Finding Hiking Partners: Clubs, Apps, or Meetups?

AMC group hikes, Meetup groups, and apps like AllTrails and TrailsPals each find you a hiking partner a different way. How each works, sourced, including what changed in 2025.

By TrailsPals · Source-based guide. How we prepare our guides · Suggest a correction

"Finding someone to hike with" splits into three different approaches: joining a scheduled hike run by an established club, posting into an informal group and seeing who shows up, or using an app that shows who's hiking right now. None of them vet who you'll actually be walking next to — the difference between them is structure, not safety. This goes through how each option actually works, sourced from each organization's own pages wherever they'd load, including one well-known option that quietly closed in 2025.

How do organized hiking clubs like AMC run group hikes?

The Appalachian Mountain Club runs hikes led by trained volunteers and explicitly welcomes non-members onto them, not just paying members. Every hike is graded on AMC's own six-level scale — Relaxed through Strenuous — based on distance, elevation gain and pace, so you can match a hike to your fitness level before you commit to showing up.

AMC does this at scale through roughly 4,400 volunteer trip leaders who lead about 5,000 trips a year, per AMC's own history — hikes are posted to AMC's activity database and some require a short registration form, but AMC's own hiking FAQ states plainly that "non-members are also welcome on our hikes." Sierra Club chapters run a similar volunteer-led outings program in many regions, but sierraclub.org returned a blocked response on every page we tried to fetch directly for this post, so beyond that general shape we're not stating this chapter's specific cost, vetting or leader-training details — check your local chapter's own page.

What happened to REI's guided group hikes?

REI ran a guided-hikes and classes program called Outdoor School, later folded into a broader "Experiences" business, for decades — but REI shut that entire program down in January 2025, laying off roughly 428 employees in the process. It's no longer a current way to find a hiking partner through REI.

REI's Outdoor School started in 2006 and the broader Experiences business dated back to 1987, per REI's own history on Wikipedia; CEO Eric Artz called it an unprofitable business the co-op could no longer subsidize, per OPB's coverage of the layoffs. REI's $30 lifetime membership and its retail stores are unaffected — it's specifically the guided trips and classes that are gone.

How do Meetup groups work for finding a hiking partner?

Meetup.com hosts hiking groups that local members create and run themselves, not a central organizer, sorted by membership size so the most active groups in your area surface first. Many groups run entirely free, recurring hikes open to anyone who joins — there's no vetting of who shows up beyond whatever each group's own organizer chooses to do.

Meetup's own hiking category page lists groups ranging from city-specific hiking clubs to large regional ones, run by what the page describes as local enthusiasts "dedicated to hiking excursions near and far." Facebook hiking groups work the same basic way — member-created, member-moderated, free to join — just without Meetup's event-RSVP structure.

Can an app like AllTrails or TrailsPals help you find a hiking partner?

AllTrails' Hike Together feature lets you plan a specific hike in advance — sharing the route, meetup time and notes, and tracking who's RSVP'd — which suits a hike you're scheduling with people you already know. TrailsPals works the opposite direction: instead of scheduling a future hike, it surfaces people whose journey is active right now, near your own, and lets you send a request they can accept or ignore.

AllTrails describes the feature on its own App Store listing alongside a broader community pitch for "connecting with trailgoers like you." TrailsPals' version is covered in full on the find-hiking-buddies page — including the detail that matters most: no identity or ability checks run on anyone you request, the same as every option in this post.

How do you stay safe meeting a hiking partner from any of these?

None of these options run a background check — not AMC, not a Meetup group, not an app. The safety plan is the same no matter where you found the person: meet at a public trailhead, agree on pace and a turnaround time before you start walking, keep your own transport home, and tell someone who isn't on the hike your plan and expected return time.

The National Park Service's own guidance is to leave a trip plan with someone who isn't on the hike; see Hike Smart. A Guardian safety plan turns that trip plan into an expected-return time and check-ins that flag if you go overdue, and the solo hiking safety system and day-hike checklist both cover building that plan, whether you're hiking with a stranger from a club, a Meetup group, or entirely alone.

Which to use depends on what you want. A scheduled, graded hike with an experienced leader points toward AMC or a local Sierra Club chapter. A free-form local group points toward Meetup or Facebook. A hike you're planning ahead with people you already know points toward AllTrails' Hike Together. If you want to see who's already out on a trail near you right now, that's the job TrailsPals' nearby discovery is built for — build your Guardian safety plan before you go, whichever option you pick.