Finding showshoe routes using Swiss OpenData and QGIS

Switzerland's great for winter activities, including snowshoeing. But finding somewhere to go can be frustrating.

Sites like SchweizMobil have a list of routes and useful information; length, total ascent/descent, route maps, and so on. But support for searching for routes that meet specific critieria is lacking.

In my case I wanted to find routes of between 5 and 12km, up to 300m of ascent, and taking no more than 4 hours. I'd like to see this on a map (so I can get a rough idea of where in the country they are), and quickly click between them as part of making a decision.

SchweizMobil doesn't support this sort of search, and you're left to scroll through routes, open them in different tabs, and eyeball some of the data to decide whether the route is suitable.

There's a better way. opendata.swiss provides all the necessary data under a range of licenses.

This data can be loaded in to QGIS, an open source desktop geographic information system (GIS) for displaying and manipulating map and related data.

Together this allows you to create your own personalised map of suitable routes.

At the end of this process you will be able to see a route on the map, including the elevation profile, like this:

elevation-pane-active-profile.png

Install and run QGIS

Install QGIS by following the instructions at the download page at the QGIS Web Site.

Launch QGIS after installation.

Install QGIS plugins

QGIS supports plugins that provide additional functionality, and we will use two:

Both of these plugins make it easy to load data from external sources directly into QGIS.

QuickMapServices displays data from OpenStreetMap directly in QGIS. We will use this to provide the map of Switzerland and routing.

Swiss Geo Downloader allows you to search for and import Swiss OpenData in QGIS.

There are other ways of accomplishing both of these tasks, the plugins make it straightforward.

To install these plugins:

  1. From the QGIS menu choose “Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins...”.
  2. Search for “QuickMapServices”, select it, and click “Install Plugin”.
  3. Search for “Swiss Geo Downloader”, select it, and click “Install Plugin”.
  4. The plugins dialog should look like this. The exact list of installed plugins may differ depending on the version of QGIS you have installed, but “QuickMapServices” and “Swiss Geo Downloader” should both be listed and checked. plugins-dialog.png
  5. Close the “Plugins” dialog.

Use OpenStreetMap as the base layer

  1. From the QGIS menu choose “Web > QuickMapServices > OSM > OSM Standard”.
  2. A world map should appear in QGIS, and the “OSM Standard” layer should appear in the “Layers” pane at the bottom left.
  3. Zoom in on Switzerland. It should look like this: switzerland-base-layer.png

Import snowshoe routes

  1. From the QGIS menu choose “Plugins > Swiss Geo Downloader > Swiss Geo Downloader”.
  2. You may be prompted to switch to the Swiss coordinate reference system, LV95. Choose “Yes”.
    1. If you are not already zoomed in to Switzerland the map will become very distorted. This is normal. The distortion will disappear when you zoom in on Switzerland
  3. A “Swiss Geo Downloader” window pane will open, with a search bar at the top.
  4. Enter “snowshoe” in the search bar.
  5. Choose the “Snowshoe trails” dataset from the results. Section 3 of the window should show “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” downloading-snowshoe-routes.png
  6. Click “Download”, and choose a directory when prompted.
  7. The “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” layer should appear in the “Layers” pane downloaded-snowshoe-routes.png

Improve visibility of the routes

The snowshoe routes may be difficult to view on the map. To improve their visibility:

  1. Double-click the “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” layer, to open the “Layer Properties” dialog.
  2. Adjust the colour, width, and other properties. For example, click “effect neon” and set the width to “1mm” to quickly make the routes stand out. layer-properties-symbology-neon.png
  3. The available routes should now be much more visible on the map: layer-properties-neon-applied.png

Filtering the routes

The map is currently showing all ~ 200 routes. To filter them to your own criteria:

  1. Right click the “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” layer and choose “Filter...” from the menu to open the “Query Builder” dialog.
  2. Use this to build a query for the routes you care about.

The query builder field names are in German, and have the following meanings:

For example, the following query filters to routes that are:

  1. Between 5km and 12km
  2. Have a maximum ascent of 300m
  3. Take 4 hours (4 * 60 = 240 minutes) or less
LaengeR >= 5 AND LaengeR <= 12 
AND HoeheAufR <= 300
AND ZeitStZiR <= 240

query-builder.png

After applying the filter the map will look like this (your map will look different if you used different filter criteria).

filtered-routes.png

View an elevation profile

QGIS can display elevation profiles for routes.

To activate this feature:

  1. Choose “View > Elevation Profile” from the menu.
  2. The “Elevation Profile” pane will open at the bottom of the display. elevation-panel-after-open.png
  3. Click the small “Capture Curve from Feature” button in the “Elevation Profile” pane. elevation-panel-capture-curve-from-feature.png
  4. On the map, find the route you want to see the elevation profile for.
  5. Click the route.
  6. The elevation profile for the route will appear. elevation-pane-active-profile.png

Click a route to open a web page

The “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” data also contains URLs for each route. QGIS can be configured to open that URL if you click the route.

  1. Right click the “schneeschuhwanderwege_2056.gpkg” layer and choose “Properties...” from the menu to open the “Layer Properties” dialog.
  2. Choose “Actions” from the list of properties on the left of the dialog.
  3. Click the green “+” button to open the “Add New Action” dialog.
  4. Use the following action settings:
    1. Type: “Open URL”
    2. Description: “Open SchweizMobil”
    3. Action Scopes: Check “Canvas”, leave other options unchecked
    4. Action Text: [% ChmURL_en %]
      1. This will open the English page. Other options are [% ChmURL_de], [% ChmURL_fr], [% ChmURL_it], or [% ChmURL_rm] for German, French, Italian, and Romansh respectively.
  5. Click “Ok” twice to dismiss both dialogs.

You can now enable the action in the QGIS toolbar.

add-new-action-dialog.png