Hello ​@ArneSchoeters 

Thanks for your post. It is possible to filter the heatmap on gravel rides only. I’m not clear on exactly what you’re suggesting here. If you could provide more clarification, that would be great.

When you filter the map for gravel. A lot of the roads that are highlighted are paved roads used by people when riding gravel (or for a winter ride on their gravel bike). By giving the option to exclude the roads that are used when filtering on the normal bike. You get a view of the gravel (unpaved) roads only. This would help a lot to actually get to know new gravel routes in an area where there aren’t a lot of good gravel roads. The busy paved roads light up so much the smaller less traveled gravel roads get lost.

Hello ​@ArneSchoeters 

Thanks so much for your reply. I’m not clear on how we would be able to create that filter, as we wouldn’t have a way to determine which bikes are “non gravel” bikes. For example many people have nicknames for their bikes on Strava, and we also have Athletes who don’t add their bike in our Gear section, so some activities set to “Gravel ride” but don’t have a bike attached. 

The only way I see to achieve something like that would be to include a surface type filter in the heatmap, that way paved roads could be excluded.

Hi ​@Jan_Mantau 

That’s a good point. We do currently offer a surface type filter as part of the segment search. Selecting “gravel ride” as the sport and then selecting the “unpaved” option updates the heatmap to show only unpaved sections:

​@Jane I just tried that but that only excludes segments on paved roads, the heatmap doesn’t change.

​@Jan_Mantau 

Yes, that’s true, but it can at least give a better sense of where the gravel actually is located, especially in segment heavy areas.

I think what OP is talking about is a heatmap, where only real gravel roads that are not regularly used by road bikes are highlighted.

You could achieve that by substracting the road heatmap from the gravel heatmap.