As Drought Grips Europe, droply Helps Hikers Find Water Along the Trail
droply helps hikers and bikers to find water along their way
New droply Navigator flags dry stretches on a planned route and shows where to refill, built on a community that keeps water-source reports current.
When a spring dries up, the missing water is only half the problem. The other half is that the map might still say it's there. We built the Navigator so hikers know ahead if water is flowing.”
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, August 19, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- droply, the community water-source app for hikers, cyclists and travelers, today introduced the droply Navigator: a tool that reads a hiker's planned route and shows the dry stretches and refill points ahead, as a severe drought leaves water sources across Europe less predictable than usual.— Micha, co-founder and software engineer at droply
The launch lands in the middle of one of Europe's most severe droughts in years. The European Environment Agency measured drought conditions across roughly 35% of the area of its 38 member and cooperating countries in the last ten days of July 2026, affecting 37 countries, and Copernicus recorded Austria's and Czechia's driest spring since national records began. Rivers and small waterways have visibly shrunk this summer, and the same uncertainty reaches the springs, taps and fountains hikers plan their water around.
For a hiker, the effect is smaller than a shrinking river, but just as concrete: a spring marked on a map is not the same as a spring that is flowing today. The Navigator was built to close that gap.
The droply Navigator reads a hiker's GPX route and searches droply's map of more than 800,000 water sources worldwide, drawn from community reports and a range of other data sources, for the ones along it. It returns a simple readout: the next source and how far away it is, how much of a detour it takes to reach, and where the dry stretches fall. Routes can be downloaded before hikers lose signal, so the Navigator keeps working offline.
That readout is only as current as the community behind it. droply is built on hikers checking in at water sources to confirm whether they're flowing, adding photos, and flagging sources as reliable or not. droply's growing community, which helps curate this data, is rewarded with droply points, so the next hiker gets an up-to-date picture instead of a static pin on a map.
"When a spring dries up, the missing water is only half the problem. The other half is that the map might still say it's there. We built the Navigator so hikers know what's actually ahead, not just what used to be true."
— Micha, co-founder and software engineer at droply
"We didn't want to build another route planner. We wanted to know what water is coming up on a route we already have. This year, that question matters more than usual."
— Nathalie, co-founder and product designer at droply
The droply Navigator, along with the new droply PRO tier that unlocks it and offline maps, is available now for iOS and Android. droply PRO costs 29 EUR once or 9.80 EUR a year, with no monthly plan; hikers who have contributed 100 or more droply points through check-ins and photos can claim a year of PRO for free. droply's map, water-source check-ins and community reports stay free for everyone.
Read the full story behind the droply Navigator on the droply blog.
Micha Burger
droply
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