How to put the Lost Coast BDRx on Your Garmin

THE
“EXPLAIN IT LIKE I’M FIVE”
EDITION

Over the weekend I attended the launch of the BDRx at Scuderia in San Francisco. Yes, I was the one in a Teal San Jose Sharks Santa Suit. It so happens that we also were involved with SantaCon earlier that day.

Tomm, er I mean Santa even got to get the party started with Jocelin and Inna…

At the event I talked to quite a few people, saw some pretty cool bikes and even met F2F one of my favorite MTB guys! More than once, the question or problem of GPS Navigation came up. It’s a common issue that so many people have. Many of these people have a Garmin device but don’t know how to use it.

Nobody makes it easy. Not Garmin, and not the BDR. Nobody explains it all in easy to understand terms, and nobody wants to read the manual – and that’s all ok!

I’m going to explain all this stuff and make it all better.

• I’ll start out with a few basics (that everyone should read)
• and then get a little techy (feel free to skip if you like)
• next there will be a “simple” section – and if you keep going
• the next section is even easier (and so much better!)

Feel free to skip down to the easy part if you like.

Let’s start with some basic terms and what they mean. I am using a Garmin zumo XT – but really this applies to any Garmin and most any GPS unit. This will work for the Lost Coast BDRx as well as any other BDR Route and even for most things your buddy might send you, “Hey, let’s go here next weekend“, which is how most of my weekend rides happen.

* UNDERSTAND THIS FIRST: We are talking about using a GPS unit to guide us off road. OFF ROAD is the key here. This is not at all like the nav unit in your car. It is not going to tell you turn by turn. It does not ‘recalculate’ when you miss a turn. Pay attention to the words CAPITALIZED and try to understand the differences.

* actually, yes it could – but it’s very complicated and not at all reliable so let’s leave it at that.
Are we good?

POINTS:

There’s a few different points that we can talk about. You might hear the word WAYPOINT. You might also hear POINT OF INTEREST. There’s a lot of different point type names that we could talk about. The main idea here is that when it comes to GPS, any type of point, they are all just stationary coordinates on a map.

If I said I was at 37.87392240809242, -122.25395031929364 that is just a POINT. If you pulled it up you might find that I was sitting center stage at the Greek Theater in Berkeley hopefully watching a great Billy Strings show. A POINT can also contain other information, like a Title, an Elevation, and so much more. The important part to remember is that it’s just a set point on the map.

TRACKS:

Think of tracks as bread crumbs. They are a series of POINTS that someone dropped on a map to guide us along the way just like Hansel and Gretel dropped bread crumbs in the forest – only we’re going to have a better ending. Each little bread crumb is actually a coordinate. When we combine a string of these points together we can see a “track” on a map. When we’re following a TRACK, we’re following someone else’s trail of bread crumbs. Or think of following someones footprints on the beach. That’s simply a TRACK.

So, what happens when the footprints you are following on the beach turn right but you carry on straight? Nothing, right? Typically the same thing happens with TRACKS on your GPS. Although you might get a little alert that you are ‘off track’, but nothing really happens. The tracks go one way, you and your map go another way.

What isn’t going to happen when you are following a TRACK is what you see happen in your car. That “recalculating” thing. It’s when your GPS has to compute, or think, and it comes up with a new route to get you to your destination. Now that you missed that last turn, where you deviated from the TRACK, it has to devise a whole new way to get you to your last point (your destination).

I think that not understanding TRACKS and the lack of “recalculating” is where people really get confused about off road GPS.

ROUTES:

In GPS terms, a ROUTE is a series of dots or POINTS (just like a TRACK but with far fewer) and we leave it up to the GPS unit to calculate the best way to get from point to point. “Hey, that’s just like my car!“, and yes it is.

So, ROUTES are the answer to everything?

Nope! Quite the opposite. The problem is that we are off road right now and you cannot ask a GPS to navigate trails and fire roads like it would in a city. That would typically take you in the fastest way, right? First of all we don’t want the fastest way. We probably want to climb this two track to get to see this fire lookout, we want to cross this stream, and we want to divert around that fallen tree. Our GPS also doesn’t know all the trails available off road. In reality, we don’t want it to calculate anything at all.

If and when you diverted off a planned ROUTE your GPS unit would recalculate a new ROUTE to take you to the next point on the plan. But, it wouldn’t have all the information it needs to make the right decision, so most times it’s going come up with the wrong answer – often taking you miles off course to the nearest paved roads even if you set it to include the dirt ones.

As a side note a ROUTE can have anywhere from 2 to hundreds of POINTS that make it up, while a TRACK can have thousands. Would you rather watch a video in 4K High Def or the old 420P? It’s just like that. More is better. Much much better.

That is why we do not use ROUTES in off road. We use TRACKS.

TRACKS are not ROUTES – ROUTES are not TRACKS.
Read that all again, slowly, if you need to.

TRACKS > ROUTES

If you pull one thing from the tech side of all this get this:

In off road, TRACKS are better than ROUTES.
MUCH, MUCH BETTER!

