Drawing And Editing Routes

The route editor is where a route in Your Routes is drawn and changed. Choose Draw a route on the Routes page to start a new one, or open any saved or imported route to edit it.

Drawing A Route

1. Find your starting point on the map and click it. Switch between Topo and Satellite in the corner of the map to see what you're looking at.
2. Click the next place you're heading. The leg between the two follows the nearest trail or road: that's Snap to trails, which is on by default.
3. Keep clicking. Each click adds a point and a new leg, and the distance, ascent and descent under the map update as you go.

Points don't need to be exactly on the track. A click up to about 500 m from a trail snaps onto it, and the point's marker moves to where the route actually passes. Put a point wherever you want the route to go a particular way; between points it takes the most sensible path it can find for a walker.

Going off-track? Turn Snap to trails off and new legs are drawn as straight lines, dashed on the map, until you turn it back on.

Changing It

• Drag any point to move it. The legs either side of it are worked out again.
• Tap a leg to see its length and how it was drawn, then Draw straight or Snap to trails to switch it, Add a point here to split it, or Add a waypoint here.
• Tap a point to Delete it. The legs either side join into one.
• Undo (or Ctrl+Z) takes back the last change, as many times as you need.
• Reverse walks the route the other way. The start and end names swap with it.
• Clear removes the route's points to start again. Undo brings them back, and your waypoints stay where they are.

If a leg can't follow a trail (there's none close enough, nothing connects the two points, or it's longer than 50 km), it's drawn straight for now and marked with dots. Tap it to see why, and where it's worth another go, Try again. Otherwise draw it straight, or add a point to guide it.

Waypoints

Waypoints mark what's worth knowing about along the way: water, campsites, huts, a lookout, a tricky crossing.

1. Choose Waypoint above the map, then click where it goes. Clicking the route itself puts it right on the line.
2. Give it a name, pick its type and add notes if you like: how reliable the tank is, how far off the track the hut sits.
3. Drag its pin to move it, or Delete waypoint to remove it.

There are the same twenty types a hike's map uses, from Water, Tent and Hut to Summit, Hazard and Reception. Every waypoint is also listed under the map, with the start of its notes and, when it's within 200 m of the route, how far it is from the start (0.9 km from start). Tap one there to find it on the map.

Waypoints go into the route's GPX, and onto the map of any hike you add the route to.

Naming The Ends And Picking A Colour

Below the map:

• Start point and End point name where the route begins and finishes (Halls Gap, Wonderland Camp). You can also type them straight in when you tap the start or finish marker. They show wherever the route does in a hike: the route list, the itinerary and the Section Planner.
• Route colour is one of the colours a hike offers. Auto leaves the choice to each hike, which gives it the next colour in its list.

The Figures

Distance, ascent and descent are worked out exactly as they are for a route file you upload, so a route reads the same here, in its GPX and in any hike. Move along the elevation profile under the map and a dot shows where you are on the route. Grade above the profile colours it by steepness, the same switch as on a hike's profiles (see Elevation Profiles And Steepness).

Straight legs have elevation only at their ends, since the ground in between isn't in the trail data, so a route with long straight sections can read a little flatter than it is.

Saving

Save keeps the route in your routes. It needs a connection and at least two points, and waits for any leg that's still being worked out. After that, Save changes saves each round of edits, and Add to a hike appears once everything's saved.

• Nothing is lost if you close the page. Until you save, your changes are kept in this browser and come back when you return, with a Discard changes button if you'd rather not keep them.
• Two devices, one route. If the route was saved somewhere else since you opened it, saving asks whether to Replace it with mine or Open the saved version, rather than quietly overwriting either.
• GPX downloads the route as it stands, waypoints included.

If the route is already in some of your hikes, saving makes their copies older ones, and the editor offers to update them: Your Routes explains what an update changes.

Imported Routes

A route you imported keeps the file's track exactly, with points to drag roughly every kilometre (further apart on very long routes). Nothing about the track changes until you move a point. Then the two legs either side of it follow the trails like any other snapped leg, so on a stretch that goes off-track, tap the leg and choose Draw straight.

Good To Know

• Snapping needs a connection. Offline, new legs are drawn straight and marked, and they snap on their own once you're back online.
• The editor works on a phone too: tap to add points, and press and drag a point to move it. The map takes most of the screen, and everything else is below it.
• Nobody else sees what you draw here until you add the route to a hike, and then only the hike's copy.