Venturing into the mountains is among the most rewarding and risky endeavors many of us will undertake. We live in a time of bountiful technology that helps us map our trips, discover trails, and call for emergency help by satellite. Yet when we search for reports on conditions, we find a mess of outdated park service data, scattered social media groups, non-profit regional websites, sites covered in ads, and the ghost towns of former communities. Useful trip reports are scarce, hidden, and precious.

Many attempts have been made to fix this yet all fizzled with time. Inevitably the creators of these communities feel the strain of maintenance costs and choose to inundate them with ads or sell to another company. Once acquired, communities lose motivation as it becomes clear their contributions are used exclusively to benefit the corporation's subscription revenue. The few holdout communities have fallen into disrepair or have ancient, hard-to-use interfaces because they were designed for a different era.

This is the conundrum that must be solved so we can all have an enduring resource to help us be prepared and inspired when going into the wilderness. This is why I'm starting Tatoosh.

Tatoosh is a path to simultaneously:

1. Nurture a sustainable community of trip reporters who can forever protect the value created by their efforts.

2. Apply great software design to radically reduce the time and effort it takes to create a trip report so more people do it.

3. Fund a development team who is incentivized to serve the community for the long term.

Until very recently, the technology and support structures did not exist to make this combination possible. The key missing ingredient has been ownership. In Tatoosh everyone who shares beta becomes a part-owner. The contributors truly own it and decide what happens with the resource they helped create.

The time for this project is now because true digital ownership has crossed the threshold of mainstream viability. I've been building software for over 15 years and understand skepticism of anything relating to crypto, yet I've come to see that ownership networks are the way to overcome the challenges that have prevented anyone from making this work in the past.

It's time for a new type of digital outdoor community. One that will be owned and protected by the people who contribute, while being sustainable for the long term.

I am proposing two symbiotic systems:

• Tatoosh Network: A collection of trip reports and trail data that is owned by the people who contribute and open to the world as a public good. It's built on a Web3 technology stack so ownership has real world monetary value, voting rights, and anyone can build apps on it.

• Tatoosh App: Mobile and web apps that help people plan trips and get prepared to enter the backcountry. It will be the first app to enable contributions to the Tatoosh Network and it must earn usage by innovating and competing with the best outdoor apps out there.

I am at the earliest stages of building this and am looking for people to join me on this journey:

• Hikers, scramblers, mountaineers, backpackers, climbers who want Tatoosh to exist. If you want to provide feedback, get early access, or contribute trip reports, I want to hear from you.

• Web3 experts willing to help define the structure to achieve a balance of genuine community ownership and sustainable funding.

• Investors interested in helping seed the creation of a new enduring consumer application.

• Builders who want to apply their talents or knowledge to push this project forward.

I would love to hear from you!

~ Brian Thomas
Climber and builder from the Pacific Northwest

Venturing into the mountains is among the most rewarding and risky endeavors many of us will undertake. We live in a time of bountiful technology that helps us map our trips, discover trails, and call for emergency help by satellite. Yet when we search for reports on conditions, we find a mess of outdated park service data, scattered social media groups, non-profit regional websites, sites covered in ads, and the ghost towns of former communities. Useful trip reports are scarce, hidden, and precious.

Many attempts have been made to fix this yet all fizzled with time. Inevitably the creators of these communities feel the strain of maintenance costs and choose to inundate them with ads or sell to another company. Once acquired, communities lose motivation as it becomes clear their contributions are used exclusively to benefit the corporation's subscription revenue. The few holdout communities have fallen into disrepair or have ancient, hard-to-use interfaces because they were designed for a different era.

This is the conundrum that must be solved so we can all have an enduring resource to help us be prepared and inspired when going into the wilderness. This is why I'm starting Tatoosh.

Tatoosh is a path to simultaneously:

1. Nurture a sustainable community of trip reporters who can forever protect the value created by their efforts.

2. Apply great software design to radically reduce the time and effort it takes to create a trip report so more people do it.

3. Fund a development team who is incentivized to serve the community for the long term.

Until very recently, the technology and support structures did not exist to make this combination possible. The key missing ingredient has been ownership. In Tatoosh everyone who shares beta becomes a part-owner. The contributors truly own it and decide what happens with the resource they helped create.

The time for this project is now because true digital ownership has crossed the threshold of mainstream viability. I've been building software for over 15 years and understand skepticism of anything relating to crypto, yet I've come to see that ownership networks are the way to overcome the challenges that have prevented anyone from making this work in the past.

It's time for a new type of digital outdoor community. One that will be owned and protected by the people who contribute, while being sustainable for the long term.

I am proposing two symbiotic systems:

• Tatoosh Network: A collection of trip reports and trail data that is owned by the people who contribute and open to the world as a public good. It's built on a Web3 technology stack so ownership has real world monetary value, voting rights, and anyone can build apps on it.

• Tatoosh App: Mobile and web apps that help people plan trips and get prepared to enter the backcountry. It will be the first app to enable contributions to the Tatoosh Network and it must earn usage by innovating and competing with the best outdoor apps out there.

I am at the earliest stages of building this and am looking for people to join me on this journey:

• Hikers, scramblers, mountaineers, backpackers, climbers who want Tatoosh to exist. If you want to provide feedback, get early access, or contribute trip reports, I want to hear from you.

• Web3 experts willing to help define the structure to achieve a balance of genuine community ownership and sustainable funding.

• Investors interested in helping seed the creation of a new enduring consumer application.

• Builders who want to apply their talents or knowledge to push this project forward.

I would love to hear from you!

~ Brian Thomas
Climber and builder from the Pacific Northwest