Best (free?) App for Hiking w/ Heartrate monitor

[Supp0rtLinux]

In two weeks I'm going on a 3 day hike averaging 10-15 miles a day on a section of the AT. I have an iPad Mini with LTE and a Wahoo Fitness BT heart rate monitor. I typically use the heartrate strap with my iPhone when working out. But for the hike, my plan is to pair the HR strap with the Mini and put the mini in the top of my pack with GPS enabled, but wifi and LTE/4G/3G off to maximize battery life. Basically, I want the app to use the GPS to track my trek, but also to get accurate heart rate readings so I can also calculate calorie burn (NOTE: I can do this w/o the HR strap, but there's no good way of calculating calorie burn when factoring in temperature, elevation change, and the weight of the pack... which changes as I consume water and food... so a heart rate strap is best). Basically, I'm looking for the best app to handle this. I have the Wahoo Fitness and RunKeeper apps on my iPhone, but both are iPhone apps. Neither are optimized for the iPad or iPad Mini. Runkeeper has the most options... Wahoo Fitness only allows for running or walking, not hiking. Runkeeper allows me to choose hiking and it works well when in GPS only mode as it will add the maps data in later when it has data coverage later. But as noted, its not iPad optimized... its an iPhone app that is super-sized to work on the Mini.

So... does anyone know of a good (preferably free) app that can run in a GPS only mode but add mapping data in later... can support a BT heart rate strap... and that is iPad/iPad Mini optimized?

 

[gpsjack]

Smartphone Hiking Apps

If you want to track your trek then invest in a hand held GPS device. If you use a smartphone hiking app on the AT then your trek will not accurately represent your hike. There's a document at pickatrail.com that explains why GPS coordinates recorded by smartphone trail apps at remote locations are highly inaccurate and erroneous. Please read this document before your hike:
http://www.pickatrail.com/about/maps/cartographic_spam.html

 

[Supp0rtLinux]

If you want to track your trek then invest in a hand held GPS device. If you use a smartphone hiking app on the AT then your trek will not accurately represent your hike. There's a document at pickatrail.com that explains why GPS coordinates recorded by smartphone trail apps at remote locations are highly inaccurate and erroneous. Please read this document before your hike:
http://www.pickatrail.com/about/maps/cartographic_spam.html

Thanks for that. I read over it and understand the issues. Honestly, the AT is pretty well mapped out so I'm not overly concerned with things being spot-on. I'm more concerned with getting a *close* mapping of the distance I cover and my heart rate at the same time. RunKeeper will work well for this... I can disable wifi and cellular and leave on only GPS and BT and when I have wifi or cellular later it will add the map topography to my tracks. My only gripe is that its iPhone formatted and I want something that offers everything RunKeeper offers, but optimized for the iPad.

As an aside, I run and hike with a Garmin Forerunner 210 and when I compare its logs to those of RunKeeper on my iPhone, they are within feet of each other, so the above concerns about smartphone tracking may not be all that... I could use the Garmin while out and about, but its battery maxes at 8-10 hours which isn't good for a multi-day trip.

Oh and your suggestion of a handheld GPS device doesn't handle the issue of my wanting to track calories and heart rate and such as mentioned in my original post.