About Us
After deciding to improve their quality of life, Interactive Recreation Information Systems, Inc co-founders Susan Smith and Claire Marynowski, decided to run their first marathon. After completing two marathons they decided to expand their training program by adding trail running to their plan. Living in the hills of Oakland, California, they tried running the trails in nearby parks and soon realized just how challenging the hills were. Getting information about the trails was difficult and tedious.
Rather then giving up on the trails, Susan and Claire decided to do something. Susan’s background in high-tech system development and Claire’s background in In-Vehicle Navigation systems led to the concept of interactive recreation and the development of The Original Ultimate Trail Guide.
Interactive Recreation Information Systems is dedicated to helping people enjoy outdoor recreation by providing the information needed to discover and improve recreational experiences. Look for us on the trails as we continue to add more parks to our database of trails.
How We Do It
Our tagline says it all – Because we’ve been there. Putting together an Original Ultimate Trail Guide region means that we hike or bike each and every mile of the trails we include in the region. While we on the trails we carry a global position system (GPS) device that allows us to capture the geographical (latitude/longitude) positions of the trails and other data pertaining to the overall environment. We take photographs of the trails and the surrounding area so we can relate to you what you can expect to see along the trail.
Once the field data is captured, the data is processed and prepared for use in the Original Ultimate Trail Guide program. The GPS data is cleaned of echos resulting from trees or other obstacles that block satellite signals, park and trail descriptions are written, slideshows created and the data is compiled into a comprehensive database.