Route Difficulty

Strava can estimate the difficulty level for hiking, walking, or trail running routes as easy, moderate, or difficult. Mountain biking and gravel biking routes can be categorized as easy, moderate, difficult, or extreme. We calculate route difficulty based on attributes like distance, elevation, and aggregated community completion time. Routes and sections of routes where athletes with more skill and ability tend to complete faster are generally deemed more difficult.

Routes are assigned an overall difficulty level but you can also view how the difficulty level may vary along the route from the route details page.

• The overall difficulty level can be seen from the Maps tab of the Strava mobile app for both suggested and saved routes. An easy, moderate, or difficult designation can be seen just above the route name.
• Tap See Details on any suggested or saved route of the qualifying sports types and scroll down to the “Terrain” section. Swipe to the difficulty map to see the route’s polyline displayed as a gradient of color based on the difficulty. Easier sections will be green, moderate sections will be blue and hard sections will be black.

Please be aware that route difficulty is unavailable on the Strava website or for the cycling sport type.