Climbing in Morialta Conservation Park with Adelaide in the distance. A little too steep for some.
Today we're deep diving into a mystic fine art of the bikepacking world. The Art of the Route. Something that can take years to master, after many dead ends maybe one day your friends will trust you with this gargantuan task. To help you on your way, Curve LEGEND, 2025 Dirty Valda Champion, Mr TDU himself, and the world’s second-best Dave, David Rossi (aka BogusJimmy), will run you through how to build your next route.
Hi, I’m David - an adventurous dad from Adelaide often found camping with my partner Kelly, or leading a group of unsuspecting gravel riders into an infamous “Rossi stitch-up” on my Curve Big Kev (one of the first ever built). I’ve competed in bike racing with varying levels of success across CX, road, and gravel, through to ultra events such as Curve’s own Race to the Rock and Dirty Valda.
When heading over the hills and far away (if you know Adelaide, most rides start with a hill climb) I prefer to follow a route, planned meticulously and shared with the group then overanalysed ahead of time. People understandably want to know what they’re getting into and can decide which bike to ride, how long the ride will take, and where they’ll finish up or maybe peel off early.
Creating a good route is both an art and a science, balancing challenging or technical sections with some easier transfers for a chance to recover, sometimes short and simple, other times adventurous and meandering. Longer rides require resupply points, even if it’s just water, but of course a fancy doughnut and good coffee is better. Accurate mapping is important too, making sure the line which you’ll eventually follow on your bike computer matches the trail closely, even if that trail is just a faint gap in some long grass.
Route Planning Platforms
The 2 major online route mapping services are Strava and RideWithGPS, though Komoot, MapMyRide and others are popular too. Strava has become the default social network for cyclists, and their platform for creating events for rides seems to have become the default too; add a description, time and date, pace and terrain notes, link to the route, and riders can RSVP if they’re coming. Saying that, my preference for creating routes in RideWithGPS - it’s always been the more powerful and feature-rich platform (and Curve's favourite - you can find all of our routes HERE).
Most of the platforms operate on a freemium model; the basics are free, but more advanced features come with a subscription cost. To get route planning with Strava you need a subscription, then you also get other features like access to leaderboards and some data insights (more info). RideWithGPS does include route planning on their free plans, but you need to go up to their basic or premium plans to get more advanced mapping tools and heatmaps (more info).
Most of the platforms also work the same way, in that to create a route you click or tap your starting point, then points along the way until you’ve reached your desired destination. But this is where it gets fun. Setting your preferred surface type or terrain can prioritise dirt over bitumen, Strava allows minimising (or even maximising) elevation along the route, and depending on the mode or activity type, e.g. riding, walking, driving, mountain biking, etc, the routing engine can choose very different options. You do need to look closely as using walking mode might take your route up a hiking trail where bikes aren’t allowed, or driving mode along a freeway. I also like to use Control Points (RideWithGPS) or Waypoints (Strava), effectively anchoring the route at points, allowing you to drag the route to find alternatives in between, with instant feedback on how this affects distance and elevation gained.
While Strava allows you to switch between standard maps, satellite view, and a hybrid view, RideWithGPS allows you to switch the mapping layer between their own maps, Google, and OpenStreetMaps (think Wikipedia for maps), amongst others. It can also highlight unpaved options in some layers.
While creating the route, you can add Points of Interest (RideWithGPS or Custom Waypoints (Strava) to mark important points along the route. These could be the resupply points, toilets, a warning for technical or dangerous sections, an Audax control, a ferry, etc. These do sync to some bike computers so you can see the distance to these points while navigating the route.
Rapha used Control Points during their Tour Down Under group rides, which synced to my Garmin Edge 1050
Heatmaps
Heatmaps are a great way to see where others have gone before you. Layered on top of the map and visually weighted so more popular routes are a thicker line, heatmaps allow you to see which roads and trails are popular, only been ridden by a handful, or somehow never been ridden before. More advanced filtering allows you to see the heat from walkers and runners vs cyclists, or more recent heat, which is handy when trying to avoid roadworks or trails in poor condition. I find delight in discovering trails with only a faint hint of heat, showing that only a very small number of people have recorded an activity in that area, but that also usually means it’s a viable route option.
The “heat” generated by my activities in the Adelaide Hills in purple, with unpaved surfaces highlighted in orange.
Can I go there?
Once you get into more adventurous and obscure trails, you find yourself questioning which are public access and which aren’t. Trails in National and Conservation Parks are usually marked or designated as being for hikers or shared with cyclists (or for mountain bikes only in designated MTB parks), but there’s other times when it’s not so obvious. No Through Road signs in rural areas surprisingly often have a trail at the end, but locals are quick to put up Private Property signs. My intent is to not trespass on private property, and so I use government maps (SA Property Planning Atlas in SA) to find property boundaries and road reserves. This strategy has generally kept me out of trouble when exploring remote areas, while allowing me to find some great roads and trails.
The South Australian Property Planning Atlas shows here that while Tilleys Hill Road and Charlick Road don’t meet there is a road reserve in between. It’s a steep, rocky, and barely rideable trail, but it isn’t private property. It was part of the 2020 Rack to the Rock route.
But how do I follow my route?
Once you’ve got your route, most avid cyclists will follow it on a bike computer, but using a phone mounted with a Quadlock mount or similar is an option too. While the Garmin Edge 1050 is my current preference, there are many other cheaper and smaller options in the Garmin Edge range. Wahoo’s ELEMNT is also popular, Hammerhead’s Karoo offers some advanced features since it’s Android based, and the relatively new COROS Dura offers unprecedented battery life. Getting your routes onto these devices used to involve USB cables and a bit of swearing, but nowadays it all happens over the air once the relevant services are connected together.
Using your phone can be as simple as opening the app for the service in which you created or saved the route, then selecting the route and starting your ride. Between iOS and Android there are lots of other navigation apps where you can import an existing route usually via GPX file and follow it with turn-by-turn navigation. OsmAnd Maps is one of my favourites because you can do it all offline after saving maps of your area.
When the bitumen ends there’s often dirt… Basin Rd near Uraidla in the Adelaide Hills.
Will it rain?
Lastly once the route is done, I like to import it into another favourite app of mine EpicRideWeather (available for iOS and Android and requires a subscription). It connects to all the popular platforms to import routes, and once you enter a start time and expected average speed, it models the weather forecast across the ride including wind strength and direction. As we all know the weather can change dramatically across a ride, especially when routes include mountain ranges and coastal areas. Over the many years of using the app it has been reliably accurate!
EpicRideWeather’s forecast for a ride around the Fleurieu. It’s nice when the big arrows point in the direction of the route.
Need some inspiration?
If you’re keen to check out a particularly adventurous route in Adelaide Hills, this was a group ride I led as part of the regular “Gravel Busters” series run by my team Mood Racing. It’s all rideable, but only just. Follow @mood.racing for more rides like it.
Navigate the route directly in RideWithGPS, save it to your bike computer, or share with riding buddies.
Godspeed.