Find trekkers

There are lots of ways that you can find fellow trekkers before your Trek America tour and doing this can be really useful, especially if you are travelling solo and want to hook up with other people before the tour begins; plus I think it's nice to say hello before you meet in person :o)

So, here's my guide to finding your trek buddies:

1/ Ask Trek America

Trek America are very open about providing trekkers with some basic details about the tour group (you can find out how many people are booked, get an overview of the age range, nationalities, gender ratio and numbers of people travelling solo or in pairs etc). I should state that Trek America do not breach data protection in sharing this information and I think it's great that they are open about it. I've travelled with other small group adventure travel companies and some have refused to give any indiction, like they've something to hide! ;o)

2/ Find a Facebook group/set one up

Search Facebook for a group specifically created for your tour date (a fellow trekker may have set one up already) e.g. Trek America Westerner 2 October 2010. If a group appears for your trek, join it and say hi to your new travel buddies :o) If there isn't a Facebook group, why don't you set one up? You might want to keep the content private to members only (remember to always be careful about the information you share publicly online).

3/ Use Trek Connect

Trek Connect is a Facebook application that is connected to the official Trek America website.

Visit the page for your chosen tour on and post a message on the Trek Connect wall along with your tour date and include a link to your Facebook tour group (Update: 'Trek Connect' is now found under the 'TrekAmerica Live' tab).

4/ Join Team Trek America

Trek America have an official Facebook page: Join Team Trek America If you haven't already joined, this is a great place to find other trekkers (post a link to your group) and get advice from experienced trekkers too. There's a discussion forum and you can also see photos and videos of previous treks - a few of mine are on there :o)

5/ Persevere

If you book your trek way in advance and start the hunt for your trek buddies early on, it's useful to remember that not everyone will have booked in advance and your messages on Trek Connect and the Join Team Trek America page will soon be buried by other messages (Trek America have a VERY active community!). The best thing to do is to keep checking every few weeks, see if anyone else has posted a message on the Trek Connect wall/Facebook page and keep re-posting your messages. Of course you won't necessarily find everyone, not everyone uses Facebook, but it can be fun and help pass the time until you get on that plane :o)