Hikezilla
Mist drifting through mountain ranges at sunrise with hikers on a ridge trailA lit mountain hut and campfire with friends under a starry sky
About Hikezilla

The mountains are better together.

Hikezilla is an outdoor community built around a simple idea: get outside and give something back.

Come for the hikes and the people you meet on them. Stick around long enough and you'll probably end up helping someone else find their way out there too.

Find your next adventureGive back
A Hikezilla group in snow gear at the Schlink Pass sign in Kosciuszko
Kozi 2022
Where we started

More than a hiking group.

6 years running. 180+ hikes hosted. A lot of blisters.

Hikezilla started in Sydney in 2020, fresh out of the first lockdown, as a way to get a few people out on the trails. Nobody involved was exactly Bear Grylls.

For years that mostly meant weekend hikes, trail runs, camping trips and exploring somewhere new. Some easy, some stupidly hard.

Along the way we kept meeting people who brought more than a pair of boots: bushwalkers with decades of knowledge, ultrarunners, climbers, data nerds, developers, photographers, gear obsessives, people who know every fire trail in their local park. And people who'd never been on a hike in their life.

Every one of them had something worth sharing. Hikezilla is becoming the place to share it.

Still a place to find your next adventure. Now also a place to put something back.

Why Hikezilla exists

Everyone has something to contribute.

You don't need to have climbed the biggest mountains or run 100 miles to have something to offer. (The 100-milers mostly offer advice about chafing anyway.) Maybe you…

Know a trail really wellCan code30 years of bushwalkingTake great photosKnow your gearLove digging through dataWrite useful trip reportsOrganise thingsVolunteerMake beginners feel welcome
There's no single way to be an outdoors person. And there's no single way to contribute.

Hikezilla is trying to create more ways to do both.

01 · Get outside

Get outside.

This part hasn't changed. We want people outside.

Join a community hike, a trail run, a camping weekend, or something you've never tried before. Most people come for the trail and come back for the people.

Take on a Hikezilla Challenge, earn achievements and keep a log of the things you're proud of. Or just use it as the excuse to finally do that trip you've been talking about since 2022.

Some challenges take an afternoon. Some take years.

Getting outside is still the whole point. Everything else on this page grows out of it.

ExploreEventsChallengesAchievementsAdventures
A hiker standing on a sandstone lookout above a forested Blue Mountains valley
02 · Give back

Give something back.

Getting outside is only half of what Hikezilla is about.

The outdoor community runs on people quietly doing things for each other. The track notes you read before your last hike. The person who led your first beginner walk. The friend who lent you a sleeping bag so you didn't freeze. Most of them never got a thank you.

Hikezilla gives you a place to be that person. Add to the Wiki, write a trip report, host an event, join a project, lend gear through the Gear Library, or help someone who's a few steps behind you.

There's no right way to do this. Pick whatever suits you.

ExploreWikiBlogs & Trip ReportsForumsHost an eventProjectsGear LibraryVolunteering
A hiker sitting on a rocky ledge beside a sandstone cliff, working on a laptop
Hmm maybe build it indoors next time?
03 · Build

Build something useful.

Not every contribution happens on a trail.

The outdoor community is full of developers, designers, researchers, data scientists, writers, creatives and people who just like tinkering. Hikezilla Projects gives them somewhere to put those skills to work: build an app, dig into a dataset, map something, create a hiking patch, work on a conservation idea, improve Hikezilla itself, or start something we haven't thought of.

Every project is open and collaborative, and they all start from the same question:

Can we make something useful for people who love the outdoors?

If the answer is yes, let's build it.

Explore Projects →Start building →
04 · Understand

Understand the outdoors.

There's an enormous amount of information about the outdoors, scattered across government datasets, research papers, old forums and the heads of people who've walked the same tracks for 40 years. A lot of it is hard to find. Some of it is hard to understand. Some of it has never been put in one place.

Hikezilla Insights turns that data into maps, stories and tools you can actually explore. The Wiki captures what the community knows. Outdoor News pulls the useful stories together. And we're building open datasets and tools so others can make things of their own.

What one person knows about a track should help the next hundred people who walk it.

ExploreInsightsDatasetsWikiOutdoor NewsOutdoor Dictionary
05 · Belong

Find your place in the outdoors.

For some people, the outdoors stops being a weekend thing. They want to work in it, volunteer for it, or build something with people whose skills look nothing like their own.

The Jobs Board, Projects and community spaces are there to make those connections.

Sometimes the next step isn't a trail at all. It's a job, a volunteer role, or someone you'd never have met otherwise.

ExploreOutdoor JobsProjectsCommunityVolunteering
06 · Recognition

We reward adventure. We also reward contribution.

Doing things outdoors

There are plenty of reasons to celebrate getting outside. Finish a challenge. Explore somewhere new. Climb a ridiculous amount of vert. Do something that scares you a little.

Hikezilla rewards those things.

Doing things for the outdoor community

We think the person who hosts the beginner walk, fixes a Wiki page or helps build a tool deserves recognition too.

That earns Hikezilla Points and achievements as well.

Points unlock rewards and perks from Hikezilla and our partners.

We don't just want to reward people for doing more outdoors. We want to reward people for doing more for the outdoors.
How Hikezilla Points work →Explore Rewards →Perks
Where we're heading

From Sydney, outward.

Hikezilla started with a handful of people hiking around Sydney. Australia is still home, and there's a lifetime of places here we haven't got to yet.

But the idea isn't tied to one city. Wherever there are people who want to get outside, and people willing to help them, there can be a Hikezilla.

Local crews. One big community.

Two hikers crossing a snowfield in a steep rocky mountain pass, with alpine peaks beyond
Two ways in

You can come here just to find your next adventure.

That's completely fine.

But if one day you decide you've got something to give back too, we'll give you somewhere to do it.

Get outside. Give back.

Find your next adventureFind a way to contribute