If I'm going to hike a lesser-traveled or unmaintained trail I like to download a GPS track ahead of time. As we all know, the trail alignments on topo maps are frequently wrong, and sometimes they're wrong on Open Street Map too.
I know of three sources where you can view public/shared GPS tracks. Any others out there?
Caltopo.com: On the website you can click the box for Shared CalTopo maps to turn on that layer. (I don't see a way to do this in the app, at least not with the free version.)
AllTrails: You can find shared tracks from other AllTrails users in the Community section of the website and the app.
Gaia: In the app you can go to settings to toggle on Public Tracks, and on the website you can click on Overlays, then toggle on Public Tracks.
Sources for public GPS tracks?
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- adamschneider
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Re: Sources for public GPS tracks?
If there's a mountain nearby, Peakbagger.com has GPS tracks from users.
The best source for seeing true trail alignments is Strava: https://www.strava.com/heatmap - you can't download from the heat map, which is just imagery, but it's very helpful for scouting. And a lot of OpenStreetMappers like me use it to correct trails on OSM.
The best source for seeing true trail alignments is Strava: https://www.strava.com/heatmap - you can't download from the heat map, which is just imagery, but it's very helpful for scouting. And a lot of OpenStreetMappers like me use it to correct trails on OSM.
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Re: Sources for public GPS tracks?
You can't download the Strava heatmap, but you can use it for route finding. IDK if free accounts get access to it but there are some 3rd party things that you can sometimes use to view it.
- Michael
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Re: Sources for public GPS tracks?
I don't know about the app, but free accounts can definitely view the heatmap in the Strava web site.