Creating a trip
How to create, configure, and manage trips in Trailkeep.
A trip is the central object in Trailkeep. It holds your itinerary, GPX route, waypoints, gear list, safety contacts, and shared link — everything that belongs to a single outing in one place.
Create a new trip
From the dashboard, open Plan → Trip and click Add (creates a new trip). Enter a trip name — Trailkeep creates Day 1 automatically.
Set start and end dates in the trip calendar when you are ready (departure and expected return). Dates drive the safety system's overdue alerts.
After the trip is created you can optionally add:
- More days — tap + Day. When dates are set, the button shows + Day (n/N) where n is how many itinerary days you have and N is your calendar span (for example (1/4) on a new four-day trip).
- Trail name and trail URL — links to the route page on AllTrails, Komoot, or similar
- Description — optional notes with basic formatting (bold, italic, lists, links; single line breaks preserved; 5,000 character maximum). Turn on via Show description in display preferences (see below).
Setting accurate dates matters for the safety system. The end date is what triggers overdue alerts for free accounts. Without an end date, automatic monitoring cannot activate.
Trip status
A trip has three statuses. Status does not change automatically based on dates — you control it manually:
- Planning — the default state; full editing available
- Active — tap Go on the Start tab when you hit the trail; arms return-by monitoring and sends your shared link live
- Completed — finish from the Start tab on return; cancels monitoring and closes the trip
To start or finish a trip, use the Start tab. Trip Planner is for planning and viewing completed archives.
Once a trip is set to Active, the shared edit link is locked — collaborators can no longer make changes. The trip owner can still edit. This prevents accidental changes to a live plan.
Days and itinerary
Each trip is made up of day rows — one per stage of your route. A day groups your waypoints for that stage.
Trip dates (start and end on the calendar) set your safety return window. Day rows are your itinerary and daily check-in slots. They can differ while you are planning; the + Day (n/N) counter helps you see when they do not match. When you start the trip from the Start tab, Trailkeep adds empty day rows if you have too few, but does not remove extra ones.
You can:
- Add days with + Day (n/N)
- Name each day (e.g. "Day 1 — Fort William to Kinlochleven")
- Check in during the trip from the Start tab only
- Reorder days using the up/down arrows on each day header
Reordering days
Use the up / down arrows on a day header to move that day earlier or later in the itinerary. The arrows are always visible on both desktop and mobile.
After you place a Day 1 trailhead or any waypoint on the map, you can still reorder days while the trip is in Planning — map-linked distances recalculate to match the new itinerary. Day reorder locks once you start the trip (Active) or after you complete it; duplicate the trip if you need a different structure on an active or archived trip. Uploading a GPX file alone does not lock reorder — only starting or finishing the trip does.
Waypoints within a day follow their day — they are not independently reordered by position. To insert a waypoint between two existing ones, use the + button that appears between waypoint rows (see Waypoints).
Trip summary
The trip summary card appears at the top of the Trip Planner and shows your total trip distance, broken down by day. When at least one section has waypoint distances, the Total row also shows a clock + duration sum (per-section Naismith estimates) and a total Active calorie figure — both summed across sections. If any section used a terrain-based climb guess, the moving-time total is prefixed with ~, same as on day cards. Totals sum each waypoint's leg distance (from the previous stop in that day). See Distances: map-calculated and manual and Day stats and active burn.
Per-section moving time and Active burn also appear in each day card's stats row (below the waypoint list). See Day stats.
The summary uses a stacked bar chart — a horizontal bar divided into proportional segments per day, with a list of days and their distances below it. There is no alternative chart view (the pie chart is Pack Planner only).
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Currency selector | Sets the currency symbol for waypoint costs across the trip |
| Distance unit | Sets the display unit (km or mi) |
To view the full GPX route on a map, open the Trail chip in the trip header and click the route preview in the Route file section. See Uploading a GPX file.
Clicking a day row in the breakdown scrolls the planner down to that day.
When you create a new trip, it inherits the distance unit and currency from whichever trip is currently open. If no trip is open, distance unit and currency use your saved defaults from signup, or miles and $ until those are set.
Linking a gear list
Every trip can be linked to a list from your Pack Planner. Once linked, the list is accessible from the trip view, included when you share the trip publicly, and its total weight feeds moving time and Active burn in each day section. Without a link, those estimates assume no pack load (not a generic default weight).
To link a list, open the trip in Plan → Trip and click the backpack chip in the metadata row (next to the calendar and trail controls). Select an existing list or clear the link. See Day stats for how pack weight affects estimates.
Importing a trip from CSV
You can restore a previously exported Trailkeep trip CSV via the user menu → Import → CSV file. Format is auto-detected from the # Trip: header. The trip always imports as Planning; GPX is not included — re-upload your track after import. Free accounts are limited to 3 itinerary days per trip on import as well as in the planner. See Importing data.
Deleting a trip
Open the three-dot menu on the trip card and select Delete. Deletion is permanent and removes all associated days, waypoints, GPX data, and the shared link.