I was doing some blog gardening today and stumbled across a picture I took when hiking to Estes Cone back in 2017 with my wife. We were out there for a wedding, and my good friend was telling us it was a “casual” walk, to which my wife didn’t agree after we got back that night. Anyway, as I was doing my usual cleanup, I realized it would be great to find my Strava activity from that day, as I was almost 100% certain I had it from back then, which I did, using a Fitbit Surge. 😱

The problem was that the hike got split into two files: a 4 mile section and a 2 mile section, either due to user or watch error, as I can’t remember now. So, wanting to clean things up, I figured it would be great if I could combine these files and make one entry to link to on my blog from this post.

Enter GOTOES, the web based app that can track repair, merge, and edit GPS files. Honestly, it was as simple as that. I downloaded both of my original GPS files from Strava, deleted those Strava activities (if you don’t do that, when you try to upload the new file, it will say it’s a duplicate), used the Combine / Repair FIT, GPX, or TCX Files app from GOTOES to export a file that combined both of those activities, then uploaded it back to Strava to have a nice new combined activity that I could link to in my post to check out years down the road.

This is the second time I’ve really used these tools. Another time, my GPS got all out of sorts, and somehow these tools made sense of the corrupted data so it would show up in Strava with the correct map and data. Even after that first time, I saw the value here, so even though it’s only a couple of times a year that I use it, I donated to the cause. I really enjoy finding these tools that people spent time creating, even though it’s free, and I probably don’t need the enhanced features. But I want to see it stick around, and obviously, the person took time in building them for my benefit.