time you check the weather. Seriously. Weather kittens.

But if you’re using your smartphone to plan an adventure, survive extreme weather, or even just figure out when you should walk the dog, you’re going to need more than just cute kittens. We spent a month testing dozens of weather apps on our smartphones in a variety of scenarios. I used them to plan hikes and bike rides in the mountains and surf sessions on the coast in an attempt to separate the good from the bad. And I learned a few things in the process.

Tips to Pick the Best Weather App

Here are four things to keep in mind when you鈥檙e picking your next weather app, followed by our favorite WApps (that鈥檚 weather+apps) at the moment.

1. Radar is Everything

Forecasts are fine and dandy, but I don鈥檛 trust any forecast, especially in the mountains,听without also being able to see up-to-date radar. Seeing is believing. The best apps give you radar imaging that鈥檚 current within the last five minutes. A couple will give you a 鈥渇uture-cast鈥� that predicts the track of the storm over the next 30 minutes to an hour.

2. User-Created Input Is Fun, but Not Reliable

More apps are allowing users to input the weather around them to help dial in the immediate forecast in your area. There鈥檚 something satisfying about being able to report the conditions near you, but this user-generated info isn鈥檛 terribly useful, particularly in under-populated areas.

3. The World Is Bigger Than You. So Is the Weather.

Most weather apps focus on hyper local forecasting鈥攚hat鈥檚 happening where you are right now. It鈥檚 helpful, but the best apps also give you a broader sense of the weather in the region so you know how your hyper-local forecast fits into the big picture. This info helps you forecast your local conditions beyond the next hour or two.

4. No Good Weather App Works Offline

You can鈥檛 cache weather data because weather data is constantly changing. Like every single minute. The best apps are updated constantly with new radar images and forecasts, so if you don鈥檛 have a solid connection, they鈥檙e not going to do you any good. So remember in the backcountry, red sky at night鈥�

4 Best Weather Apps Worth Your Time

Weather Underground (Free, iOS听and Android)

How It Works

Most weather apps worth your data plan use 鈥檚 radar data, (a network of next-generation radar stations operated by the National Weather Service), and . But the app also uses a network of personal weather stations that are 200,000 strong worldwide. Each of those stations has a suite of weather-measuring instruments that gauge temperature, humidity, pressure, rain fall, and wind speed,听and direction. So you get trustworthy radar imaging and real time reports from the station closest to your location.

Our Take

WU is the most comprehensive app we tested. It gives you a super-detailed hourly forecast as well as a look at the week ahead. You get radar imaging, but also a layer that shows the projected path of each storm around you so you can tell if that red and yellow blob is coming your way. If you add Storm, a separate app from WU, you can get their FutureCast radar, which shows you the projected path of the storm over the next five hours.

Our Favorite Feature

First light/last light. Plenty of apps tell you when the sun will rise and set, but WU tells you what you really need to know鈥攚hen it will actually get dark, which is key if you鈥檙e out on a ride and wondering if you have time for a few extra miles.

听

Dark Sky听($3.99, iOS and Android)

How It Works

pulls data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration鈥檚 network of 140 radar stations spread across the U.S. but then uses some fancy math to forecast hyper-local weather. Their theory: while weather in a broad sense can be chaotic, you can see and predict patterns on a smaller, local level. The app also uses your phone鈥檚 pressure sensors to generate more local forecasts through a 鈥渞eport鈥� feature allowing you to contribute data straight from your phone. The forecasts still rely on the NOAA radars, but the user reports add another layer of on-the-ground听data.

Our Take

Dark Sky focuses on the here and now, so most of the data you get focuses on the next hour of weather in your area. There鈥檚 an extended forecast, but it鈥檚 pretty basic. Get this app if you want to know if it鈥檚 going to rain in the next hour. They鈥檒l tell you what minute it鈥檚 going to rain and how hard. And it proved to be pretty accurate, forecasting rain on a number of occasions within a reasonable margin of error.

Our Favorite Feature

The global radar.听Dark Sky has a slick global view that shows you broad weather patterns all over the world. Zoom in and you can see your country, your state, your town:听I like being able to see how the weather in my backyard is part of a bigger system.

听

RainAware听($4.99, iOS听and Android)

How It Works

Much like DarkSky, is focused on hyper-local, short term forecasting, which it calls 鈥渘owcasting.鈥� The app pulls data from radars, satellites and surface stations and 鈥渆xtrapolates areas of precipitation to your location.鈥� In other words, it predicts the path of local storms. Open the app and you get a detailed view of your weather over the next three hours. If it鈥檚 going to rain, the app tells you when and for how long. It also gives you a more general forecast for the next 24 hours, as well as a seven day forecast and up-to-date radar imagery.

