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What each badge is, exactly what earns it, and why one might not have appeared yet.
Badges are small awards for hikes you have logged and historic markers you have found. They are free awards on your profile that show off your achievements.
You need an account to earn them, because they are counted from the hikes you log as completed — see Logging a hike — and from the markers you record, on a hike or anywhere else — see Finding markers.
Earned badges always show on your profile, even if you turn off "Show my hiking activity" in your settings — that setting hides your completed hikes and streak, not your badges, and a badge never carries a date when it's off. See Your account and privacy for the full picture.
Not every badge below is live. Badges are launched by the site, one at a time and on purpose — they do not switch themselves on just because the catalogue happens to grow large enough. Two things have to both be true before you can see one: the catalogue has to be big enough for it to be winnable at all ("complete ten hikes" is not a goal when nine exist), and the site has to have deliberately turned it on.
So if you read about a badge here and cannot see it on your profile, it has not launched yet — even if there are plenty of hikes to earn it from. Once a badge does launch, everyone who already qualifies is awarded it right away; nobody has to hike again just because the switch was flipped after the fact. Badges you have already earned are never taken away, and even if a launched badge is later pulled, your award for it stays on record.
| Badge | What earns it |
|---|---|
| 🥾 First Hike | Log your first completed hike. |
| 🎯 Perfect Quiz | Ace a trail quiz with a perfect score. |
| 🪧 Marker Spotter | Record your first historic marker. |
| 🔍 Marker Hunter | Record five different historic markers. |
| 🕵️ Marker Sleuth | Record ten different historic markers. |
| 🏛️ Roadside Historian | Record 25 different historic markers. |
| 📖 Story Keeper | Record 50 different historic markers. |
Different hikes, not repeat walks. Every milestone counts distinct hikes. Walking the same trail five times and logging it five times earns First Hike and nothing else.
Only published hikes count. A hike that is still a draft, has been unpublished, or has been deleted does not count toward any badge — and that is checked when the badge is awarded, not when you logged the hike. If you walked something while it was a draft, it starts counting once it is published and you log your next hike.
A perfect quiz means every question. The quiz has to have at least one question, and you have to get all of them right. A hike with no quiz cannot earn a quiz badge.
Geography counts the hike's country, state/province and city, not the region text on the hike page. Every hike is tagged with a country, and usually a state/province and city too. Globetrotter needs three distinct countries. State Hopper needs five distinct states or provinces — Florida and Georgia are two, no matter how many cities you've hiked in each. Regional Rambler needs five distinct cities within one single state or province — hiking five different cities spread across five different states does not count, because none of those states has five on its own.
A hike an author typed a city for that isn't in our reference list still has a country and state/province — only the city itself might be missing, which only affects Regional Rambler.
Marker badges count different markers, not photos. Recording the same marker again only adds photos to your find, so it counts once. When two records turn out to be the same marker and are combined, they count once. A find counts while it has at least one photo that is showing: a find you deleted, or one whose photos are all hidden after a report, stops counting toward your next badge, but a badge you have already earned stays yours. Marker Wanderer counts the different published hikes you recorded markers on.
Badges are awarded in the background, a moment after you log a hike or record a marker. If one is missing, the usual reasons are:
Your profile also shows a weekly streak: consecutive weeks (Monday to Sunday) in which you logged at least one hike. It is worked out from your logged dates each time the page loads, so there is no counter to break. A streak is not reported as broken partway through the current week — you have until Sunday.