A route can be drawn in a plain colour, or coloured along its length to show what the going is like. Open the Quality section of the route inspector and pick what the colours should measure.
Tick Show on map to draw the colours on the route line. The editor turns this on for you, so a route you are drawing is coloured as it grows.
Both measures use the same ramp, so green is always the easy end and red always the hard end.
| Colour | Surface | Ascent |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Good, made-up going | Under 5% |
| Yellow | Moderate | 5% to 9% |
| Orange | Poor | 9% to 14% |
| Red | Rough or soft | 14% and above |
The bar just above the verdict in the Quality section uses these same colours. It shows how much of the route falls in each band.
Surface colouring does not name a material. It grades how easy the ground is to travel, from the surface, smoothness and track-grade tags in OpenStreetMap. A well-kept gravel track can therefore come out greener than a broken paved lane.
Where a path carries no surface information at all, it lands in the middle band rather than being left out. Treat yellow as "not known to be bad" as much as "moderate".
Ascent colours by gradient, not by how high you are. A path at 2000 m runs green if it is level.
Climbing and descending are treated the same, so a steep drop is red exactly as a steep climb is. The gradient is averaged over about 30 m of route rather than taken between neighbouring points, which keeps one noisy elevation sample from painting a red streak across an easy path.
Tip: Ascent cannot be picked until the route has elevation data. If it is greyed out, the route has no heights yet.