I would go so far as to say you could forget the word ROUTES. Or better yet… make it a drinking game. Every time you slip and say the word “route” you have to buy another round of beers. Hell, I’d play that game with you!

Back to the story… So BDR had someone look at a map and find some cool roads. Someone then rode those roads, thought they were cool too, and recorded their travels on a GPS device exactly where they went. (and yes, all that could also be done on a computer).

Speaking of computers – they then pulled that info into a computer, discarded what they didn’t like and came up with the route we’re now calling The Lost Coast BDRx. The organization is now sharing that with you in what they call TRACKS. You can download that here:

Do not be surprised when you download the file and it is actually called a .gpx file.

MORE TECHY STUFF

Not to get too techy but a gpx file is just text based file that contains all those important POINTS we talked about above. If you peek under the hood it’s an .xml file at heart. This is just the start of an older file I have, but the BDRx is similar. It goes on and on and on…

Did you notice that you can read “Black Butte Country Store” in plain English. See the latitude and longitude above it? See the “Restaurant”? This is a POINT. It happens to be a POINT of INTEREST and they put it in here so that it shows up on your map on your Garmin. That particular point happens to be a bit off course but it’s a little place along the Eel River if you happened to be near and needed gas or food. I’ve eaten there and actually camped across the street from there a few times.

MAKING IT SIMPLE…

If you skipped the part above, welcome back!
You didn’t miss much, we could have learned about points, tracks, routes and xml – Oh yeah, and we have a great new drinking game we can’t wait to play with you!

Let’s do this in just a few easy steps. I’m also going to suggest you do this on a computer.

1. Head on over to https://ridebdr.com/download-tracks/
Don’t worry, this should open in a new browser tab for you so you won’t lose your place.

2. Fill out the form. Use your real name, your real email address – don’t be a dick.

3. Check the box for the tracks you want. Check just the Lost Coast BDRx or check them all if you want them all.

4. Agree to the TOS (terms of service) and submit.

5. You should see a little link now that will link to the file you chose. You should also get a little email with the same link.

6. Click on it and it should ask you where you want it to download to. It might not and just go to your ‘downloads’ folder. Either way – save the file. You can see I have a folder on my computer just for ADV. Those that read the whole article are wishing they are at a bar with me right now.

7. Open up the back of your Garmin and pull out the SD Card. It has a rubber dust cover and then a slide to unlock the card.

7a. IF you don’t have a SD Card in your Garmin you should have one. Grab one and format the card in your Garmin FIRST, then pull it out.

8. Plug the SD Card into your computer and copy the downloaded BDRx file from your computer folder into your SD Card in the folder called GPX. Eject the card from your computer and reinstall it in your Garmin.

9. Turn on your Garmin. You should be looking at a screen like this on a zumo XT. We’re going to click on the Apps Button.

10. When the Apps opens up we’re going to look for the TRACKS Button. You may have to scroll down to find it. Click that TRACKS icon.

11. When the screen loads it might look empty or like this if you already have a few TRACKS. We’re going to go to the little wrench icon on the top left.

12. Next we’re going to IMPORT the tracks.

13. When you click on IMPORT it should find the TRACKS on your SD Card. I would suggest checking the box for ALL and then click the IMPORT button.

That’s it! You now have the Lost Coast BDRx (or anything you had TRACKS for) on your Garmin. There’s just one problem. They don’t show up on your MAP yet.

This last step is to show those TRACKS on the Map. I know, right?

14. Now go back to the HOME screen, then Tracks, and you should see each of the TRACKS that are in the memory of your Garmin.

15. If you click on any of the TRACKS it should show that TRACK isolated on a map with options to the left on what to do with that TRACK.

Click on our little wrench friend in the upper left…

16. You might have to scroll, but click the SHOW ON MAP and then DONE.

17. Now that TRACK will show up on your main Map and you can follow along that little purple line.

NOTES:
We did not, do not want to, convert to a trip. Just don’t do it. I know you saw that and were thinking just that. Trip is code for ROUTE and if you read the whole thing you know we want TRACKS – not ROUTES. I was looking at the FAQ on BDR and found this:

We also did not show ALL of the TRACKS on the Map. We could, but what we just did was just one track. Now that you know how – go back and turn them all on if you like.

It should also be said that we can do this all on a phone. We can do this all via bluetooth. We can simply download straight to the device with the right cable. Yes, we can do all of that but this is the easiest way for everyone, everywhere, in a way that anyone can understand.

PRO TIP: Let’s say you did not want to do any of the Expert sections. No judgement here. Just don’t click to show those TRACKS on the map. Easy as that. You’ll never know they existed and will just ride on by!

PROTIP BY LKRAUS:

I shared my post in the Mapping & Navigation section of ADV and LKraus gave me a great tip.

“That reminds me of a topic that I noticed is not mentioned in your article. If an XT user has Explore enabled (the default), “Show on Map” is not available in the Tracks app. Explore uses Collections to determine what is shown.“

Now it is. Thanks!

