Hiking routes in a region

Signposted hiking trails are relations of type route=hiking. Their members are the paths they follow. Here they are searched in a bounding box around Zermatt.

The query

[out:json][timeout:60];
rel["route"="hiking"](45.95,7.65,46.07,7.85);
out geom;

Run it

Live result from overpass.ch, cached for up to 12 hours. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).

How it works

1. Routes are found when at least one member is inside the box, so long-distance trails come out whole.
2. The network tag says the level: iwn international, nwn national, rwn regional, lwn local.

Variations

• Only national trails: add ["network"="nwn"].
• Mountain hiking difficulty is on the paths: way["sac_scale"].
• Distance, ascent and descent of one route: elevation profile of a hiking route.

Run it from your code

curl https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter \
  --data-urlencode 'data@query.overpassql'

import requests

query = open("query.overpassql").read()
r = requests.post("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter",
                  data={"data": query}, timeout=120)
r.raise_for_status()
print(r.json()["elements"][:3])

const res = await fetch("https://api.overpass.ch/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/interpreter", {
  method: "POST",
  body: new URLSearchParams({ data: query }),
});
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(await res.text());
console.log(await res.json());

Save the query as query.overpassql. It works the same in Overpass Turbo, QGIS and JOSM.