HikerScrolls

Where trail stories meet living maps.

A scrollytelling journal for Obsidian that transforms your adventures into immersive, map-driven narratives.

Everybody can tell their own story on the road.

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Watch Demo

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The Problem

You come back from an incredible trip with hundreds of photos, a GPX track, and memories that deserve more than a photo album. But stitching together the story — the route, the moments, the places — is tedious. The photos sit in a folder. The GPX file sits in another. The story stays in your head.

The Solution

HikerScrolls lives inside Obsidian and turns your raw trip data into a living document. Upload your GPX, drop in your photos, and write your story. The plugin does the rest — syncing your narrative to an animated topographic map that scrolls with you.

Your journal. Your map. Moving together.

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What You Can Do

Your Personal Atlas

Every journal you create appears as a pin on your personal world map. Over time, you build a global atlas of everywhere you've been — with one-click access to any trip.

• Interactive world map with animated trip markers
• Fly to any trip instantly from the Timeline sidebar
• See your GPX tracks drawn on the map as you zoom in
• Track your stats: trips taken, kilometers walked, regions explored

Scrollytelling Journals

This is the core experience. Open any journal and your trip becomes a scroll-driven story:

• The left panel shows your narrative — location cards with photos, descriptions, and your writing
• The right panel shows a real topographic map with your route
• As you scroll, a red dot traces your path along the GPX track
• The route line draws itself in real time as you move through the story
• Multi-route trips animate each segment independently — no fake lines between disconnected paths

5-Step Creation Wizard

Creating a journal takes minutes, not hours:

1. Info — Name your trip, set the dates, upload your GPX file, pick a map style
2. Locations — Place pins manually on the map, or let AI detect locations from your photos
3. Photos — Drag and drop photos between locations on an interactive map
4. Sections — Create blog sections and assign locations with checkboxes, sorted by route order
5. Generate — One click, and your journal is ready to explore

Timeline Sidebar

A chronological index of all your journals, always visible in Obsidian's right sidebar:

• Grouped by year, sorted newest-first
• Cover photo thumbnails for quick recognition
• Search by name, region, or date
• Click any trip to fly to it on the atlas
• Auto-refreshes when you create or delete journals

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Map Styles

Choose from 14 map styles to match the mood of each trip:

Stamen and Stadia styles require an API key from stadiamaps.com (free tier available).

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AI-Powered

HikerScrolls integrates with Google Gemini to help you build journals faster:

AI features are optional. Everything works without an API key — you just do the tagging manually.

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Get Started

Install

1. Download the latest release — you need three files: main.js, styles.css, manifest.json
2. In your Obsidian vault, create .obsidian/plugins/hiker-scrolls/
3. Drop the files in
4. Restart Obsidian -> Settings -> Community Plugins -> Enable HikerScrolls

Get a GPX File

Don't have a GPX file yet? Here are two great options:

• Geo Tracker — Record your route in real time on your phone
• gpx.studio — Create and edit GPX tracks online in your browser

Configure (optional)

In Settings -> HikerScrolls:

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How Your Data Works

HikerScrolls stores everything as plain Markdown files in your vault:

your-vault/
  hiking-journal/
    miami-downtown-trip/
      miami-downtown-trip.md    <- journal (YAML frontmatter + content)
      track.gpx                 <- your GPX file
      photo-001.jpg             <- your photos
      photo-002.jpg

• No proprietary formats. No cloud sync. No lock-in.
• Your journals are Markdown files you own forever.
• Move vaults, switch devices, or stop using the plugin — your data stays intact.

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Acknowledgements

The scrollytelling design of HikerScrolls is inspired by Koya Bound by Craig Mod — a beautiful digital book about walking the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail. Their pioneering work in scroll-driven map narratives showed what's possible when stories and geography move together. All code in HikerScrolls is independently implemented.

Built With

Obsidian Plugin API · Leaflet.js · Google Gemini · OpenStreetMap · Nominatim · Claude Code

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

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HikerScrolls is made by @rickliang-JY @klxd2000