We're thrilled to release a number of updates to COTREX this summer to improve your ability to plan and navigate in Colorado's great outdoors. Location-based weather, a closure and alert subscription service, increased navigation and offline capabilities, and new GPX file download options are among a host of new and improved aspects of COTREX this year.
If you have an idea on how we can improve COTREX, please let us know using our new feature suggestion form. We use many of the public suggestions we receive as the basis for future feature improvements!
- New Public Support System
- Closure & Alert Subscription Service
- Weather Forecasts
- Custom Route GPX File Downloads
- GPS Direction Indicator
- Keep Screen On While App Active
- Changed "Star/Starred" to "Hearts/Likes"
- Sharing a link now includes the use type you have selected
- Accessibility and labeling improvements
- Minor search improvements
- Downloading a Featured Route is now one button
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New Features
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New Public Support System
This is where you are right now. :)
In order to more easily answer your questions and to provide you with easy resources to make the best use of COTREX, we've enhanced our public-facing support.
We plan to continuously update this portal with tips and tricks for how to best use COTREX, common questions, and product updates and announcements.
You can reach the portal at any time by heading to cotrex.zendesk.com.
If you have a question about any of our new or existing features, or just need help with something, email us at cotrex@state.co.us
You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional announcements, feature profiles, and other news.
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Closure & Alert Subscription Service
In March of this year we released the Closures & Alerts system. This system gives management agencies around the state the ability to post official trail closures and alerts on the map in COTREX. For more on closures and alerts generally, see our FAQ article on the subject.
As of this update, users with a COTREX account can now subscribe to select areas that are under active management by an official agency. Subscribing to actively managed areas will automatically send a push notification or weekly email to your account any time the official management agency (or COTREX staff) post a closure or alert notice in that area.
We hope that this service helps you stay abreast of the status of your favorite trails and parks, or places you plan to visit soon, so that you aren't disappointed by a closed trail!
For an up-to-date list of actively managed areas within COTREX, sign in to your account and go to your Followed Regions dashboard under Profile > Settings > Followed Regions.
For an overview of how to follow and manage your regions, click here.
- Note - While we currently only cover a small number of areas and agencies around the state - predominantly National Parks and city and county parks in the front range - we are constantly working with management agencies to expand our coverage for this service, so stay tuned for updates!
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Weather Forecasts
You can now check the weather for a specific GPS point or area using COTREX and weather.gov. Where applicable, a new weather button will appear in COTREX when browsing trail segments, trails, and points on the map. Tapping the "7-Day Weather Forecast" button will pull the GPS coordinate you are looking at to provide a detailed forecast for the area.
On longer trail segments, the weather forecast uses the highest point on the trail to determine the forecast to give you a sense of the most extreme possible weather for that trail segment.
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Custom Route GPX File Downloads
You can now download your Custom Routes as .gpx files for use in other applications. Previously Custom Routes could only be used within COTREX. In addition, .gpx files can be easily shared with others.
Check out our FAQ on downloading and importing .gpx files with COTREX here.
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GPS Direction Indicator
When location services are enabled, your location icon will now display the general direction you are currently facing with a blue cone. This will allow you to more easily determine which direction you should turn at trail intersections.
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Keep Screen on While App Active
You can now set COTREX to keep the screen on while the map is active, eliminating a common issue where users would need to regularly 'tap' their screen to keep their phone or tablet from turning off.
You can change this setting by logging in to COTREX on the mobile app and going to Profile > Settings and toggling this setting on.
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Major Updates
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Offline Measure Tool Update
Previously, the measure tool's feature where a line would 'snap' to the nearest trail to provide a contoured measurement was only available when in cell service. Using this measure tool outside of cell service would previously only give an "as the crow flies" distance between points.
This update now provides that 'snapping' contour feature while offline, providing significantly higher accuracy in mileage estimates when outside of cell service.
Note - The offline measure tool still does not include the elevation profile for measured sections (this is because including the elevation profiles offline would currently take up too much memory on certain devices).
Read more about the measure tool's online and offline capabilities in our FAQ article here.
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Coordinate Sharing Improvements
We've improved the ability to share coordinates with others on both web and mobile.
On mobile you can now scroll down to coordinates (always the last section on any trail or location selection) and tap the "share" icon to easily share a location with friends and family.
On web browsers you can now more easily copy lat/long coordinates with a "copy" button.
More on sharing coordinates in our FAQ article here.
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Minor Updates & Improvements
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Changed stars/starred to hearts/favorites
Previously both Featured Routes and your personal favorites used the same "star" symbology. In order to reduce confusion and usability, we’ve updated the “Starring/Starred” symbol to a heart, and renamed the "Starred" area "Likes"
As before, you can favorite an area by tapping on the heart icon (previously a star icon), and see the list of your favorite trips in the “Likes” section (previously called “Starred”) of your profile.
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Sharing a link now includes the use type you have selected
Previously, all links you shared from COTREX would default the map to whatever category the "share-ee" (the one opening the shared link) last viewed in COTREX, even if you (the share-er) selected a specific use type when you shared the link (like hiking, biking, or horseback riding).
This update ensures that the use type you select before sharing a link is reflected in the link for others. This means that if you share a link to a trail with the “hiking” activity type selected, others will be automatically defaulted to “hiking” when they open the link in COTREX.
This will reduce situations where, for example, you share a mountain biking trail with a friend, who then responds with "I don't see that trail" because they have "OHV" selected as their activity type (and therefore the trail is greyed out).
URLs generated by COTREX for sharing purposes will now contain the use type in the URL, like "trails.colorado.gov/trails/trail#activity=hike"
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Accessibility and labeling improvements
We’ve improved the visibility of one-way trail indicators, improved the labeling of one-way trail details when viewing trail segments (now showing uphill or downhill designations), and increased the maximum zoom level for the map for easier navigation at dense trail junctions. We have also slightly adjusted the colors of certain trail types to make them easier to see in dense networks and urban areas.
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Minor search improvements
Now when seeing suggested results of a search, the result will show the distance from your current location (when location services are enabled) to help you find the result you're looking for.
Also, when relevant we've included "closest city" to the suggested results to further narrow down results with duplicate or similar names.
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Downloading a Featured Route is now one button
Previously, if you downloaded a Featured Route you had to also make sure you manually toggled the map block for use outside of cell service.
Now, any time you download a Featured Route the relevant map block(s) will download automatically as well, eliminating the possibility that you have the route available offline, but not the underlying map details.