Elevation profile
Two routes can be the same distance and be nothing like the same ride. The elevation profile shows you the climbs before you commit to them — and it’s also the reason the menu item sometimes isn’t there at all.
Height up the side, distance along the bottom. The filled green line is the road ahead of you.
The dashed pink line is where you are along the route. It only appears while you’re navigating — during planning the chart shows the whole ride with no cursor on it.
Opening it
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Plan or generate a route first
An A-to-B route, a multi-stop trip or a round trip all work. There’s nothing to profile until a route exists.
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Open the menu
The same menu you use for map downloads and settings.
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Tap Elevation Profile
A sheet slides up from the bottom with the chart in it, the route’s total distance in the top-right corner, and nothing else to get in the way.
Swipe it down to close. Nothing about your route changes either way — the profile is a read-only look at what you’ve already planned.
Reading it
- Up the side — height above sea level. The chart auto-fits the range of your route, so a 200 m rise across the Hunter and a 1200 m climb over the Alps both fill the same box. Read the numbers, not the shape.
- Along the bottom — distance from the start of the route.
- The dashed pink line — your position along the ride, while navigating.
The height figures are taken along the route about every 50 metres, so short sharp pinches show up rather than getting smoothed away.
Even if you’ve set the app to miles, the height labels read m and the distance along the bottom reads km. The total distance in the sheet’s top-right corner does follow your units setting, so the two can disagree on the same screen. Worth knowing before it confuses you.
Why the menu item is sometimes missing
The Elevation Profile item is only built into the menu when there’s something worth showing. Three reasons it won’t be there:
No route is loaded
The commonest one. Close the planning sheet with the × and the route goes, and the menu item goes with it. Same when navigation finishes. Plan the route again and it comes back.
The route is flat
If the highest and lowest points of the whole ride are less than 5 metres apart, the app hides the chart rather than drawing a flat line and pretending it told you something. Ride the western suburbs and you may never see it. Head for the ranges and it appears.
Your map region has no height data
Elevation comes out of the routing data on your phone, not from a live lookup. If the region you’ve downloaded was built without height data, the route comes back with no elevation figures at all and the chart is hidden — exactly as if the ride were flat. Nothing is broken; there’s nothing to draw.
Plan the route on Road, look at the profile, then plan it again on Adventure and look again. The distance and time on the result card tell you the cost; the profile tells you what kind of cost it is. A route that’s 30 minutes longer and 800 metres of climbing is a different afternoon from one that’s 30 minutes longer and flat.
The elevation number on the map screen
The map screen’s bottom row carries a height figure with a small m under it. It isn’t the same thing as the chart, and it’s worth knowing which you’re looking at:
- While navigating a route with height data — it reads off the route profile at the point you’ve reached, so it matches the chart.
- Any other time — it’s the altitude your phone’s GPS is reporting. That figure wanders more than the road does, especially under trees or between buildings.
- A dash — neither is available yet. Usually the GPS hasn’t settled.
For deciding whether a climb is worth it, trust the chart. For knowing roughly how high the lookout you’re parked at is, the map-screen number is close enough.