SPOKANE, WA. – Jade Porter grew up in Spokane and views the Centennial Trail as one of the city’s greatest gems. She also feels strongly that women like herself should feel safer when using the trail by themselves.
“Historically and sort of notoriously, the Centennial Trail has not been safe for women especially,” Jade said.
Jade hopes her ‘PCHY’ app she’s working to launch this year will address that, and hope trail users feel safer by empowering them with more information about the trails shared by other trail users.
“We are building an app which is a review site for women and intersectionality marginalized groups to share safety information,” Jade said. “So very specific information like ‘how well lit is this parking lot, how isolated is the trail.'”
Jade said her PCHY app is currently in the MVP or minimal viable product stage which allows them to test the smallest version of the app so that they can continue testing and gain viewer feedback. She said she hopes that PCHY will become available for use at our fingertips around June 2024.
“We’re actually building the app specifically for the trail, so that users can go in and let’s say they’re at Sontag Park Trailhead…they can say ‘this is where I parked, this is how far I parked, and this was my experience.”
Hannah Trammell said she uses the Spokane area trails almost every day, and was excited to learn about Jade’s efforts.
“I have heard some horror stories of women who have been out by themselves and had scary things happen to them,” Hannah said. “I love hearing stories of women doing things like that. I think it’s so empowering.”
Jade has more plans for helping empower women and other trail users.
Next month, she’s planned a walk on Centennial Trail starting Friday, April 5th at Mile 1 near the Idaho-Washington state line and ending Sunday, April 7th at Sontag Park trailhead in Nile Mile Falls.
“We’re gonna walk 10 to 12 miles a day,” Jade said.
She hopes it will help her gather more feedback and information about how people feel using our area trails.
“I originally was planning on walking the entirety of the (Centennial) trail on the Washington side by myself as sort of a silent protest,” Jade said. “To be honest, I was a little afraid of walking 35 miles by myself…so many people wanted to walk with me that we decided to invite anyone in Spokane that wants to walk.”
Jade said more than 200 people have already signed up for that walk.
You can learn more about her efforts at justpchy.com.
