Elevation & Terrain

Elevation Profile Chart

The profile is drawn from the elevation the route already carries - the <ele> values in the file you loaded, or the 3-D coordinates BRouter returns for a route you planned here. Nothing is looked up: there is no elevation service behind the chart, so a track recorded without elevation draws as a flat line.

Chart Features

• Colour by steepness - switch on Colour the profile by steepness in Settings and each part of the profile is shaded by how steep it is, using the thresholds riders already know from Strava and Komoot:
  • Grey - level ground (under 0.5%)
  • Green - gentle (0.5-3%)
  • Yellow - noticeable (3-6%)
  • Orange - steep (6-9%)
  • Red - very steep (9-12%)
  • Purple - brutal (12% and above)
  • Blue - every descent, all one colour: a red descent would read as "hard" when it means the opposite
  It's off by default, because the profile's normal single colour is what ties it to the route line on the map. Road hazards keep their own colour either way - a hazard is a warning, steepness is only information.
• Climbs and descents - the Import Summary lists the biggest climbs and descents in the profile: where each starts, how long it is, how much it gains, and its average gradient. Unlike the famous-climbs list, this doesn't need the climb to be famous - it reports what your route actually does, so it's the one with something to say on a local ride.
• Hover crosshair - Shows distance, elevation, and estimated clock time (if configured) at any point.
• POI markers - Click to view POI details
• Click anywhere - Center map at that location
• Chart and map track each other - moving along the chart drops an orange dot on the matching spot on the map, and running the cursor along the route on the map moves the chart's crosshair to match.

Elevation Statistics

The figures aren't on the chart itself - they sit in three places:

• Info menu - distance, elevation gain and elevation loss for the route.
• Mini widget - when the panel is collapsed, the strip above the thumbnail shows distance, gain, loss and how many POIs you have.
• Import Summary - the panel that appears when a file finishes loading adds maximum and minimum elevation, estimated time, the POI/waypoint count and the climbs-and-descents list.

Panel Controls

• Click expand/collapse button to toggle full panel
• Use P key to toggle panel
• Map Sync Button - Toggle to sync the elevation chart zoom to match the visible route section on the map. When enabled, the chart automatically updates as you pan or zoom the map, and the chart's own zoom and pan are switched off until you turn sync off again. It always starts off when you load the page.
• Mini widget - When collapsed, shows thumbnail in bottom-right corner
  • Click thumbnail to expand
  • Quick visual reference

Interactive POI Highlighting

POIs on the map and elevation chart are linked with bidirectional hover highlighting:

• Map → Chart: Hover over a POI marker on the map to highlight and enlarge the corresponding annotation on the elevation chart
• Chart → Map: Hover over a POI annotation on the elevation chart to highlight the map marker with an orange pulsing glow
• Custom POIs (Alert, Danger, Event Sticker) and Start/End flags also appear on the chart with color-coded icons

Zooming and long routes

• Zoom and pan - scroll or pinch to zoom into the profile and drag to move along it. The POI markers thin out to whatever is in view.
• Long routes are simplified for drawing - past 2,000 points the profile is reduced with the Douglas-Peucker algorithm (to 2,000 points for the full chart, 1,000 for the mini thumbnail) so it stays quick to draw. That's the picture only: the full-resolution track is kept for the crosshair read-out and for export, and zooming in doesn't redraw at a finer resolution.

Wind & Weather Beta

Turn on View → Wind & Weather to see the wind and weather for the day and time of your ride, both on the map and along the elevation profile. It needs a ride date - if you have not set one, PitStopper opens Clock Time first so you can pick the day (and optionally a start time).

What you see

• Animated wind field - moving particles over a dimmed map show wind direction and strength for your ride's date and hour.
• Rain radar - flick on the Rain toggle to overlay coloured cells (pale blue → deep violet by intensity) showing where and how hard it is forecast to rain for the selected hour. It scrubs with the slider and chart hover just like the wind, and toggles off again so it does not fight the wind particles.
• Head / cross / tail band on the elevation profile - a coloured strip along the top of the chart shows what you will be riding into at each point: red headwind, amber crosswind, green tailwind, brighter for stronger wind. A small key sits in the corner.
• Weather badges pinned along the route - a condition icon and temperature for the hour you will actually be at each spot.
• Summary - a pill at the top of the map sums up whether it is mostly a head, cross or tailwind day, with the distance in each.

On-map controls

• Time slider - drag it to replay the wind field across the whole ride window, hour by hour.
• Run the cursor along the elevation chart - the field and slider jump to the wind for that point in your ride, so you can trace the route and watch the wind change.
• Wind / Rain toggles - turn the wind particles and the rain radar on or off independently, so you can see either on its own or both together.
• Typical weather - opens the Historical Weather panel: typical conditions for this date over recent years.
• Close weather view - the button next to the slider (or the menu item again) turns it off.

Wind and weather come from Open-Meteo - the forecast for upcoming dates, and the historical archive for past ones. Distances and temperature follow your chosen units.

Find Peaks & Valleys

Open the Info menu and click the Elevation Gain or Elevation Loss figure to highlight the route's top five peaks or lowest five valleys - Route → Find Peaks and Route → Find Valleys do the same thing. Markers appear on both the map and the elevation chart, helping you spot the major climbs to pace and the high points worth a stop. They are kept at least 5 km apart along the route, so you get five separate places rather than five points on the same climb. Click a marker to zoom to it; its popup has a Street View link and an Add POI shortcut. Click the menu entry again to clear them.

More on the blog: Find the Best Views with Peaks & Valleys.

Named Summits (Peaks Layer)

Turn on the peaks button on the map toolbar to see named summits around you, drawn as triangles with their names beneath. It follows the map: pan or zoom and it fetches whatever is now on screen. The three highest summits in view are shown in red.

Using it

• Click a triangle to see the summit's name and height. Heights follow your chosen units, so set metres or feet in Settings → Units.
• Where OpenStreetMap has one, the popup includes a Wikipedia link - about a third of summits have one.
• Zoom in if you see a "Zoom in to see named peaks" message. Zoomed too far out, a mountain range returns more summits than can be read, so the layer waits.

Why some triangles have no name

In a crowded range there are more summits than there is room for names. Rather than stacking them into an unreadable pile, the layer works out which names fit and drops the rest - the highest summits keep their labels. A triangle with no name is still a real summit and still clickable; the popup names it. Zoom in and the names reappear as space opens up.

It does not touch your POIs

The peaks layer is a map layer, not a search. Summits shown here are not added to your POI list, not counted, not exported to GPX and not saved into your project - otherwise panning across a mountain range would quietly bury the stops you actually chose. If you do want summits in your list, use the Summit category in a normal POI search instead.

More on the blog: Naming the Hills: Peaks on the Map.