To check and see if you have EXPLORE enabled go to the Home Screen of your Garmin and click on the “WHERE TO?” and you should see the EXPLORE Icon. Click on that and if you see this screen you are good to go.

IF instead you see something like this:

You are connected and as LKraus mentioned, you will not be able to click on a TRACK and then SHOW ON MAP. I verified this by enabling EXPLORE on my own Garmin and then connecting it with the Garmin Drive App on my phone.

To fix this I had to RESET my Garmin, go into my phone settings and sign out of the Garmin Drive App – what a royal pain in the ass!

LKraus sent me a link to this POST.

Did that all seem a little complicated? I agree.
Having to turn on or off tracks is a pain. How about we make it even easier?

TRICKTRACKS

It’s widely documented how Garmin makes it all so very complicated. Why can’t they just make a big ass line showing me the whole route at once that always shows up on my Map?

Well, they don’t and they won’t – so this really smart guy, Scott figured out a better way to make that happen.

It’s called TrickTracks. Skip almost everything I mentioned above and go to his site here: https://tricktracks.org/

1. You’ll need to give your name and email to get an access code (just once).

2. I would suggest you make a few adjustments on the Config Screen – primarily the Track Arrow Style for your device. There’s a lot you could play with but for now that’s it.

3. Upload the .gpx file you got from BDR.

As soon as you do you’ll have a little download pop up to save this new file. It’s called .img file and not a .gpx. You can see it’s similar to the original – just with a TT and other stuff added to the title.

This new file is actually going to be a Map Layer and we’re going to next move it into our Garmin.

For this you will need a proper cable and you cannot use a MacBook, it has to be a PC. UGH! I know, right?

Obviously you’ll need a cable with the right type of ends on either side. For my older model Garmin zumo XT it’s a USB on one end and what is called a USB Mini on the other. It looks like this.

I think I heard the newer ones come with a USB-C. But here’s the thing. It needs to be what is called a “Data Cable“. That means it has more internal connectors to help transfer data. Cheap aftermarket ones look the same on the outside but are usually just “Charging Cables”. There was one that came with your Garmin and if you still have it it’ll be stamped on the end plug with a “GARMIN”.

4. Plug one end of that into your computer and the other into your Garmin. It should turn on the Garmin and let you know it is going into data transfer mode. We want that. When it does you should be able to see it on your PC. Just like plugging in an external hard drive, or thumb drive.

It might take a few minutes to have the Garmin show up but it will. When it does you should see something like this:

5. Click on that triangle or whatever says Garmin and it’ll probably say something like “Internal Storage”. We want that. Click on that. and then find the MAP folder and open that.

6. Now just copy or move the TrickTracks Image file to that Map folder. It should look like this:

So, just to clarify it’s This PC > zumo XT > Internal Storage > Map

PROTIP FROM GIL:

Gil read my article and suggested, “Great article on the lost coast bdr and trick tracks the only thing you missed is that some of the zumos you may have to add a new folder and name it map. They may have fixed this through software updates but when I bought my first xt about 5 years ago I had to add the map folder.“

If it’s in there you are just about done. Eject all the things as you normally would and then start your Garmin.

7. On your Garmin Home Screen click the SETTINGS > Map & Vehicle > Map Layers and make sure the Custom Maps is checked and click SAVE.

Scroll down a little to myMaps and you should see all the map layers on your device (like CN North America) and you should see one called “BDRX_LostCoastCA_Dec2025” or similar. Make sure that one is checked. Now you are done!

Keeping score? That was 7 steps to the traditional way of 17!

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

I turned on just the first TRACK I had just loaded and then moved my map up to the start of the Lost Coast BDRx in Fort Bragg. I didn’t change the color of the line, the thickness, or rename it. Here’s what that looks like on my Garmin zumo XT zoomed in to 500ft which might be close to what you would see riding.

It’s hard to see but there’s a little purple line running north. You can see it just to the right of the words “Mill Pond 2381 Dam”. That’s the TRACK. It’s called LCX1 and it goes 62 miles to Shelter Cove. If you zoomed in the little purple line wouldn’t change in relative size to your screen. It will always be that thin.

I could have colored it bright PINK or made it a little larger but I wanted to show you what it looked like straight out of the box.

NEXT, I turned off the TRACK and turned on the MAP LAYER I got from TrickTracks. I navigated to the same spot and this is what the Lost Coast BDRx looks like with TrickTracks.

I even zoomed out to 800 ft. just to get in the POI of Glass Beach. Which would you rather follow along with?

That big blue line of arrows is our TRACK. We’re just showing it as layer on the map. You can zoom all the way in or zoom all the way out and that big beautiful line of blue will always be there showing where the TRACK is and which way to go.

POINTS of INTEREST like Glass Beach, Hazards, Gas Stations, Food and Lodging will still be shown and depending the options you could have chosen in your TrickTracks setup before you uploaded – they might have a big red circle around them. That part is up to you.

Also – and I think this is the best part – the entire BDRx is shown from the start to the end. The TrickTracks Map Layer we turned on is the entire BDRx – not just the first TRACK. How cool is that?

Ok, so what did I miss?