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Does Strava have any sort of location based challenge? Example: a local hiking area has 30 "peaks" and we have a Facebook group tracking a group of people as they hit them. But it would be great if Strava had a feature where we could track them. It would make a lot more sense when tracking things like summiting mountains in hiking ranges, etc.

So does anything like this exist?

Hi @rblancarte, I appreciate your question here. Segments on Strava could be used in this way, though not necessarily as a challenge with a time-based constraint. If you create segments for the "peaks" (and the preferred routes) of choice, then you could track the leaderboard to see the publicly visible efforts on those segments over time, with some ability to filter by 'this month' or 'this week.' There are some constraints, though, as segments can only cover one route to the peak, and only apply to one eligible activity type. However, you could create segments for various routes to a peak, and for various activity types of interest. 

Further, you could create a club on Strava to build a community for the hiking area you have referenced so that athletes interested in climbing these peaks can compare efforts and connect with one another. Segments also have club filters so you can compare efforts from club members only. 

Would this work for your needs? I am curious to hear your feedback or to get additional insight about the functionality you would like to see. 



The problem is that not everything has a preferred route. The park in question has a number of hiking paths. So potentially you could have 30 or MORE segments to track because you could have 2 or more routes to each peak. This map shows the points in question and all of the routes around the park:

 

Separate segments would be a pain too, because instead of a single list showing a list of target points you would have 30 or more segments you would want to track. And some might be harder to track because for example you've hit #30 Whip Hill, but if you see a different segment than you did, you might think it's still on your list.

Ideally the goal here is a point tracker - you have 30, 50, X number of points to hit and then you target these. They don't have to be peaks, they could be a valley, a scenic point, anything.  You could see them on a map and identify which points you want to hit on a particular day easily. You would know which you lacked via the map OR the list. I think it's a completely different way to look at segments/challenges, etc


I second this idea for point-based accomplishments. Not sure it’d be unique to hiking, but can see that it’d be used a lot in that context. Also, I’d have to think that Strava could extrapolate data of users reaching defined points to generate (or recommend) segments - if not for performance tracking, perhaps for wayfinding. 


Yeah, this is great feedback! Currently, there isn't a way to create a challenge around a general area beyond a segment, including for challenges that we create internally. We'd love to hear more ideas from you and the athlete community as to how this functionality could be used.


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