New Zealand Route Planner Help Page

Positioning the Map View

• With a mouse
  • Left click, drag to move the map.
  • Right-click, drag left/right to rotate.
  • Right-click, drag up/down to tilt (for a 3D view).
  • Mouse wheel up/down to zoom (or use the +/- buttons in the top right).
• On touch screen
  • Touch, drag to move the map.
  • Two fingers and twist to rotate the map.
  • Two fingers and drag up/down to tilt.
  • Two fingers and expand/contract to zoom (or use the +/- buttons in the top right).
• Use the fa-regular fa-compass compass button to set the tilt to vertical and orientation back to North.
• Show your location using the fa-solid fa-location-crosshairs target button. You need to allow the site to use your location to do this.
• Click/tap on the fa-solid fa-magnifying-glass search button in the top right to find a location.
• Click on the fa-solid fa-circle-question help button to get a short version of this page on a slide out panel.

Showing Location Information

Click/tap on any location to reveal GPS coordinates and estimated elevation data. Click the coordinates to open Google Maps in that location. Click the fa-regular fa-clipboard clipboard button to copy the coordinates.

Featured items (such as DOC huts and tracks) will reveal a panel with detailed information on that item. See the help page for more information. Wherever you see the cursor turn to fa-regular fa-hand-pointer, there is a clickable feature below.

Switching Between Topographic and Satellite Maps

Hover with the mouse over the image tile in the bottom left (or tap on touchscreen) to reveal other map styles. Click/tap one of these to change the map style.

DOC Facilities

Click on the blue circle icons or red tracks to get detailed information from DOC, including any current alerts affecting that facility. The black dashed tracks (orange on the satellite map) are also DOC tracks but with minimal published information.

Creating Routes

Adding Points to the Map

• Right-click on a location (or long press on a touch screen) to show the menu and select "Add Waypoint". The "Route Steps" menu will open in the top left showing your added point.
• Click on the label for the added waypoint to give it a name. A default name will be pulled from the map if it is on a map feature.
• Add at least 2, and up to 25, waypoints.
• Select the route type (walking, cycling or point-to-point) and click on Show Route to draw the route and get a route profile with distance/elevation break down for each leg of your route.

The elevations are cumulative ascent and descent over the entire leg of the route. There is also a total for the whole route.

In full-screen mode, you can minimise the route summary by clicking on the title bar.

Use the "Download GPX" button on the title bar to export a GPX file for use on your navigation app.

To re-order waypoints, use the fa-solid fa-chevron-up up / fa-solid fa-chevron-down down arrows on the left of the waypoint, or drag/drop using the fa-solid fa-grip handle in the top right of the waypoint.

Unroutable Points

If a point lies more than 100m from a path or road (or you have selected Point to Point for the route type), the Waypoint will be marked orange and you will a warning "Waypoint not on routable path". The route to or from this point to the next will be calculated as a straight line with net elevation gain only.

Going off-piste

Your route can be a mix of on-track and off-track points. Add a waypoint at the point you will leave or re-join a track, and at least one off-track point in between. The route created will show straight line data for those off-track segments.

If your entire route will be off-track, select "Point-to-point" as the route type after you have added your first point.

Sharing or Saving Your Map

The address bar of your browser is updated each time you change the map view (location, tilt, orientation, zoom) or create a route.

You can bookmark this address to reload the same view (and route if present), or share it with others. If a route is included, the zoom setting will be ignored in favour of fitting the route to the browser it's being loaded on.

Use the fa-solid fa-share-nodes share button (or your standard browser method) to do this.

Limitations and Known Issues

• Walking tracks do not show on the map until you have zoomed in to quite a detailed view. This is an unfortunate feature in the underlying mapping software.
  On desktop browsers, you can work around this a little with the following steps:
  • Reduce your browser zoom (normally by typing ctrl - (cmd - on Mac). Each press should reduce the browser zoom by 10%.
  • Increase the map zoom to get the same boundaries on your browser. Since this requires a higher zoom on the map, you can see a wider area with the tracks visible. The trade-off is that everything is smaller on your screen.
  • Ctrl/cmd 0 sets your browser zoom back to 100% when you're done.
• Some roads and track appearing on the map are private with no public access. The routing software does not distinguish between public and private land. As such, some routes may not be possible without permission from the land owner.
• Similarly, if you place two points connected only by walking track, and ask for a Cycle route, the route given will be along that walking track regardless of whether the route is suitable for bicycles. There is no implication that the route is ridable.
• The route given will sometimes be a roundabout path where there is a direct path. This can be for a number of reasons including:
  • There is some property of that path that the routing software looks to avoid.
  • A spurious result thrown by the routing algorithm. In this (or the previous) case, add extra points along your desired path to force the route along that way.
  • A gap somewhere along that path (often at track junctions) preventing the algorithm creating a route across that gap. If you encounter this, use the "Improve this map" link at the bottom right of the map and report the issue along with a screenshot and GPS coordinate of the problem (get the GPS by clicking/tapping on the point and use the fa-regular fa-clipboard clipboard button to copy the coordinates).
  • If there is no visible path at any zoom level then the routing software cannot make a route at that point. Use the "Off Piste" instructions above.