Finding the Popularity Heatmap on Web
The Trailforks map has several "trail style" options for displaying trails. The default display option showcases trail difficulty by colour. One of the options for filtering trail display is by "popularity," which will colour the trails based on a colour heatmap.
In the region, you can click on the Trail Style dropdown menu and select 'Popularity' to see which trails are ridden the most. The range displays green to yellow to orange to red. Green demonstrates the least ridden trail; red is the most-ridden trail.
This popularity data is calculated based on ridelog data from users in the past year and is relative to only the trails in the same region (not relative to trails across the state or globe).
Trails are ranked on a 1-100 scale based on how much the trail is ridden. A different colour (on the red to green scale) is assigned by every 5 steps within the 1-100 scale, so there will be up to 25 colours on the heatmap.
Using this feature, you can quickly identify the most popular trails or navigate to the trails that fewer people ride.
Finding the Popularity Heatmap on App
You can similarly navigate to the popularity heatmap on the Trailforks app by tapping on the layers icon in the left-hand icon on the map. Tap on Trail Style > Popularity, as shown below. This will provide you a heatmap of the most ridden to least ridden trails in the region.
Trailforks scans ridelogs from users to determine which trails are ridden the most in the last 9 months. Trails are compared with nearby trails in the same region with a possible 21-25 colour shades. Think of this popularity heatmap as more rides equals to more kinetic energy and warmer colours on the map.