Identifying trails and areas that are open to riding is an often-overlooked topic for both new riders and old. One of the most important things to keep in mind while riding off-road is that it is a privilege that can be taken away easily. We all want great places to ride and it is solely the awesome individual landowners, state and federal governments to allow us to ride these epic trails! It is of utmost importance to ensure we all respect landowners wishes and abide by all rules of the trails and or local laws and regulations and this is one of the cornerstones of The Dirt Bike Dad. With all this in mind lets delve into some of the great options available to riders to ensure we all abide by the rules.
Where to Ride in Maine and Beyond
So you are looking for some good trails to ride and are a newbie or you are in a new area that you are unfamiliar with. There are some great resources available to you with a bit of research. I will focus mostly on Maine and the Northeast in this section as I am most familiar with these areas but there are a multitude of great online resources like advrider.com and several of the bike specific forums that have a wealth of info based on recommended rides.
Here in Maine we have a strong network of ATV clubs that maintain over 6,000 miles of off-road trails dedicated to ATV riders (Maine considers ATVS side by sides, four-wheelers and dirt bikes). Each club maintains the trails for a certain geographic area and work closely with individual landowners and city and state governments to decide where trails will be. Most clubs maintain a map of their own trail system. In Maine we do have some trail limitations for dirt bikes that do not allow us on all the trails other off road vehicles are allowed on so do be aware of that if coming to ride here. Atvmaine.org is the organization that oversees all the clubs in Maine and is a wonderful starting point to find local clubs in your area. Do a little research in your own state and you’ll be surprised how great the community of riders is and will learn a wealth of info. For those more seasoned riders feel free to post in the comments below for any useful info for your own state or country so others can learn!
Paper Maps
A great place to start with respect to navigation is to grab some simple paper maps of your intended riding area and study them prior to a ride. They are also great to have as a backup in the event you use an electronic device for navigation, and it fails or is broken during a ride. Paper maps offer great insurance wile only offering the basics. The also do have limitations compared to say a GPS or a phone and are of no use if you are lost unless you also have a compass (which you should also be carrying with you).
Smartphone
Ahhhh… its 2021 and it is amazing the power we all have in our pockets. Smartphones are an awesome resource for navigation while riding. There are a ton of great GPS and mapping apps and contrary to popular belief your phones GPS will still work 100% of the time without cell or wi-fi coverage. The key to using your phones navigation capabilities effectively for dirt biking is to choose a navigation app with “offline” topographic maps. Those two items “offline” and topographic are the most important key items for off road maps. Offline maps allow you to set your phone to airplane mode and use the GPS only to conserve battery. You do need to download the maps to your device to do this so keep that in mind. Topographic maps are maps that contain elevation and additional geographic features in addition to roads and trails.
I personally use the GAIA GPS app (gaiagps.com) available on both the Apple App Sore and the Google Play store. The app is free but if you do choose to pay you will get additional base map options. Base maps are essentially the topographic maps only. One of the great aspects of the app is the default base map uses the openstreetmap.org map database which is an open source mapping organization that maintains maps for the united states and other parts of the world, more on that later. The major pitfall of using a smartphone is even though in todays age they are designed to be somewhat water resistant they are still not that “rugged” a drop on the trail or a smack from a branch or rock at the wrong angle and there goes your screen.
GPS
The absolute best option for off road navigation in my opinion is a properly setup traditional GPS unit. You would be incredibly surprised to learn how powerful even a 10 or 15-year-old GPS unit can be when combined with the proper maps and setup. The key here is to set the unit to off road if possible and change the map orientation from 3D view to either “Track Up” or “North UP” mode as this will make it much easier to navigate with for off road conditions.
Base maps should also be updated to topographic maps if allowed by the GPS. GPS manufacturers usually offer “paid” topographic map upgrades for GPS units but at $100+ can be a hard pill to swallow on software that may have not been updated in the last 5 or 6 years. As I stated above openstreemaps.org develop maps for many areas for free and they are generally much more up to date and detailed than what GPS manufacturers have to offer. Gpsfiledepot.com is a great resource with links to all the available free base map options for many of the navigation devices out there. The maps are generally easy to add to the device and another great resource specific to Garmin units is the hikingguy.com and he has a ton of info on how to do this here.
I personally use a Garmin Montana 610 GPS for my daily driver. This was a big investment, but it has excellent features for dirt biking and other off-road activities. It can be directly mounted to any AMPS compatible GPS mount and can also be hardwired to the vehicle. I will review the GPS in a future post to discuss more of the features it has as well as loading of the base maps and tracking features of the unit.
Gpstrailmasters.com
Since I live in the Northeast the best resource I have found as of yet for off-road navigation is gpstrailmasters.com. GPS Trailmasters is essentially an aggregation service that takes all the local maps in a state, combines them into a base map overlay for use on any device that can read .gpx, .img or .kml/.kmz files which is essentially any GPS or smartphone. They also add important information to each trail like ATV limitations and points of interest (POIs) like gas stations, rest stops, scenic lookouts and lodging. As discussed above in Maine we do have many trails that are side by side and/or four-wheeler only and do not allow dirt bike so it is good to have that info on hand to ensure I am on the trails I can be on. They do charge for this service but at $40 for two years-worth of updates it’s a steal and if you take tracks on your device that are not on their overlays and send them via email you will be added in for additional free updates as a contributor. Check out their site if you ride or snowmobile in the Northeast US region.
After Thoughts
We covered a lot of info here and as stated I will be releasing reviews / how to’s shortly on both the GAIA GPS App for iPhone as well as covering the Garmin Montana series GPS and how it is working out for me. I will also cover the accessories I have chosen to help out with this like the Buckin’ Roll Tank Bag by Giant Loop and the H3Dmoto KTM AMPS Mount from (rallymotoshop.com) with the Garmin Rugged AMPS mount for the Montana GPS.
The single most important thing to remember when riding and navigating is to be respectful of each landowner’s wishes. Some do not want dirt bikers on this property unfortunately and that is their personal decision, and we have no right to question that or disregard it. If we all want mor great places to ride than we need to become involved in the process, Join a local club, post respectively on social media and be heard. There are plenty of owners that appreciate the joy this sport brings us and sometimes striking up a simple conversation on the issue may get you permission or at least the opportunity to be heard. There are unfortunately some individuals that give the sport a bad rap over the years so do be vigilant on watching for and reporting those individuals as needed to ensure the rest of us responsible riders will continue to have great areas to ride. Be respectful and gracious to others and most of all get out and ride and have fun doing it!