Goals of WhiteBlaze Pages

01/11/2021
by Rick Towle

My goal was to be able to produce and distribute an Appalachian Trail guidebook for free.
Not only for free but I want it to be the best Appalachian Trail guidebook on the market.

I have discovered that this cannot be done for free.
Due to the cost of materials, such as paper and postage, there is no way possible to distribute a guidebook for free.
The only option was to get the cost of the book as low as possible so that I could pay for the materials and postage.
I have done this. I am selling the guidebook $1.00 over the cost of what it takes to produce it.
The only reason I added the $1.00 was to account for unsold books.

My next working project is the PDF of the guidebook. I also want to make the PDF the best guidebook PDF that is on the market.

I have spent many long days and a lot of hours over the last three months working on the WhiteBlaze Pages PDF. I have taken the time to make it more user friendly and redesigned it to work with the newer larger screen phones.
I have gone one step further and have incorporated Gaia GPS to work in conjunction with it.
I have made the coordinates in the PDF active (live) coordinates. Now when you click on the coordinates in the PDF, they will open the Gaia GPS app (if installed) on your mobile device to the exact location on the map of that coordinate.
I have created an up-to-date centerline of the Appalachian Trail for Gaia GPS and other devices.
I have close to 4,000 waypoint coordinates that are Appalachian Trail related.
I have many more coordinates to add, and I am continually adding them.

I am not doing this to make money, like the other guidebooks on the market. If I did, the price of the book would be higher.
I love doing this. I have a very strong love for the Appalachian Trail and its community.
Maybe I should call it an addiction.
I have been supporting the AT community for over 18 years now in one way or another.
This is truly a labor of love.

I have found that since I have been improving on WhiteBlaze Pages over the last couple of years, other guidebooks have also copied some of my ideas and incorporated them into their guidebook.
I must be doing something right if this is happening.
I only wish that they would not copy my ideas and would get creative on their own.

I just wanted to share my original goal here and I still feel the same way.

I hope you enjoy the guidebook.

AT Troll

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