Our Take: I like the detail on the radar imagery, which gives you the track of the storm up to a minute prior to opening the app. I also like how the app is constantly updating the forecast based on the movement of the storm. The forecasting proved to be as accurate, if not more accurate, than DarkSky. But there鈥檚 no magic here鈥攁ny meteorologist will tell you that forecasting immediate weather is relatively straight forward. Forecasting weather days in the future is when it gets tricky.

Our Favorite Feature: Rain spotting. RainAware听focuses on what’s听happening in your location in the next three hours, but the app can听also tell听you where the nearest rain is falling when you open the app. It鈥檚 handy if you鈥檙e planning a trip or tracking a storm.

听

Bonus for Weather Geeks: RadarScope听($9.99, iOS)

If you really want to geek out on radar, spend the extra cash for , which gives you NEXRAD Level 3 and 鈥淪uper resolution鈥� radar data鈥攖he highest level of radar detail you鈥檒l find for a smart phone. Private pilots use this app to navigate around storms. It鈥檚 overkill if you鈥檙e just looking for a weather app to tell you if it鈥檚 gonna rain in the next hour, but if you really want to get into reflectivity, velocity,听and dual-polarization, RadarScope is the app for you.

听

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There鈥檚 nothing quite like leaving the office on Friday evening, jumping into a car with all your gear, and heading out for a weekend in the woods. In theory, camping trips are simple. You don鈥檛 need much, and you can keep most of your regular kit packed and ready to go.

In practice, however, getting away is rarely simple. You have to figure out where to camp, what the fees and regulations are, and what the weather will be like, among other concerns. Thankfully, there are apps for that. Here are a few of our favorites.

The Best Camping Apps for an 国产吃瓜黑料 Assist

Best For Finding a Designated Campsite: Recreation.gov

This go-to app has an exhaustive database of campgrounds around the country, from RV to tent sites. Just plug in the area you鈥檙e visiting and your arrival and departure dates, and the app produces a map with pins denoting nearby campsites. (You can manually select specific towns or cities or use location tracking to auto-populate sites in the surrounding area. The app chooses a mileage radius, which is not adjustable.) Blue pins signify available campsites, and yellow pins mark campsites that are booked. You can call an agent or make a reservation online from within the app.

Best For Boondocking Beta: Campendium

Camping for free is great but often involves a lot of shooting in the dark. It鈥檚 easy to pick a national forest or tract of BLM land on a map, but you never really know what you鈥檙e going to find. Campendium makes the process a bit easier. The app鈥檚 database includes information about cell service, site size, and amenities like toilets or RV hookups. You can also filter destinations by elevation, get detailed trail maps, and more. The comments section is a cache of more specific information based on people鈥檚 experiences staying at each site鈥攍ike whether there鈥檚 space to turn around a large vehicle, if the road is in good condition, or whether you鈥檒l experience crowds.

Best for Weather Reports: MyRadar

How many times have you seen rain in the forecast and packed up camp, only for it to merely drizzle? Or chosen an exposed campsite for the beautiful views and been rocked all night by heavy wind? MyRadar provides detailed weather data to help you avoid such trip-ruining mishaps. Like other weather apps, it gives you an hourly and weekly forecast, but it also shows you the direction, speed, and severity of impending storms, wind, temperature swings, wildfires, and even earthquakes through an interactive map. (You can turn all these filters on or off as needed, like if, say, you鈥檙e not camping on an active fault line.) A $7 upgrade gets you access to detailed information from 150-plus individual radar sites that provide the aggregated satellite weather reading. That upgrade also gets you ad-free app usage, Apple Watch compatibility, and a hurricane tracker.

Best for Staying Organized: PackPoint

Between the camp kitchen, food, hiking gear, fishing gear, bikes, and first-aid kit, there鈥檚 a lot of equipment to keep track of when prepping for a camping trip. Enter PackPoint, which lets you create different lists for certain types of trips鈥攍ike separate 鈥渃amping 鈥� and 鈥渉ut trip鈥� lists鈥攁nd then populate each with activities or categories such as food, clothing, and toiletries. Add items to each, specify a quantity (three pairs of socks, two six-packs), and then click the check box once the item is accounted for. The app is free, but upgrading to the premium version ($3 per year) let’s you share your list with others, sync across your devices, and further customize your lists (great for type-A packers).

Best for Stargazing: Night Sky

Outsource constellation-remembering duties to this app (no, not you, Siri). Use your phone鈥檚 compass to line up the screen with what you鈥檙e looking at in real life鈥攂e it a star, planet, or satellite鈥攖hen click on each constellation for a mini astronomy lesson. Night Sky can also help you search for a specific constellation. Nightly stargazing reports tell you what will be visible that evening and (also key) where to find a spot with minimal light pollution for optimal viewing. The app is free, but $2 per month gets you augmented-reality tours of planets and moons.

