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Route Lab
Trail-running routes for Gatineau Park.
Route Lab generates trail-running routes on Gatineau Park's real trail network —
loops, point-to-point, or region tours — sized to the distance, time, or climb you want, and
tuned for how you run. It hands you ranked options, an honest finish-time estimate, a GPX for
your watch, and a share link.
Why this, and not Gaia or Garmin?
Most apps do one of two things — Route Lab fills the gap between them:
🗺️ Map & navigation apps (Gaia GPS, onX, AllTrails)
Beautiful maps — but you draw the route by hand, segment by segment. They show you what's there; they don't design a run for you.
⌚ Training & watch apps (Garmin, Strava)
They record what you ran and track fitness — after the fact. They don't help you plan a route that fits your goal on real trail data.
Tell Route Lab "a hilly, technical 15 km loop from P17" or
"a 2-hour run near Meech Lake" and it builds real routes on actual trails, ranks
them, estimates your finish time, and gives you the GPX. It's the planning step those
apps skip — specialized for trail running in one park it knows deeply.
Built on open data
- OpenStreetMap — the trail network, names, surfaces and difficulty come from OSM, the free community map of the world. You can improve it right from a route (below).
- GraphHopper — an open-source routing engine running a custom "hike" profile tuned for foot travel and technicality.
- SRTM elevation — for honest climb/descent and grade-aware time estimates.
Everything's open; nothing is behind a subscription.
What you can do
- Generate loops, point-to-point, or whole-region routes to a target distance, time, or climb.
- Tune the terrain — flat ↔ hilly, easy ↔ technical — steering onto (or away from) rugged singletrack.
- Hill-repeat workouts — find the right pitch for a vertical target.
- Personal pace — set your flat pace and every time estimate is yours, adjusted for grade, surface and fatigue.
- Save, star & share — a permanent link + GPX for your watch.
Make the map better 🌱
Because the trail data is OpenStreetMap, you can improve it. Walk any route
section-by-section and rate the real surface, width, difficulty and condition — or flag a trail
that's been rebuilt or rerouted. Contributions are pooled, reviewed, and flow back to OpenStreetMap, so
the map gets better for every runner, hiker and skier who uses it — not just here.
← Start a route