Make a Map of All of Your Strava Activities with Caltopo.
In a few easy steps, you can create a map of every activity in your Strava account. I recently discovered this awesomeness after Strava’s Personal Heatmaps feature left a bit to be desired. I am using it to see which trails I have not been on in my glorious back yard, the Wasatch Mountains!
To create a map of your conquests you will need the following:
- An account on Strava.com chalk-full of activities.
- An account on CalTopo.com.
1. Let’s Download Our Activities From Strava!
NOTE: As of late 2018, the bulk export of data has moved to a different area under settings and some activities are exported in a strange file format of fit.gz. The following won’t likely work anymore.
First, log in to your account on Strava.com
Then, hover over your Profile Icon and press “Settings”
Click the “Download all your activities” button on the bottom right of the Settings page. It looks like this:
Obsessively check you email until Strava sends you the link to download all of your activities.
Download the file and unzip it. You should have a folder with .gpx files for every activity you’ve ever tracked on Strava!
2. Let’s Create a Map From Our Strava Activities!
Now, log in to CalTopo.com (I use my google.com account to log in).
Hover over the “Import” item on the top nav bar and click “Choose Files”.
In the folder full of your .gpx files, select all of them and click “Open”.
NOTE: This step will take a while, especially if you have a lot of activities in your Strava Account. My 350 activities took about 5 minutes. If you have more than 200, I would would recommend uploading them in batches. 100 at a time would be pretty manageable. Be patient and don’t reload the page! Eventually you will see this:
Press Import. You should see your activities on the map. If you want to hide the labels, just hover over the “config” menu item and change “Show Labels” to “None”.
Be sure to save your map!
You now have a great visual reference of where you have and have not been. Your data from Strava + the awesomeness and power of CalTopo = ❤.
I am a huge fan of CalTopo.com. Their free plan lets you save 5 private maps and unlimited public maps. If you upgrade you get more private maps and a lot of other cool features. Check it out here: https://caltopo.com/join.
