As we like to say at Alpinesavvy, having a map is great, but having a map with your route printed on it is even better. And, having that route on your phone with a quality GPS app like Gaia GPS is another plus.

Knowing your route usually starts with a GPX file, which is a standardized format for sharing geographic data. A GPX track file is a simply a text file with a long string of latitude and longitude coordinates (and sometimes time and elevation), and a line drawn between them. This shows a hiking or climbing route that someone has recorded in the field or (hopefully) carefully drawn in mapping software. (If you can't find what you want, you can draw in your own route in mapping software like our favorite, Caltopo.)

Why do you want a GPX file? If you have a GPX file, you can print a PDF map of your route in CalTopo, which looks something like this (Hamilton Mountain, Columbia River Gorge)

Or, you can download it to Gaia GPS or your preferred GPS app/device, so you can use it for navigation in the field, here's a screen grab of that (Hamilton Mountain, Columbia River Gorge):

Historically, it's been quite difficult to find a consistent, quality source of GPX tracks for hikes and climbs, but that’s changed for the better in the last few years.

Here are two good websites where you can download free GPX files for hiking trails - GaiaGPS and AllTrails.

Hiking - GaiaGPS.com

Gaia GPS is my favorite backcountry navigation phone app. In addition, the GaiaGPS.com website has steadily improved and it’s now is a solid place to locate hike track files, provided you know where to look. Plus, if you already use their app, a big timesaver is that you can save a hike description or hiking track directly onto your phone with one click.

Note: You need to have an account at GaiaGPS.com for this to work, and the below examples are shown on the desktop website, not on the app. (The app has some pretty good built-in hike finders as well, but we're not covering that today.)

Here's how to do it.

Click “Hikes” from the top menu bar.

Search for the name of the hike you want, or use the map finder to zoom into your area of interest. (The search function can be a little hit or miss; it can help to type in the state you're looking for so you don't get results from all over the world.)

Once you find the hike you want, give it a click. The easiest way to save both the track and a lot of info about that hike is to click the big green “Save Hike” button at the top right corner. This saves pretty much that entire webpage on your phone, with distance, elevation gain, recent trip reports, and of course a base map with the GPX file.

On your phone, this is saved under the “Saved > Hikes” icon along the bottom of your screen.

Also helpful: along the bottom are icons for “Copy Link” and “Share”, which lets you send that webpage easily to your other hiking buddies. (From what I can tell, it's pretty much the same as a copy paste of the web address.)

If you want to see other Gaia users’ uploaded tracks of the same area, which might show some detours or other areas of interest off of the main hike, you can do that too. Scroll down the page a bit, until you come to “Public Tracks”. This shows a link, and often a bit of a trip report. If you click on any one of these links, it will open that person’s track in a new window, and you can download it if you want.

And, a whole other way to look at these data is to use the Gaia “Public Tracks” overlay, which shows the recorded tracks of everyone who has shared a hike in that location. We cover how to do that at this tip.

Often it takes a few minutes before Gaia GPS can synchronize with your phone. If you download the hike or GPX file to your GaiaGPS.com account, and it's not showing up on your phone, You can force the synchronizing to happen like this: Go to the Gaia app, Settings, and toggle the “Sync/Backup” button, shown below.

Hiking - Alltrails

Alltrails is another good choice for day hikers to find quality GPX files. The website has a clean interface, and lots of functionality even on the free version.

To find a GPX track, zoom into your area of interest and choose the hike you want, here Hamilton Mountain in the Columbia River Gorge. Tap the “More” link on the left side. From this drop-down menu, select “Download Route” to save the GPX file onto your computer.

Once you have that GPX file on your hard drive, you can import it to Caltopo and print a map or save as a Google Earth friendly KML file, upload it to your guy GPS account to put onto your phone, or share it with your hiking partners.