Test Posting

Getting off the beaten track into B.C.’s wilderness can be a challenge when you don’t know the terrain.

Anyone who has hiked, biked or driven B.C.’s back roads knows the drill. You get half-way down a trail and it ends in a dense, green impassable thicket or it turns into a nightmare of ruts and potholes.

If these scenarios sound familiar, you might want to follow the business of a Coquitlam technology company that’s hoping to revolutionize the province’s tourism industry.

A couple of Coquitlam computer engineers, Steve Chapman and Steve Graham, have developed a software system to create virtual guidebooks that take the guesswork out of trip planning.

The company is called Virtual Outdoor Adventures and already it has caught the attention of Dragons’ Den producers who gave the entrepreneurs an opportunity to pitch their business plan to the show’s group of business moguls.

Chapman says he can’t divulge the details of the CBC-TV venture and whether he got any investment capital, but the fact that his business was selected for the show from 4,000 hopefuls is a promising sign.

“It was an intense experience,” is how Chapman describes the morning taping on May 23.

Chapman, his wife Jackie, and Steve Graham were pretty confident going in. They’d already impressed a group of producers, hikers themselves who could see the value of a $20 DVD-ROM that would enable them to plan a safe and enjoyable route that they could print out and take with them or download to an IPOD or Blackberry. But nervousness got the better of them. In their anxiety, the trio misplaced several of their props only to find them later in some obvious places — their pant pockets, for example.

“We kept losing these things and we spent a lot of time looking for them,” Chapman recalled.

But such mishaps are commonplace on the road to success.

The group is now forging ahead on several fronts. An internet site, www.virtualoutdooradventures.com, showcases the company’s product line and Chapman says he’s looking at additional ways to utilize the software he and Graham developed last year.

“We’ve created a software platform that pretty much any trip can be superimposed upon. People can create data and we can create new products using the same software. That’s where the real value is.

“We want to set ourselves up as a digital publisher. I employ the services of third party authors, who collect data. We can create the product from that,” he continued.

The company’s first venture was a digital guide of the Kettle Valley Railway from Myra Station to Penticton, an 80 km ride, with access points, descriptions and photographs. A similar guide is planned for Indian Arm that will include hiking trails and kayaking routes, and Chapman said he’s developing another series covering hikes in the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley with local hiking enthusiast and Trails B.C. director Leo Lebrun.