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I am a high-level snowboarder but a relatively new skier. The sum total of my experience: two half-day lessons three years ago, and then another half-day two years ago. So when I was offered the chance to try , a program that uses sensor-equipped insoles to give you digital ski coaching, I said sure. Nowhere to go but up.

The device ($149 for the device and basic analysis functions, plus a $199 annual subscription for the more detailed coaching services) consists of an insole with a long, thin wire running up to a small, rectangular battery pack that clips onto the outside of your ski boot. A whopping 36 sensors per foot measure exactly how much pressure you鈥檙e putting on your ski and how that pressure breaks down across your foot. Meanwhile, the battery pack is also equipped with an accelerometer and gyroscope to track things like speed and angular velocity, plus a Bluetooth radio chip that sends all that information to an app.

The app then translates all that combined data to show you exactly how each of your ski boots is oriented in space, where and how hard you鈥檙e pressuring each ski, how well you鈥檙e initiating each turn, and to what degree you鈥檙e getting your skis on edge. That information gets tallied up to calculate what Carv calls Ski:IQ, a zero-to-165 scale for categorizing your skiing ability. In addition to that score, the data-based app identifies your biggest deficiencies and then gives you one or two tips to improve, either at the end of each run or turn by turn. For every tip, there鈥檚 an accompanying video you can watch on the chairlift back up. The videos feature high-level coaches like Tom Waddington, Tomass Marnics, and Tom Gellie听and are easy to follow. In other words, it鈥檚 basically like having a tiny ski coach inside your boot who sees and feels everything.

The Test

I spent听two days testing the system鈥攐ne day at Buttermilk and one at Snowmass. First, the app advised me to spend my first few runs in Free Ski mode with the audio coach turned off. Basically, you just ski without any feedback so the system can establish a baseline. My baseline Ski:IQ was pretty terrible: in the 50 to 55 range, which put me squarely at the bottom of Level 1. After that, I turned on the audio coach and things started to change.

Each run is automatically broken up by the individually named segments鈥攖hat is, the trails鈥攁t any given resort. (Carv comes preloaded with more than 1,000 resort maps.) After each run or segment, the audio coach would tell me my new Ski:IQ and offer me one tip to make the biggest difference. My biggest problem, it seemed, was that I wasn鈥檛 fully finishing my turns. The audio coach advised me to finish by really pressing through my heels, as if I were trying to 鈥減ush them through some heavy sand.鈥� The image worked. Quickly, I felt more control and better able to carry speed into the next turn. My numbers started improving, as did my confidence.

Over the course of the next couple days I would get digital advice on my edge pressure, how long to draw out my turns, how to shift my weight from edge to edge, and how to rotate my hips properly. I also played with some of the training modes, which focus on one specific skill and give you audio feedback on a turn-by-turn basis as you go. There are such modes for carving, pivot slips, outside-edge ski turns, and balance. Next, I tried the Edge Angle Challenge mode, which directs you to drive through your knees to really get your skis up on edge.

The Verdict

By day two I鈥檇 gone from barely picking my way down green runs to charging blues at speeds above 33 miles per hour (yes, the app measures that, too). Toward the end of my second day, I flew down my final runs back in Free Ski mode with my Ski:IQ scores now in the upper eighties, which I was told was a huge improvement for a day and a half. Ultimately, I didn鈥檛 really care about the numbers鈥攖his was the first time I was really having fun on skis.

That day, a surprise storm dumped knee-deep powder. Normally that would send me running for my snowboard鈥攚hich I did after lunch鈥攂ut I wasn鈥檛 ready to do so right away. Carv had gotten me to a level where I was able to get down some steep, lumpy, powder-covered blues and come out hooting and hollering. It wasn鈥檛 pretty, but I didn鈥檛 objectively suck.

Now, for the first time in my life, when someone asks me if I can ski, I can just say yes.

Note that to get all of the digital coaching, training videos, and detailed metrics, you need to buy a membership, which costs $199 a year on top of the $149 base cost for the Carv system. That might sound steep, but consider how expensive ski lessons are: often hundreds just for one day. I鈥檓 glad I had a human instructor for my very first ski lesson all those years ago, but even the best ski coach can鈥檛 see every single turn, and they certainly can鈥檛 feel what鈥檚 going on inside your boot. I found that nuanced information really helped me level up beyond the foundational skills I鈥檇 learned through in-person instruction.

