Adventure Travel App Review – Epiclist

I live in one of the most adventure-friendly towns – if not countries – in the world: Queenstown, New Zealand. So it’s no surprise then that my day-to-day life (and consequently this blog) is filled with quite a bit of adventure.

I generally choose to document my travels through my Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, but am always open to new ways to document and share the adventures I get up to. It turns out there is another app for that – and it’s called Epiclist.

Epiclist

Epiclist is an iPhone app (coming soon to an Android near you) that allows you follow the journeys of your friends or fellow-adventurers and document your own adventures from around the world.

If you’re into travel – namely adventure-focused travel – you can use the app to find inspiration through photos, brief stories, maps and discussion on hiking, surfing or simply exploring.

Epiclist says they have over 10,000 users already, with over 10,000 travel experiences shared through the app. So, how does it work?

1. After signing up for Epiclist, you begin to add your own Journeys through the app. This can include as little as a Title, a photo and a brief overview. E.G. – “Paragliding off Coronet Peak”.

2. After you’ve added the Journey and noted whether it is “Planned” or “Completed,” you can also add Activities specific to that Journey. E.G. – “Hiking on the Franz Josef Glacier.” Again, you would then add photos or a description associated with that Activity.

3. Epiclist users then can see your Journey or Activity, Pulse Up your activity (aka “Like” it), comment on it and share it with their friends through various other channels.

4. If you’re not adding Journeys, you can check your newsfeed to find inspiration from others that are either planning trips or actually out traveling.

5. If you have a specific destination or activity in mind, you can use the search feature of the App to find journeys or activities about that destination / activity.

6. Epiclist appears to have partnered with some travel / tour operators, so you can conceivably connect with operators that offer tours on activities or destinations you’re interested in. These include big names like Intrepid, and smaller operations like Adventure Out.

My Final Say

Epiclist is a beautifully designed App. The interface is designed nicely and easy to navigate around. However, I do find the Journeys vs Activities classification someone confusing and unnecessary. You can’t add an Activity unless you connect it to a Journey, but not all Journey’s are going to need multiple activities.

Epiclist is a great place to find inspiration from other travellers. There’s no shortage of content already loaded up onto the app. You can find heaps of things to read about and add to your list of adventures – whether they are close to home or further afar.

It seems that a lot of this content has been added by Epiclist. You can tell which Journeys these are when the user’s profile photo is the Epiclist logo. On the surface, this isn’t a problem. The content they have added has beautiful photos and good information associated with the journey. When you’re getting a user-focused or generated app like this off the ground, you’ll often face a Chicken vs Egg situation that they are seemingly facing here. With no Journeys, there likely won’t be any users – so they’re trying to jump start the process.

Whilst Epiclist is a nicely designed app with great potential, it’s not one that I would use myself to document my travels. I stay busy enough trying to put together blog posts, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, Google+ posts and more, and don’t envision myself adding another App to that list of things to update.

Be sure to check out the App and decide for yourself. If you’re in the planning stages of a big trip or looking for weekend adventures, check out Epiclist to see if there’s an adventure on there that fits your plans.