Routes are the heart of your event. Each route is defined by a GPX track, and participants score by riding those routes. This guide covers uploading routes, the paved-vs-trail distinction, and attaching routes to your event.
Upload a route (GPX)
A route is created by uploading a GPX file together with the route's details (its name, type, and other metadata). The GPX track defines the exact path that activities are matched against, so it's the single most important part of a route — a route without a GPX can't be scored.
What the GPX file must contain
The file has to be a valid GPX, and every track point needs:
- Coordinates — latitude and longitude, so the route has a path to match activities against.
- Elevation — the altitude at each point. Without it the route's climb can't be measured, and its difficulty can't be worked out.
A file that's missing elevation data is the most common problem: it may open fine in other tools and still be unusable here. If an upload is rejected or the route looks wrong afterwards, check the track has elevation before anything else. Exporting the track again from the source that recorded it, with elevation included, usually resolves it.
Paved vs. Trail
Every route has a type that affects how it scores:
- Paved — a road route, scored with a multiplier of 1.0.
- Trail — an off-road route, scored with a higher multiplier of 1.4 because it's harder.
(You may see older labels like “road” and “mtb” — those map to paved and trail respectively.) The multiplier is part of how points are calculated; for the full picture see Event format: Classic.
Attach routes to your event
Once your routes exist, attach the set of routes you want to your event. If your event uses a route sequence (a defined order participants follow), you can set the order of each route so they line up correctly.
Note that bulk route operations — creating or editing many routes at once — require platform-admin (super-admin) permissions, so a regular organizer works with routes individually or asks the Twenty Peaks team for bulk help.
Replace or repair a route's GPX
If a route's track is wrong or missing, you can attach or replace its GPX without recreating the route. A route that's missing its GPX track is flagged as needing one — uploading a valid GPX is the fix.
Related: Create a community or event · Event format: Classic