I think there鈥檚 also a lot of benefit in combining Carv with a traditional ski lesson. The metrics this technology provides can give your instructor a lot of insight into how you鈥檙e skiing and may help them steer you in the right direction for faster progress.

Since my testing in December I鈥檝e recommended Carv to a bunch of different friends who, like me, are new to skiing. Several have reported positive experiences and dramatic improvement. That being said, I haven鈥檛 yet recommended it to any of the good skiers I know, because, frankly, I鈥檓 not qualified to. Thankfully, an expert skier also volunteered to test Carv technology for 国产吃瓜黑料.

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Something surprising is happening on the video app best known for silly dance moves: users are finding inspiration for adventure. There are some fundamental differences in the way TikTok works that make it stand out from other social media platforms, and those differences may make it a space that鈥檚 more prone to bringing different kinds of people together to try new things. Camping. Hiking. International travel. It鈥檚 no utopia鈥攍ike other social apps, TikTok has been called out for causing harm to younger users and spreading misinformation鈥攂ut there鈥檚 a unique energy here that can be a force of good.

This episode is brought to you by 国产吃瓜黑料 Learn, a new online education hub loaded with instructional courses guided by best-in-class experts, like climber-filmmaker Jimmy Chin. See our growing list of offerings at .

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I鈥檓 biking as fast as I can down a mile-long ribbon of singletrack in Utah鈥檚 Wasatch Mountains, navigating roots, lips, a miniature rock garden, and an abundance of turns鈥攅verything from big, swooping corners and twisty hairpins to fall-away berms. My breathing is heavy as I try to maintain my pace. When I arrive at the bottom, I check my time: a solid three minutes and 13 seconds, for an average speed of 17.8 miles per hour. But I want to go faster. And in a week or so, I absolutely expect to.

The day before, I downloaded , an app that lets duffers like me get personalized tips and advice from world-class athletes and coaches. Users upload a 20-second video of themselves doing their activity of choice, then choose an expert to work with. The app can connect you to professionals in a range of different sports, including Alex Ferreira, a freestyle skier who won silver at the 2018 Olympics; Steven Nyman, a veteran World Cup ski racer and Olympian; and Shaun Murray, a member of the Wakeboarding Hall of Fame. Ask a question, and before long they respond with advice. The average price for a two-and-half-minute instructional video? Twenty bucks.

Using video for remote coaching is by no means a novel idea. For more than a decade, elite tennis players, golfers, and track and field athletes have relied on it to improve their serve, swing, or stride. In the past few years, video-analysis tools from online platforms such as and have made the process even easier. Then, last year, Willie Ford, formerly of the helmet and goggles manufacturer POC, saw an opportunity to deliver the same kind of instruction to amateur athletes. The result was Givego. 鈥淚t lets anybody have cheap, easy access to coaching, and at the same time provides income to struggling professional athletes, helping offset training and travel costs,鈥� Ford says.

To get started, I uploaded a video of myself riding to the Givego app and then connected with my coach, Lea Davison, a two-time Olympic mountain biker and world champion medalist. I wanted some tips to help with my downhill cornering. 鈥淵ou have picked the hardest and most complicated skill in mountain biking to improve on,鈥� Davison responded. 鈥淓very mountain biker can always improve their cornering.鈥�

She went to work on my clip like a Monday Night Football analyst, freeze-framing the footage and drawing circles and arrows to help explain what was going wrong. Basically, I needed to do a better job of tilting my bike from side to side as I rode. I asked Davison if she could offer a progression of moves to practice. She sent me to a soccer field (a safe place to crash) and told me to tilt the bike with each pedal stroke until the saddle hit the inside of my leg. 鈥淭he arm on the outside of the turn should be at 90 degrees,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he arm on the inside should be straight.鈥� It was great to have a specific drill to work on.

My sole complaint about Givego is that you are allowed only a single follow-up question, and no longer than 250 characters. But it鈥檚 better than nothing. 鈥淥nline coaching isn鈥檛 a cure-all, nor is improving performance always a straightforward matter of getting feedback from an expert,鈥� says Blake Bennett, a professor at the University of Auckland who specializes in coaching. 鈥淏ut having an opportunity to get a few minutes of targeted advice can be helpful.鈥�

I practiced cornering for a week and felt like things were starting to click. So I decided to record a second video and send it to Davison. 鈥淚 do see some improvement,鈥� she replied, noting that my outside-arm angle was closer to 90 degrees and my inside arm was more properly extended. But was I faster? I headed back to the trail and booked it. My time: two minutes and 53 seconds, for an average speed of 19.9 miles per hour. I liked how I felt on the bike and was pleased with my progress. What鈥檚 more, getting better is addictive. I look forward to uploading another video and trying again.

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