I. What you can do on the Online Map and Search Page

A. Get Driving directions to trailheads
Click on a red icon (either in the map or the Trailheads list) and a “Driving Directions” pop-up will appear. Type in your address and click Go to get Google driving directions.

B. Get information about a particular trail
Click on the trail in the map and a box will appear showing the trail. A small pop-up will appear with the length of the trail and links to some routes that include the trail and a profile link for that trail (see image below).

You can also click on a trail in the Trails list to elicit the pop-up. If you use the crosshairs icon in the list, the map will hone in on that trail.

Clicking on the trail name in the pop-up box brings up a list of routes that include that trail as well as some historical information about the trail itself (see below).

C. Use the Search Tool on the Online Trail Map

Below are some search examples:

1. Find hikes between 0-5 miles
Select Hiking/Running from the Hike or Bike menu. Select 0-5 miles from the Length…menu. Click Find Route.

A matrix of options appears in order of shortest to longest.

2. Find some run ideas, starting at Witzend Trailhead that are 5-10 miles long.
Select Hike/Run from the Hike or Bike menu. Select 5-10 miles from the Length…menu and finally, select Witzend from the Trailhead menu. Click Find Route. A matrix of options appears in order of shortest to longest.

3. Find hike ideas starting at Witzend Trailhead with the Red Queen trail in them.
Select Hike/Run from the Hike or Bike menu. Select Witzend from the Trailhead menu. Finally, select Red Queen from the Trail menu. Click Find Route. A matrix of options appears in order of shortest to longest.

II. What you can do on hike or bike route maps
When you click on a route, you are typically presented with the route map and some accompanying text directions. Here’s what you can do on those pages:

A. Get Driving directions to the trailhead
Click on a red icon on the map. A “Driving Directions” pop-up will appear. Type in your address and click Go to get Google driving directions.

B. See elevation and distance on a profile
With your mouse, scroll along a profile to see: the altitude and distance (displayed on the profile) and the location on the map (a white dot).

C. Zoom in to see specific trail names.

D. Get the gpx file to your navigation app (Gaia, Caltopo, etc).
Go to the “hamburger” menu in the upper right-hand corner and, in the map options,  select “Export selected map data…” and then click Export in the resulting box.

Upload the associated file to your app. NOTE: many apps need you to also download maps of the general area.

III. TAROT (Torsten’s Ashland Runs on Trail)
This is a representative selection of hikes or runs (by no means exhaustive) in the Ashland watershed.

Sorting the list
By default, routes are sorted by distance (shortest to longest). Click on an up-down arrow in any category to sort by that category. Example 1: you can sort by Vertical by clicking those arrows. Click again to reverse the order. Example 2: you can sort by Start (Trailhead) by clicking those arrows. Click again to reverse the order.

Trick: To sort multiple categories, say Length and Start, sort first by Start (which sorts alphabetically), hold the shift key (a box will appear around Start) and click on Length. While still holding the shift key, click Length a second time to sort in increasing distance.

The results might look like this, with all of the trails sorted first by Start (Trailhead) and then by increasing distance:

GPX
You can download the gpx files file directly from the TAROT page by clicking on the gpx link associated with a certain route. The file will go wherever you have designated for downloads.

You can also download the gpx file from the selected route page itself. Go to the “hamburger” menu in the upper right-hand corner and, in the map options,  select “Export selected map data…” and then click Export in the resulting box.

Upload the associated file to your app. NOTE: many apps need you to also download base maps of the general area.

Other features
Clicking on a route will generate an on-the-fly route map with a profile. Everything you can do on the other maps, you can do on these on-the-fly generated pages (driving directions, profile scrolling, etc).

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Tools used to create these maps:

• GPSVisualizer, the Swiss army map tool, for all manner of map data display and manipulation
• Caltopo for quick mocking up of maps
• OpenStreetMaps (OSM) is the fundamental data source for many if not most online trail maps. It is crowd-sourced and may contain slightly flawed or inaccurate information. 
• Visual Studio Code for HTML and PHP editing

Updated Oct 22, 2023 by Torsten Heycke