Bike Picker

Guides

ADV & Dual SportDirt BikesSupermoto

Resources

How to Find Places to Ride a Dual Sport or Adventure Bike

and other helpful resources

The question I see asked all the time by new dual sport and adventure riders is, “Where do you find places to ride? Where can I find trails to ride near me?”

There's no single map with every legal route on it. Below are the apps, websites, Facebook groups, forums, local clubs, and GPS resources I use to find legal places to ride, from local trails to backcountry routes a few states away. These tips all assume you're on a plated/tagged, street-legal bike.

Ride respectfully

Wherever you happen to end up riding, please ride respectfully. Please don't give dual sport and adventure riders a bad reputation. We do not want any roads or trails closed down. One bad actor can get trails closed for everyone. Always keep this in mind for the health of our sport.

Apps & Maps to Start With

These are great starting points, some free, some paid. In my opinion, you'll want to choose Gaia or onX to “hold” your GPS files so you can view them (and save the .gpx in a folder somewhere on your PC). Garmin is another option if you have their devices, but I personally don't use it and found it too restrictive for my use.

Full disclosure

I pay for several of these and buy a yearly subscription during their sales throughout the year, when they're half off or more. I think they offer incredible value if you can manage to get the subscriptions on sale. (Major holidays usually have the deals: Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, and so on.)
Gaia's MVUM layer overlaying the legal forest roads across Apalachicola National Forest. Click to enlarge.
  • Gaia GPS
  • onX Offroad
  • Google Maps
  • Avenza & MVUM (Motor Vehicle Use Maps).
    • This should be one of the first things you check in your area and anywhere you're traveling: they're free, and the Forest Service wants you to know which trails are legal to ride.
    • Gaia has an MVUM layer which you can turn on to overlay these forest trails onto your preferred map layer.

Other big map apps and websites:

The main thing is to use Google Maps in conjunction with one of the apps above. Satellite imagery from Google is hard to beat, and using it side by side with the different layer options from onX or Gaia is a fantastic combination for finding legal places to ride.

Doing your research

These apps and websites will be the bulk of your GPS research. Using several together gives you the most options. It takes a bit of time, and some learning on your end, to use the different tools these sites and apps offer.

Local Facebook Riding Groups

  • Search Facebook for “YOUR AREA” dual sport, ADV, and offroad riding groups. Try “Dual Sport Riders of YOUR AREA,” “Adventure Riders of YOUR AREA,” and plenty of other variations.
  • Search the different states you're planning to visit and join their local groups.
    • These groups sometimes share GPS files of their areas that you can download and take a peek at to see where some trails are.
    • They sometimes host small local events, rallies, and more. Join them and see what they can show you.
  • Join local “SOS” offroad recovery groups. Most big offroading areas have some kind of recovery group, so if something happens you can post your coordinates and get rescued. It might also point you to some unknown riding areas worth checking out.
Examples of the local dual sport, ADV, and offroad groups you'll find on Facebook. Click to enlarge.

Niche Facebook Groups & Pages

I've had some success joining adjacent, hobby-ish pages that share different areas. For example, one called “Dirt Roads” shares names of picturesque dirt roads, which I then find on Google and map a route to, working it into a day trip.

ADVrider Forums

The ADVrider mapping & navigation forums host a lot of public GPS files that make great starting points.

Local Club Websites

Some clubs host their own GPS files on their sites that are easy to download and drop into your preferred GPS app. These are a little trickier to find, since you'll need to know the club's name. A few I've come across:

Support the creators

I highly recommend supporting any and all of these route creators. I've paid for or supported several of them however I can, because these routes are difficult to maintain year to year, as offroading inherently changes day to day.

Free Routes

Private and Public Land

Before you commit to a route, especially a GPS someone else recorded, cross-reference it against land-ownership boundaries. onX Offroad and Gaia offer a Private Land layer labeling ownership. They color in who owns the ground under the track: public, private, BLM, Forest Service, or off-limits Wilderness. A route that looked perfect can clip a corner of private property, or follow a road that's open to OHVs but closed to a street-legal bike like yours. Two minutes spent checking the boundaries beats a disappointing ride ending at a gate.

ArcGIS Data

One more source worth knowing, especially out West: government GIS data. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Forest Service, and a lot of state OHV programs publish their official travel management maps as free ArcGIS layers you can browse online or pull into an app. This matters most on BLM land, which covers huge stretches of ridable ground in states like Nevada, Utah, and Arizona that MVUM won't touch, since MVUM only covers national forests. Start at the BLM's GIS hub linked above, or search “YOUR STATE BLM ArcGIS,” and you'll often turn up designated routes that might not show up in the riding apps.

How to See These Routes on Your Bike

My Carpuride running a route on the bars, mid-ride. Click to enlarge.
  • An old phone with a Quad Lock mount.
  • Carpuride devices. You can buy a really nicely priced CarPlay device on Amazon. I use these on multiple bikes and they're very easy to use. It's hard to beat their price point, and how easy they are to install and use.
  • Chigee devices. A bit higher quality, also something I use on one of my bikes, and it works great.
  • Garmin Zumo. A dedicated, rugged motorcycle GPS with a glove-friendly touchscreen and preloaded maps. Pricier than the CarPlay units, but it's purpose-built for the handlebars and doesn't lean on your phone.

Important: your phone camera

The vibrations from your motorcycle will kill your phone's camera, so do NOT use your current phone. Use a previous-generation or otherwise non-current phone. You'll also want to keep your main phone on you in case of emergency. (What if you go off the side of a mountain and you're at the top, while your bike and phone are at the bottom? You never know.)

Friends, Family & Group Tracking

This is very useful whether you're a solo rider or riding in a group. Anything can happen offroad, and if your little dot doesn't move for a long time, your friends and family can see where you are and come get you.

  • Apple devices: if you and your spouse, friends, or family have Apple devices, you can share location data so they can see where you are.
    • Apple Watch: connects to your phone, or can run its own cell plan. It has fall detection and crash detection; it can call emergency services if you're unresponsive. The one caveat is that it needs charging every day.
  • Google Maps: same idea. You can share your location so family at home can keep track of where you are.
  • Garmin Tread app: a little janky, but free. You share a code with others and they can follow you. The code is active for 7 days, then needs to be remade. It can be shared with several people, so it's decent for an offroading group spread farther apart.
  • onX Offroad “Go & Track”: a relatively new feature, similar to the Garmin Tread app. You share a link with another person, and that person clicks it to join a group in order to see one another on the map.
  • Garmin inReach: a satellite communicator for when you ride out of cell range. It shares your live location and sends two-way messages over satellite, and its SOS button reaches emergency responders even where there's no signal.

In Closing

There are a lot more resources, apps, websites and tools to use to find places to ride your dual sport or adventure motorcycle. These are just what I've been using for the past few years and have found success with. Everyone has their own personal preferences on all of these, their own opinions and use cases. I hope this is at least a decent basis to start if you're brand new to the sport, or maybe you just want to see how other folks may do something.

Found somewhere to ride? Make sure you're on the right machine for it. Compare specs across the ADV & dual sport, dirt bike, and supermoto lineups.