How to Find the Best Gravel Routes

by Dave Malwitz

Ride with GPS has officially unveiled Inspect, and what looks like one of the most powerful route discovery tools to date. Only made available for Ride with GPS iOS and Android mobile app users, Inspect makes it possible to easily find gravel, road or mountain bike routes like never before. Over the past few years, Ride with GPS has built a massive crowd-sourced library of routes that span the globe and it has been my favorite route building and route finding tool to date. That being said, I was thrilled to see the Oregon-based company invest more in route discovery as this was a much needed improvement to the platform.

HOW IT ALL WORKS

In the limited time I’ve had with the new Inspect tool, I can say it’s very intuitive and works quite well overall for what it promises to do. When opening the iOS Ride with GPS app, select Explore from the bottom menu. A map of your area will then appear, showing overlays of 10 routes that the app selects for you. If you’re interested in learning more about one of those routes, you can simply select it on the map. Alternatively, pull up the “Results Nearby” menu at the bottom of the map to scroll through all 10 routes. If you want to explore routes in a different area, simply move the map and select “Search this area”. To use Inspect, simply long press anywhere on the map to generate a list of routes or rides for an exact location, and see routes that pass through that point. This becomes very useful when searching for routes that start from a specific trailhead, campsite or parking lot.

The tool really gets interesting when you start playing with different parameters listed in the drop down menus at the top of the map. From these menus you can select a specific Length range, Elevation range, Surface Types (paved, mostly paved, mixed surfaces, mostly unpaved, or unpaved), as well as Route Type (loop, out-and-back, or point-to-point).

What is not clear to me yet is exactly how these routes are ranked and selected by Inspect to display. Routes that have a large number of views seem to rank high, and from my experience, view count is typically a good indicator of a quality route on this platform. Ideally, they would also be ranked with information from the Ride with GPS Global Heatmap, giving users extra confidence that the routes shown are 100% accessible. Doing a quick survey of San Diego with the tool, I did notice one route Inspect suggested that contained a section of inaccessible private land. Hopefully, this issue can be addressed in future updates.

INSPECT EXPECTATIONS

Overall, the Explore page and Inspect tool does a solid job of finding good routes to choose from. Here are 3 examples of routes I discovered when when exploring 50-100 mile gravel routes with under 10,000ft of elevation gain in Encinitas, CA, Ogden, UT, and Nederland, CO. (Sorry Neil, hope this is not a spoiler.) You can see where I long pressed on each map to use Inspect, which provided a list of 10 routes that go through that spot on the map.

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Definitely give Inspect a try and see what you think. If you have any questions or comments we can pass along to our friends at Ride with GPS please post them in the comments below. Also be sure to play with the map layer function that’s built in, as the the heatmap will certainly be a helpful overlay when looking for routes in an area you may not be familiar with. Inspect is now available to all Basic and Premium Ride with GPS members on the iOS and Android mobile app.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Inspect is a promising new route discovery tool from Ride with GPS that I look forward to using in the coming weeks, especially when traveling. First impressions are very positive as I love how it seamlessly ties together the Ride with GPS community-sourced route library, the global heatmap, and filters to help users spend less time guessing and more time riding the best routes.

Learn more at Ride with GPS

Update June 8, 2022, 10AM

I just hear from Will Laubernds, Product Manager at Ride With GPS, regarding how Inspect ranks routes that are shown on the Explore page, here is his answer:

“Currently when you perform an Inspect search we pull the best routes that pass through or start within the search radius (which is the circle shown when you do an Inspect search). The "best" routes are defined by a score we assign to all routes based on a few key factors: whether the route has a cuesheet, how often the route has been viewed, navigated, downloaded, liked, etc, whether there is a description or photos, the recency, and a few other key metrics. Although these metrics don't rule out routes that go through private or are on roads that the forest has since reclaimed (which is real thing up here in the PNW), it does help with some verification unless you Inspect an area where not many route options exist.”

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