STRAVA - using (millions of) other people's tracks to plan

[kylepeterson]

strava https://www.strava.com/login is a worldwide fitness tracking application. millions of people use it.
every
single
day

so what ? we ride motorcycles! we're not wearing spandex and pedaling ! we aren't donning climbing shoes and going straight up the face! we don't count heartbeats!

but wait, check this out.... if we had a way to use their uploaded tracks to plan our rides, maybe exploit their data to see where interesting places are, or maybe AVOID places those hippie/hyper focused health weenies like to be , it might help keep our rides quieter, secret-er, dinner.

in steps the application locus (surprise! another locus reference!) with its ability to overlay any map source.... like strava's heat map.

but what's a heat map, Kyle ? it's a map of tracks, with thicker/brighter indicators of where there is more traffic, and thinner/darker tracks representing fewer trips traveled by health weenies.

so, if we overlay that heat map on top of say, Google hybrid, Southeast OSM TOPO, or a similar high resolution map, we could easily see where "they" are traveling a lot....

blue screenshot is "night mode" showing roads in bankhead nf, then the next screenshot is turning on the strava overlay, and the last one is strava showing the hot spots for health weenies...

[kylepeterson]

soooo, if someone really wanted to get off the beaten path, one might be able to use those hikers' data to find interesting spots to visit.... hmmm


or anyones data


for instance, here is the ridge LLC off road park, then ktmworld...

[kylepeterson]

say... you wanted to research a back way up a mountain in, maybe Colorado or something, for an upcoming trip ? ;-)

[kylepeterson]

cool?

[Nice Goat]

That is really cool.  I've got a lot to learn....

[jrou111]

Hmm interesting...I just did some spot checks on my super secret stuff in the Chattahoochie Nat'l Forest. Some of it has had "purple" (guess that means light?) on the heat map, and several of them have never had hikers/mtb'ers  8)