Route Marten

Route Preference

"Shortest" minimizes distance and often generates a more interesting ADV route in rural areas with fewer highway options, "Fastest" minimizes time. "Recommended" balances both speed and distance, minimizes turns, and prefers highways.

Tip: For best control, add control points to the map, or intermediate waypoints from the "Find a Route" form.

Avoid

Avoid features that may be problematic for your ride.

Steepness Avoidance

Penalizes steep roads. Useful for a heavily loaded bike or a two-up ride.

Units

Applies to route distance and turn-by-turn directions.

Street-Level Preview

Shows street-level photos along your route. Disable to reduce data usage on mobile connections. Images provided by Mapillary (CC BY-SA).

Backup & Restore

Export saves all routes and favorites to a JSON file. Import merges the file into your current workspace — existing routes are never overwritten. After import, reload the page to see the new routes in the list and on the map.

What is Route Marten?

Route Marten helps you explore and plan adventure motorcycle routes with contextual data like road surface, elevation, campsites, and weather.

You can specify the locations you want a route go through by clicking on the map or by typing place names or lat/lon values.

Tip: See short videos of common operations at www.youtube.com/@RouteMarten.

Creating a Route With the Map

1. Tap or click the map. A control point marker appears on the map.

Tip: For the best chance of generating a solution, place control points within 350 m (1/4 mi) of a roadway.

To change the map style, click or tap the kabab menu (⁝) and choose Switch to Street Map.

2. Reposition control points by dragging it to a new location. Placing a single control point implies you want a round trip route.
3. When you're finished, click the Hunt for Route button (with the "paw" icon) in the upper left corner of the map.

To disable control points, click or tap (⁝) and toggle Add Control Points.

Creating a Route With Place Names or Coordinates

1. Tap or click the hamburger (≡) button and choose Find new route....
2. Choose a Point-to-Point or Round Trip.
3. Type a start location, and for a point-to-point route, type a finish location.

You can specify either place names or coordinates (for example "Maupin, OR" or "45.175, -121.081").

For a point-to-point route, you can add intermediate waypoints by clicking the "+" button.

4. For a round trip, adjust the parameters for distance and how "circular" you want the route to be.

Tip: In rural areas with fewer roadways, you may need to lower the number of waypoints.

5. Tap or click Hunt for Route.

Tip: You can adjust routing preferences, click/tap the hamburger (≡) button and choose Route options.

Understanding Route Results

• Map: Displays a color-coded route (green=paved, orange=gravel, red=dirt), fuel, campsites, and wildfires nearby.
• Routes: The main menu contains a list of routes you have found or imported from GPX files.
• Route report: A report summary of each route appears in the drawer including elevation, a route summary, weather, wildfire alerts, campsites near the route, and turn-by-turn directions. If street view photos are available, they will be displayed.

Tip:You can add notes about a route in the drawer. And you click a place to zoom to that location.

• GPX export: Export a route, POIs, and Favorite places as GPX (GPS Exchange Format) file. Click (⁝).
• Trip plan: Export a CSV (Comma-Separated Values Format) file of route summaries. Click (⁝).
• Roll chart: Export a 3-column navigation route sheet formatted for a 2.25 inch roll chart holder. Click (⁝).
• Turn-by-turn : Export directions as a CSV file. Click (⁝).
• Warnings: Pay attention to wildfire alerts on the map.
  Wildfire alert popups indicate Fire Radiative Power (FRP), measured in megawatts (MW), a measure of the rate of radiant energy being emitted by a fire at the moment the satellite passes over:
  
  • < 10 MW — low intensity, often small smoldering fires or agricultural burns
  • 10–100 MW — moderate, active burning
  • 100–1000 MW — high intensity wildfire
  • > 1000 MW — extreme fire behavior (major wildland fires / severe conditions)

Navigating Using a Route

Click the top right context menu (⁝) and then:

• Click Export route and POIs (GPX) and then load the GPX file into a GPS device or phone's offline mapping app. The file icludes the track and campsite/fuel locations.
• Click Export roll chart (PDF) and then print, cut, tape, roll...
  Tip: Non-Latin characters are not supported. Use the CSV export for Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

Route Management

• The routes you find or import from GPX files are automatically saved to non-volatile storage provided by your web browser.
• Manage routes from the "ROUTES" list of the main menu (≡):
• CAUTION: Routes are stored in your browser's local storage and will be lost if you clear your browser data.

Browser settings to clear site data or anything labeled "storage" or "cookies" risks wiping the route workspace.

• Rename a route by double-tapping or double-clicking the name in the drawer or main menu.

Tip: The route list is sorted alpha-numerically so if you want to sort list to reflect the order you plan to ride each route, then add a numeric prefix like: 1, 2, 3, and on.

• "Source: Hunt" indicate routes you found and "Source: GPX" are routes you imported.
• Zoom-to a route's location on the map by clicking a route.
• Toggle the route visibility by clicking Hide route.
• Remove a route from storage by clicking Delete route.

Planning Places You Want to Visit

• Zoom in until the map scale is 5 mi/km. Tap or click the Campground, Scenic Places, or Town button.

Campgrounds are marked with a tent icon, scenic places with brackets, and towns with a circle or dot sized by population.

• To add a place to your Favorites, tap or click on a location and then click Add to Favorites.

Favorite places, like routes, are saved to non-volatile storage provided by your web browser.

• To link a Favorite to a route, select a route from the main menu, then from the map, click/tap a Favorite and choose Link to Route.

Tip: Favorites you link to a route, are included in the list of waypoints of the route's GPX export.

Tips

• Zoom and drag the map and note the public lands and terrain features that make good ADV routes.
• Zoom to a region 500 miles or less and then from the main menu, Find campgrounds in view.

Sites accesible by roadways are good candidates for control points. From the map, long press or right-click a campsite or fuel station to set a start/end location then from the main menu (≡) choose Find a route.

• Import GPX routes and then use as a reference to find routes nearby. GPX routes are color-coded according to the GPX file metadata.
• If load time is slow, turn off the visibility of routes. Polylines with lots of segments will impact performance. To see an extreme example of this, create a round trip with max loop distance, and max waypoints in the Tokyo metro area!
• Always verify the route and conditions before riding.
• Route Marten wildfire alerts have limited coverage. Active fire data is fetch every 6 hours from (NASA FIRMS) for North America, Central America, South America, Australia and New Zealand, Europe. When you select a route, it is sampled at ~10 evenly spaced points. Each sample area is a circle with a radius of ~10 miles. If an active fire has a FIRMS detection "confidence" >50 and lies with the sampled area then a wildfire marker is added to the map. This approach is far from perfect because sample gaps can happen on long routes. Confirm wildfire activity with a robust service like Watch Duty.

Route Marten's Design Philosophy

• Private: No data collection or tracking
• Simple: Easy to use without accounts or logins
• Accessible: Open to all riders without barriers
• Transparent: Open data sources for verifiable information

This is a "tool not a service" philosophy - like a paper map or compass. You use it when you need it, it doesn't track you, and it respects your autonomy.

Support Route Marten

If you find Route Marten useful, consider supporting conservation efforts for habitats like those of the Humbolt and Pacific marten: Save the Redwoods

© Route Marten. All rights reserved.
Routing by OpenRouteService | Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors | Weather data © Open-Meteo