Mtb route map app thing

[Gt6turbo]

I have a walking app, hikr but looking for MTB tracks, like in the peak district or wales. Any suggestions, thank you.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Trail forks or Strava for its heat maps are the two main options.

[LimaDelta]

Komoot is great for this stuff.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

LimaDelta said:

Komoot is great for this stuff.

Unless it's changed in the last 12 months, I think it depends on what you're looking for. When I tried it, it was great for long gravel and xc route routes, but not a single one of my local DH and Enduro style trails were on it.

[LimaDelta]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

LimaDelta said:

Komoot is great for this stuff.

Unless it's changed in the last 12 months, I think it depends on what you're looking for. When I tried it, it was great for long gravel and xc route routes, but not a single one of my local DH and Enduro style trails were on it.

Valid point, I use it for the longer stuff. You can plan and add your own routes though.

[oddman]

I use a combination of Strava, Ordnance Survey and Garmin.

In places like the Peak, the tracks suitable for bike are fairly obvious on the OS maps. It's really easy to plot a route as within the National Parks, the route will snap to the underlying bridleway or track.

For more remote places or Scotland or large forested areas where there are no rights of way marked, Strava heatmap comes into its own. You can see where there is an obvious route due to a strong blue line and where it's not obvious as it deteriorates into a frayed blue rope and then a blur. I tend to have the Strava heatmap alongside the OS page and still plot on OS as it's easier to pick up the features names and landmarks that way. You can plot using Strava specify MTB rather than road cycling and the track will snap to the most popular route between two points.

It's quite handy to have a running total of distance and height gain to avoid nasty surprises.

When I've got the GPX track I import it into Garmin and then I can synch my phone with my device - Edge Explore for cycling and a Fenix 6 for running, mountaineering and skiing.

It's a bit gimmicky, but the flyover feature in Strava and OS can be useful to give an overview of somewhere unfamiliar.

[mattvanders]

I use trail forks app though have used Strava and kamoot, I do think it will depend on what you want it for as discussed above but trail forks can be used for discovering and scoping areas for potential riding spots pretty well. The above two pictures are the same locations but ones the trails on TF and the other is Strava heat map on the TF - there are other setting you can do like elevation and gradient or overhead view to really get an idea on what is on offer to ride

[mattvanders]

The beast decent, with the heat map you can clearly see there are other routes next to it for example

[John87]

LimaDelta said:

TGCOTF-dewey said:

LimaDelta said:

Komoot is great for this stuff.

Unless it's changed in the last 12 months, I think it depends on what you're looking for. When I tried it, it was great for long gravel and xc route routes, but not a single one of my local DH and Enduro style trails were on it.

Valid point, I use it for the longer stuff. You can plan and add your own routes though.

They recently changed it so you can't export your routes without paying for the premium version. Having also recently been bought out by a PE firm with a history of running companies into the ground, it's likely that it will go downhill (not in the MTB sense) from here on.

For actual planning of routes, I like RidewithGPS. The planner is very easy to use and can be combined with satellite images etc. Strava can be useful as a starting point but I find a lot of the heatmaps are related to commutes rather than being good for leisure so wouldn't rely on it without cross referencing to another source

[OutInTheShed]

As others have said, it depends what you want.

More for hiking than biking, I use komoot primarily, but it can be poor in patchy internet conditions, starting to faff with downloading stuff then failing.

I'm probably going to pay up for the OS app soon, for definitive (ish) offline right of way info.

I do end up consulting the council interactive map with its rights of way layer sometimes, but it's no good offline as far as I can see.

Most of the apps like komoot are patchy with right of way info, being based on Open Street Maps.

OS guard their RoW info as it's their USP basically.

Conversely, OS can be poor with permissive paths and trails.

[GravelBen]

As others have said, I find Trailforks by far the most useful for MTB trails.

The website version is free, the phone app has free and paid versions - the free version of the app is limited to a certain radius of a point you set as your 'home' area. Not sure if it has any other restrictions.

[Gt6turbo]

I tried Strava but you have to pay and I don't want a free trial I want to see if I can use it first.

Trail forks similar. I've used a few hiking apps and they are so much more easier to use. I was looking for routes and they show you direction etc. probably just use them.

Edited by Gt6turbo on Wednesday 11th June 11:56

[fooman]

I've started using Garmin Connect on a web browser to create road, offroad and running routes, it's free I don't think you even need a Garmin to create an account.

When logged in go to;

Training and Planning > Courses > Create New

It creates courses using a combo of heat map and OSM, which you can then load onto your Garmin or extract just GPX and place on any device.

I do use OS maps just to verify what it's done but usually pretty good.

[OutInTheShed]

fooman said:

I've started using Garmin Connect on a web browser to create road, offroad and running routes, it's free I don't think you even need a Garmin to create an account.

When logged in go to;

Training and Planning > Courses > Create New

It creates courses using a combo of heat map and OSM, which you can then load onto your Garmin or extract just GPX and place on any device.

I do use OS maps just to verify what it's done but usually pretty good.

In a parallel world, people used to do something pretty similar afloat, with Navionics 'boating' on the web.
Garmin bought Navionics, now you can't really do anything worthwhile with it without a paid subscription.
They kept it free just long enough to establish dominance of the market.

[Gt6turbo]

I watch some guys on tiktok. They look like great trails but they don't put where trails are. Would be nice to actually see them as just a route doesn't really tell you much.

[GravelBen]

Gt6turbo said:

I watch some guys on tiktok. They look like great trails but they don't put where trails are. Would be nice to actually see them as just a route doesn't really tell you much.

Often people posting videos online deliberately don't share where trails are, I think either to avoid them getting too popular/crowded or because they aren't approved trails.

[Gt6turbo]

GravelBen said:

Often people posting videos online deliberately don't share where trails are, I think either to avoid them getting too popular/crowded or because they aren't approved trails.

Yet they post them. I understand what you mean but then what's the point of showing them.