Long-distance hikers

Your thru-hike as a real book, not a dead photo library.

Long-distance hiker capturing one sentence a day on trail, turning thousands of photos into a printable photobook

You spent six months on the trail. You have 8,000 photos, 300 Instagram stories no one can find, and a lot of blisters. BrainCopy captures one sentence or one photo a day from the trail, puts your whole route on a map, and turns it into a printable photobook — yours, not the platform's.

The problem

Six months on a trail, you're too tired most evenings to journal properly. A sentence in a note, a photo, and bed. By the time you finish, you have 8,000 photos, 300 Instagram stories, maybe a notebook with damp margin scrawl — and no single place where the journey is one thing.

Every thru-hiker has sat down a year later trying to write the book of their trail and given up. The material is there, but assembling it — sorting photos by day, remembering what happened where, weaving together writing and images — is a project in itself, and by then the memory is already fading.

Instagram and Strava have each half the story and neither is yours. Stories disappear in 24h. Strava has the route but no photos. Your Google Photos are organised by "every time you took a picture," not by "the Bear Pass section." And the platforms can change policy tomorrow.

How BrainCopy solves it

One sentence a day on the trail

Open the app, type "Today: storm rolled in over the pass, sheltered at the warden hut with Nils from Denmark." Done. No formatting, no forms. Offline-capable — syncs when you get signal. Battery- and data-friendly for long stretches without connectivity.

Photos with GPS, auto-placed on your route

Every photo's GPS locates it on your trail. The day's photos get grouped to the day's camp or the day's mileage. You don't tag — the trail does it for you.

Daily digest — what happened where

Each evening BrainCopy shows you the day: kilometres, photos, people mentioned, weather if you noted it. Thirty seconds to review, maybe one voice note for the thing you forgot to type. The narrative builds itself.

Import your Strava + Instagram after

Post-trail, import your Strava tracks for the exact routes, your Instagram archive for any captions you wrote, your Google Photos for the full photo set. Everything merges into the correct day on the correct section of trail.

A printable photobook, with the map

AI drafts a book chapter per trail section — text in your voice, your photos, your route on a map. You edit what's wrong, reorder chapters, pick cover photos. Print through any standard photobook service. Yours, permanently, off any platform.

What you'll actually see

Beta price for Long-distance hikers

50% off the €10/month subscription, forever, for thru-hikers during the beta. Your discount never expires.

TRAIL50

Start with TRAIL50 See full pricing

FAQ

Does this work offline?
Yes — capture writes to local storage, syncs when connected. Critical for PCT/CDT/AT stretches with no signal for days. You never lose an entry because of a dead zone.
Battery impact?
Designed for low-power. Capture is text-or-photo; no continuous GPS recording (for that, you want Strava). You could capture three entries a day for a week on a single charge with other normal phone usage.
Can I import Strava routes?
Yes — GPX/FIT import. Your recorded tracks become the backbone, and BrainCopy enriches them with photos and daily entries.
What about my Instagram archive?
Import via the standard Instagram data export. Stories, posts, captions all merge into the correct date on your trail, even the ones that "disappeared" on Instagram 24 hours later.
Cost?
€10/month (€5/month forever with TRAIL50). You only need the subscription during the trail and the post-trail editing phase — you can cancel after your book is printed and your archive stays safe in your own Nextcloud account. Printed book is through a normal photobook service (€40–€100).
Can I make the book for a specific person?
Yes — per-person framing. One version of the book with you and your trail partner, another version for your parents, another for your kid. Same archive, different framings.
Is this just for famous long trails?
Not at all. Works for Camino, GR trails, Via Alpina, Kungsleden, Te Araroa, weekend section-hikes, or a summer of hut-to-hut walks. The "one sentence a day plus photos" format scales down and up.

Ready to try it?

Takes about 30 seconds to sign up. You can start importing immediately.

Start your trail journal

Who else uses BrainCopy

Different people, same problem: too many memories scattered across too many places.