Navigating the Trails—How to Use Komoot

If you’d rather use a different navigation app, that’s fine too. You’ll still need a free Komoot account to access our routes, but you can then import them into whichever app you prefer to hike with. See how to use a different app below.

Komoot works like Google Maps for the trail. Open one of our routes, tap Navigate, and it gives you turn-by-turn directions as you hike, including optional voice navigation.

It also shows exactly where you are on the route at all times, works offline once your region’s maps are downloaded (handy where cell service gets spotty), and displays useful planning details like elevation profiles and trail surfaces. Because our whole route library lives there, the route you see on hikenwa.org is exactly the route your phone will guide you along.

A free Komoot account lets you plan routes anywhere in the world. To navigate, record hikes, or use maps offline, Komoot requires the region you’re in to be unlocked, and every new account gets one region free. Choose the region that covers Bentonville and Bella Vista (called the Benton region), and everything you need for our trails—turn-by-turn navigation, voice guidance, offline maps, and hike recording—is free for good. There is no subscription required for local hiking, though Komoot offers optional paid map packs and a Premium tier if you want more.

Download Komoot from the App Store or Google Play, and create a free account. During setup, claim the free Benton region, which covers Bentonville and Bella Vista—that choice is permanent, so it is worth doing before your first hike. Once that is done, any route on hikenwa.org opens right in the app, ready to navigate.

See the full walkthrough, with a screenshot for every step.

Following our Komoot profile means you can browse every route we publish right inside the app, save your favorites to your own profile, and get to know the trails before you ever leave the house.

In the app, tap Profile, then the magnifying glass (Find Friends), and search for Hike NWA. Tap + Follow on our profile, and you can confirm it worked under Profile, then Following, where Hike NWA should be listed.

You can also find every route we publish at komoot.com/user/hikenwa on a computer, the same routes you’ll find in our Route Library.

Found a route you want to come back to? Save it to your Komoot profile so it is always easy to find, whether you are planning ahead or standing at the trailhead.

See how to save a route to your profile.

Once you are on the trail, Komoot can guide you turn by turn, warn you if you stray off route, and get you back on track if you do.

See the full walkthrough for navigating a route on the trail.

That is okay. Every route on this site can be used with other navigation apps too, since Komoot lets you download the underlying GPX file for free. We still recommend Komoot for local hiking, since it is free for our trails and everything else on this page assumes it, but if you already use another app and want to stick with it, you can.

See how to download the GPX file and get it into your app.

We also group routes into Collections on Komoot—curated sets of related hikes you can browse as a group and save with one tap. It’s an easy way to keep a themed batch of hikes handy in the app.

Pick a hike from the Beginner’s Hiking Guide or the Route Library, tap View Route on Komoot, and hit the trail.