About Summit Cabin
A trail-side toolbox for the planning you do the evening before a hike.
What it is
Summit Cabin has five free tools: a hiking time calculator that compares Naismith's rule and Tobler's hiking function, an elevation gain and grade calculator, a pack weight calculator, a hiking water calculator and a trail day planner with offline sunset times and a printable checklist.
How it works
Everything runs in your browser. GPX files are read on your device and never uploaded, sunset is calculated with NOAA's published equations rather than fetched from a server, and once a page has loaded it keeps working without a connection. Settings, your gear list and your checklist are kept in your browser's local storage so they are there next time.
Where the numbers come from
Each page shows its method and links to its sources: Naismith's 1892 rule and Langmuir's corrections, Tobler's 1993 report, guidance from the US National Park Service, NIOSH and the American College of Sports Medicine, and hiking and equipment publications for the rules of thumb. Where we had to make a choice of our own, such as how to blend two figures, the page says so.
What it is not
These are planning estimates. They cannot see the weather, the state of the path or how your group is feeling, and they are not medical advice. Use them alongside a map, a forecast and your own judgement.