Finding gravel/fire/dirt roads?

[Look585]

Any good resources out there for finding fun gravel/fire/dirt roads? Poring over topo maps and Google Earth is too time consuming. I just want someone to tell me where the goods are... :)

[commonguy001]

Any good resources out there for finding fun gravel/fire/dirt roads? Poring over topo maps and Google Earth is too time consuming. I just want someone to tell me where the goods are... :)

ADVRider.com has lots of gpx routes all over the world.
It's a moto based website but I ride routes I found on there all the time on my bike.

[modernfuturist]

Lucky for you, the Bay Area has no shortage of mixed terrain rides (http://bayarearides.com/).

[Ken Robb]

AAA has some very detailed county maps that show and identify plenty of gravel roads in California. Similar maps are probably available for other areas. I got some very detailed maps of New England from them too but I had to order them because the San Diego Office didn't have them in stock. No surprise about that.

[tiretrax]

Do a search for them in your area. I bet there is someone organizing races.

[MattTuck]

This is a topic that comes up with a riding buddy of mine every so often. We are both surprised that Strava hasn't found a way to catalog and characterize unpaved sections of road. You'd think it would be easily available from GIS data, and I think there's a group that would appreciate tracking dirt miles.

[nrs5000]

Any good resources out there for finding fun gravel/fire/dirt roads? Poring over topo maps and Google Earth is too time consuming. I just want someone to tell me where the goods are... :)

Regional parks maps.

[cromo900]

Strave Heat Map (http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#10/-122.20661/37.87169/gray/bike) is a good way to verify if people are riding a particular road, i.e., is it open/passable, given that you may already have an idea of which area/roads you want to get out to.

[sparky33]

Garmin Basecamp indicates dirt roads with a dashed line if you zoom in a bit. It is accurate in my area. Easy to use. Pretty amazing if you have a Garmin map file handy.

Also, Bing maps supposedly shades dirt roads a bit brown, but I found it hard to distinguish the subtle coloring difference.

For you NH folks....http://granitview.unh.edu/ includes many mapping and identity tools that describe a specific road segment. I found it tedious to use but the level of detail is incredible.

[nublar]

http://www.strava.com/segments/explore

[donevwil]

Find the crowd near you who ride these types of roads. Up in my neck of the woods, Somona and Marin counties, Mike at Black Mountain Cycles rides a lot of trails in Marin County and details many on his blog. I've seen a few other blogs focused on the same thing. There is also the Grasshopper race series with route descriptions.

[vqdriver]

the local forums on mtbr could be helpful. i've found a few nice trails that way. and seeing as how, in so cal at least, a lot of the mtb trails are linked together by fireroads, access to them is pretty common knowledge among that crowd. as is current conditions and parking advice and such.

[Nags&Ducs]

It doesn't help the most of you, but here in Germany there are thousands of miles of "wanderwegs" that are perfect for gravel bikes. It is as if Germany invented gravel bikes. I occasionally will ride the wegs on my CX steed. There isn't a place you can't go on the wegs.

[DCW]

Strave Heat Map (http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#10/-122.20661/37.87169/gray/bike) is a good way to verify if people are riding a particular road, i.e., is it open/passable, given that you may already have an idea of which area/roads you want to get out to.

First i had seen this from Strava - maybe i should read their emails every now and then! Warning - severe time suck if you follow this link, but absolutely awesome resource for finding new routes!

[joosttx]

SF Randonneur website has mix terrain cue sheets for riding in Marin County

[choke]

DeLorme makes awesome state map atlases. http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=10096