On your phone, this is saved under the “Saved > Hikes” icon along the bottom of your screen.Īlso helpful: along the bottom are icons for “Copy Link” and “Share”, which lets you send that webpage easily to your other hiking buddies. 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. 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. Once you find the hike you want, give it a click. (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.) Search for the name of the hike you want, or use the map finder to zoom into your area of interest. GPS File Depot is the ultimate source of custom maps, articles and tutorials with 491 maps, most of which are free.
(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. GPS File Depot's Web Site has a lot of nice topo maps, and most of them are free to download. Note: You need to have an account at for this to work, and the below examples are shown on the desktop website, not on the app. 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. In addition, the website has steadily improved and it’s now is a solid place to locate hike track files, provided you know where to look. Gaia GPS is my favorite backcountry navigation phone app.