Routes is your own library of routes, kept outside any hike. Draw one on the map, or import a file from another app, and it lives here, ready to edit and to add to as many of your hikes as you like. Open it from the Routes tab at the top of the page (on a phone, your dashboard has it beside Dashboard), or from Your routes in the profile menu.
Getting Routes In
There are two ways to fill the library:
- Draw a route. Click your way along the map and each leg follows the nearest trail or road. See Drawing And Editing Routes.
- Import a file. Choose Import and pick a GPX, KML or GeoJSON file: an export from Gaia, AllTrails, Caltopo, a park website or most mapping apps. Its track is kept exactly as it is, its waypoints come with it, and it opens in the editor with points to drag about every kilometre, so you can change it like a route you drew.
If the file holds several routes (a folder export with one track per day, say), you'll be asked which to bring in, and whether to keep them as separate routes or join them into one, in the order listed. Gaps between the pieces of a route are simply joined up: a route here is one continuous line.
Tip: Importing is also the way to tidy up a file before it goes anywhere near a hike: trim the car-park wander at the start, add the water tanks, name the ends, pick a colour.
Tiles Or A List
The switch beside the buttons changes how your routes are shown:
- Tiles draw each route in its own colour over satellite imagery, with its start and end, distance, climb and how many waypoints it has. Good for recognising a route at a glance.
- List puts every route on one slim row, with distance, ascent, descent, waypoints and the date it was last saved in columns. Much quicker to scan once you have more than a handful.
Your choice is remembered on that device.
Adding A Route To A Hike
Choose Add to a hike on a route, then the hike. Only hikes you can change are offered: ones you own or have edit rights on, and that aren't closed. From inside a hike, From your routes at the top of its Route Details does the same thing from the other end.
The hike gets its own copy: a route file exactly like one you'd uploaded, which then works everywhere a hike's routes do (the map, the itinerary, the elevation profiles, the PDF and the safety brief). The copy takes the route's name, its start and end names, its colour (or the hike's next colour, if the route's is Auto) and its waypoints. The waypoints show on the hike's map straight away, unless the hike has already switched that kind of waypoint off in its waypoint manager.
Because it's a copy, editing the route in your library doesn't change the hike, and neither does deleting it.
Updating Copies In Your Hikes
When you change a route after adding it to a hike, the hike's copy is left as it was until you decide otherwise. You'll see where there's catching up to do:
- the route says Older copy in and the hike's name, on the Routes page;
- the editor names the hike right after you save, with an Update its copy button;
- Add to a hike lists that hike first, marked Has an older copy, and From your routes in the hike offers Update.
Picking a hike that already has a copy asks what you want to do:
- Update this copy replaces the copy with the route as it is now: its line, distance and climb, name and waypoints, plus the start, end and colour you've set. The copy stays on any itinerary days it's already on, and a waypoint that hasn't moved keeps anything the hike has linked to it, like a food drop or a camp. A start, end or colour you've left blank (or on Auto) keeps whatever the hike has.
- Add another copy leaves the old one alone and adds this version beside it.
Only the person whose route it is can update its copies, and only while they can edit that hike. If you leave a hike or are removed from it, its copies of your routes become the hike's own: they won't update from your library again, even if you're invited back.
The hike might also have a route of the same name that isn't a copy of yours: someone else's version, say, which you downloaded, imported, edited and are now adding back. You'll be offered Replace it for that one. Your route goes in its place, keeping its itinerary days, and a waypoint that hasn't moved keeps anything linked to it. From then on it's a copy of your route, so you can update it like any other. Or choose Add it as well to keep both. Any route in a hike can also be replaced from the hike itself: see Routes And Maps.
Note: A copy that's been split into sections in the Section Planner can't be updated in place, because its sections were cut from the old line. Add the new version as another copy instead.
Downloading And Deleting
- GPX downloads the route as a GPX file, waypoints included, ready for a GPS or a phone navigation app. It's the very same file a hike's copy is made from.
- Delete removes a route from your library. Hikes you've added it to keep their copy.
Good To Know
- Your routes are yours alone. Nobody else can see your library, not even people on the hikes you've added routes to. They see the hike's copy, like any route file.
- Deleting your account deletes your routes. The copies in hikes stay with the hikes.
- The Routes page works offline with whatever it last showed. Adding, importing, saving and deleting all need a connection.