GPX routes and tracks
A GPX file is the standard way routes are exchanged between mapping sites, watches and apps. myJikita keeps a library of them on your phone, draws them on the map, and lets you attach one to an outing as your planned route.
File: img/myjikita/gpx-01-library.png
Shows: The route library with several routes, each with its colour and
visibility switch.
Importing a route
Main menu → Routes → Add, then pick the .gpx file.
Routes come from wherever you plan: an outdoor planning site, a club, a friend, a watch that exported a previous outing. Import them at home, on wifi — importing needs the file, not the network, but a trailhead is a bad place to discover a file is corrupt.
If a file cannot be read, the app says so and keeps the entry so you can retry or remove it. The reason is stored in a form that is worded in whatever language you are using at the time you read it, not the one it failed in.
Managing the library
For each route you can:
- Rename it — the file name is rarely the name you think of it by.
- Give it a colour — which is how you tell three routes apart on one map.
- Show or hide it on the map.
- Delete it.
File: img/myjikita/gpx-02-edit.png
Shows: Renaming a route and choosing its colour.
Routes are stored on the phone. They are drawn over the base map and over the ski layer, in your colour, with an outline so they stay readable against contour lines and pistes.
Using a route as your planned route
When you plan an outing, attach one of your routes. It is then:
- drawn on your map while you walk,
- used for off-route warnings,
- available to a rescue team as a search corridor if things go wrong.
A planned route can only be attached when the outing is created. Import it before you start.
Off-route warnings
With a planned route attached, myJikita watches how far you are from it and tells you when you have drifted.
- The threshold is about 200 m from the nearest point of the route.
- It takes two consecutive positions beyond the threshold before you are warned. A single bad GPS fix — the sort that happens against a cliff or under a dense canopy — does not fire an alert.
- It works offline: the comparison is done on the phone, against the route stored on the phone.
This is most valuable exactly when you are least likely to notice for yourself: in cloud, in the dark, on featureless snow, or when following a bootpack that turns out to be going somewhere else.
File: img/myjikita/gpx-03-off-route.png
Shows: The off-route warning, with the planned route and the current
position on the map.
Being 200 m from the line is sometimes correct — a detour around a cornice, a better line down a slope, a switchback the file did not record. The warning tells you the situation has changed; what to do about it is your judgement.
Your recorded track
Your own track — where you actually went — is recorded automatically during an outing. You do not need a GPX file for that, and it is kept on your phone after the outing ends.
The track is what your contacts can draw on their map while you are out, and what a rescue team would be given if you were reported missing. See How rescue teams use your data.
Offline
Everything on this page works with no signal, provided the map area is downloaded. Routes live on the phone; the off-route check runs on the phone.