Wildfire Smoke Tracking for Planning MTB Trips

The two best trail builders I work alongside in Southern California put in their vacation request months ago. Two and a half weeks of time off the tools, road tripping across California, Oregon, and Washington in the hopes of finding a few good days at Whistler post Crankworx.

My honest fear was that they were driving thousands of miles to ride brake bumps. That instinct is what decades of investing myself into this culture has instilled in me. It is clearly what it has instilled into others as well, since most trail mapping applications highlight “reviews” of trails as their primary feature - more or less becoming versions of Yelp that alert others to downed trees or rutting.

As the three of us wrapped up our current trail projects this week, prior to their departure on the weekend, they mentioned wildfires in Oregon as derailing two of their intended stops, and were completely in the dark as to whether smoke would impact the rest of their PNW leg of the trip.

By some serendipity, a call with onX Backcountry - the new face of MTB Project since acquiring it several years ago - to go over the results of a grant they awarded us to restore a fire scarred trail, led to chatter about their newest trail feature: Real time updates on wildfire locations, smoke direction, and air quality index (AQI).

Together with their layers of trail data sourced from locals in each region, data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), NASA, and MODIS multispectral satellite, the app can help users visualize near-real-time conditions–seeing a fire on the map, represented by a glowing yellow dot, well before its perimeter is reported to other general mapping applications.

The additional Wildfire Smoke Layer shows where smoke from those fires drifts and how dense that smoke is. This new computer model, sourced from NOAA’s rapid refresh weather model, is also updated hourly, providing onX users with color-coded visualizations of how dense smoke particles are in any given recreation areas.\

Speaking to Brian Riordan, the Senior Director of Geospatial at onX, it is clear that user safety is on equal footing with trail information at onX, in his words “It is our goal with this work to ensure onX app users can better understand where they can find clean air to recreate and places they should avoid.”

At the moment, 78 large wildfires are being managed with full suppression strategies across the United States. These wildfires have burned 2,404,053 acres and are being fought by over 27,200 wildland firefighters and support personnel.

While most are under control, summer is not over, and more fires are bound to crop up across North America and beyond. Each of these will contribute smoke across prevailing winds, impacting trail centers often hundreds if not thousands of miles away. If we can learn anything from a shift in priorities of tech companies in the cycling space, it is that the economy and culture of the sport is becoming ever more intertwined with the reality of summer riding trips having to account for a shifting wildfire regime.