Baseline Maps started because nobody was building the app we actually wanted to use in the field. We were checking five apps before every trip. USGS Water Resources for river flows. NOAA Tides & Currents for the coast. The state agency PDF for regulations. onX for land ownership. Gaia for offline topo. Plus a notebook for whatever didn’t fit in any of them.

We knew the data was free. Agencies publish it. Buoys broadcast it. Counties export parcels. The problem wasn’t access. The problem was that nobody was putting it together the way we’d actually use it on a Saturday at 4 AM.

So we built Baseline Maps. Or really, we started building it — and then the people who downloaded it took over.

We don’t have a product committee. We don’t have a quarterly OKR. We don’t have a CMO. What we have is:

• An in-app feedback box that opens directly into our triage queue. Bug reports usually get a fix the same week.
• An Instagram DMs inbox that the founders read every morning over coffee. A lot of features started as a screenshot and a voice memo.
• A handful of Founders — original beta users we text directly when we’re weighing a design call. If they shake their heads, we don’t ship it.
• A Development Queue inside the app that names the people who asked for what we shipped. No anonymized “customer feedback” language. Real people, real credit.

Data is the product. Not motivation. Not gamification. Not streaks. We don’t want to be the app you check obsessively. We want to be the app you check once before a trip and trust.

The field is the design constraint. Every screen has to read at a glance in bright sun, with cold fingers, with a glove on, with the phone at arm’s length on a boat in chop. If it doesn’t work there, it doesn’t ship.

Source matters. Real-time flow data comes from USGS. Buoy data from NOAA. Regulations from the state agencies. Parcels from county GIS. We don’t resell aggregator marketing data and we don’t make up numbers.

One price, every mode. No subscription tiers. No per-state surcharges. No upsells. $34.99 a year. Free for 30 days.

The roadmap is public. Every ship lists what we built and who asked. We don’t hide the roadmap behind a marketing wall.

Baseline Maps Co. is based in the Pacific Northwest. The original app shipped as Driftline — a fishing-only tool — when one of us got tired of refreshing the USGS website on a phone with frozen fingers. Then a hunting Founder asked, “could you do the same thing for GMUs?” That became Ridgeline. Then a forager asked. Then a side-by-side rider asked.

We rebranded to Baseline Maps when the app grew beyond fishing. Driftline lives on as the fishing mode. Ridgeline as the hunting mode. Same data, same intelligence — under a name that fits everything we cover now, and everything we’ll cover when the next Founder asks.

The shortest path is the app itself. Download it (free for 30 days, no card friction), use it on your next trip, and tell us what was missing. We’ll usually have something to show you by the time you’re packing for your next one.

Or DM us on Instagram @baselinemaps. Or email info@baselinemaps.io. We’re here, and we’re shipping.