Using a GPS to guide a ride

@americancyclo 39964 wrote:

Nice write up!

When you’re mapping rides, particularly for mountain rides or the gravel grinders, do you switch back and forth from the different map types on RWGPS?

I’ve found that sometimes the RWGPS, OSM, or OSMCycle have better trail data in park with paths mapped out while the default map sometimes just has a big green shape.

Lake Fairfax Park is a great example.

I typically don’t map out mountain bike rides on RideWithGPS. I tend to get a vague idea of where I want to go and then I watch the trails on the GPS. There are some exceptions. When I did the Western Rim ride in the Rabbit Valley trail network on the Colorado/Utah border, I was basically riding on a network that has you pretty far out in the boonies. When riding solo, it helps to be a little less free-form with directions. The trailhead is a ways off the beaten path and the ride goes at least another 10 miles out. There’s a lot of exposed cliffs and no water. Having the ride mapped out gave me a bit of extra security blanket, since I was riding alone. People knew EXACTLY where I was going, when I was expecting to be back and I had some bread crumbs to follow. Even with that I took a few wrong turns and explored a bit.

To answer your question: No, I don’t use the different map types very often. Sometimes having Open Street Maps helps with mapping out mountain rides… sometimes it is just kinda screwy. None of the mapping web sites recognize trails as roads, so the “stay on roads” function that makes it easy to follow things really work that well. I click on “Draw Lines” when creating a map and have Open Street Maps option turned on makes it possible to map pretty easily. It doubles the time that it takes to create a map, but it does show you where to go.

The ride: http://app.strava.com/activities/6005536

Here are the Photos from that ride: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedrogringo/sets/72157629712013969/

You can see the terrain is LOVELY, but not particularly hospitable if you get lost. I saw two people close-in to the parking area, but was pretty much on my own further out.

@consularrider 39991 wrote:

Is that because the trails aren’t on the base map to begin with? I’ve found on garminconnect and Google maps with bicycle directions selected that it will follow the trails that are on the map (usually as a bright green line) using the “stay on roads,” sometimes better than others. As a matter of fact, when I mapped my ride to from Arlington to Rockville and back, the garmin mapping selected the trail alongside the road. I did this for a couple of rides in Indiana as well as in this area.

Yes and no… There are often small intersections of trails in Open Street Maps that the RideWithGPS.com mapping front end to Google Maps doesn’t pick up as a viable bike route. I found that I can actually switch the “stay on roads” off, manually go through a section that it doesn’t recognize, then switch it back on to continue mapping. That works quite often, but is easier seen in process rather than explained verbally.

When we’re talking about the base map, it is the base map in Google Maps, not the base map on the GPS. My GPS has all of those trails in them because I use Open Street Maps as the base map instead of Garmin’s maps.

Does that make sense?

Thanks!

Pete