Bikepacking routes on google maps?

[chrisx]

I clicked
google maps
directions
bicycle icon
then zoomed in until the bar in the lower left corner said 10 miles.

The first thing I noticed was the pacific Northwest trail.  Apparently it is an official bike route, at least in places.  The dark green line goes through Olympic national Park.  On roads open to cars the dark green line stops then restarts where the road ends.  The Idaho Centennial trail was shown in a similar fashion.  Looks like the Arizona trail is also a broken green line on google maps.

[swampboy62]

Yeah, you can use it for ideas but always doublecheck. 

For example when I look at WV's Monongahela Nat'l Forest it shows the Otter Creek Trail as a bike trail - and since it's in a wilderness area it most definitely is not.  I even sent Google a note saying that it was wrong, but it's been more than a year and it's still shown the same.

I also saw that the North Country Trail in PA's Allegheny Nat'l Forest is shown as a bike trail, and it most definitely is off limits to bikes as well.

Steve Z

[AZTtripper]

Interesting it sounds like they were able to pick out the no bike sections of the AZT but nobody thought to look for a bike detour route.

Not that they can just come on here and load up the AZT network file but if they would have made any attempt at reaching the ATA we could have come up with something for them. I think if you rode all of the longest options from the new data book you could be looking at an 850 with a lot of that being single track if you wanted it to be.

[ec_duz_it]

If you like google maps, use www.bikeroutetoaster.com

Play with the different settings on the right.  And don't forget to create an account so you can save your routes.

Cheers