Can you export all your hikes as one GPX file?
Yes — a GPX file is not limited to a single route, so a whole-history export is really just that: every hike you have recorded written into one file, one after another, instead of a folder you would otherwise have to manage by hand. The format does not change between the two kinds of export. What changes is how much is packed inside, and that has real consequences for what happens when another piece of software tries to read the file back.
The short answer
A GPX file can hold any number of tracks inside the same document, and each one is a complete, independent route with its own name and its own ordered list of points. Export a single hike and you get a file with one track in it. Export your whole history and you get a file with one track per hike, sitting one after another in the order they happened. Nothing about the format is different between a file with one track and a file with two hundred — both are perfectly ordinary GPX, just different sizes.
One track per hike, not one long track
This is a different kind of grouping from the segment breaks that can appear inside a single hike. A pause and resume during one walk can split that walk's own track into more than one segment, but it is still one track describing one outing. A whole-history file is the opposite kind of structure: a new track for every separate hike, often recorded weeks or months apart, with no assumption that any of them connect to each other at all. The two look similar in a text editor if you are not watching for it, but only one of them is describing a single walk.
What another piece of software actually does with the file
This is where the two kinds of export stop behaving the same way. A viewer built to handle a whole trip history draws every track it finds, often letting you switch a hike on or off individually or colour them apart from each other. A viewer or import form built around the idea that a GPX file is one activity behaves differently — plenty of them read only the first track in the file and quietly ignore the rest, which means uploading a file with a hundred hikes in it can come back out the other side as exactly one.
Worth checking before you rely on a whole-history export for anything: whether the place you are sending it to actually advertises multi-activity import, or whether it is a single-activity upload form that happens not to reject a bigger file. Both will accept the same GPX without complaint. Only one of them will hand you back everything that was in it.
Why the totals do not add up into one number
Distance, elevation gain and moving time are all calculated per track, from the points inside that one track alone, so a whole-history file does not carry a single combined distance for every hike you have ever recorded. Software that parses the tracks correctly still reports each hike's own numbers, exactly as if it had been exported alone. The failure mode to watch for is a tool that does not respect track boundaries at all, and instead treats every point in the file as one long, continuous walk — which can produce a straight line jumping between the end of one hike and the start of an unrelated one recorded somewhere else entirely, and a distance total that includes that jump as if someone had actually walked it.
Where TrailCam fits in
TrailCam can export a single route or your entire history in one action, as GPX 1.1 or as a CSV summary. A whole-history export writes each hike as its own track inside the file rather than flattening them into one continuous route, so the file stays honest about where one walk ends and the next begins. Export is part of the optional TrailCam Pro upgrade; the app itself is free to download.
Questions
- Does a whole-history GPX file get bigger the more you hike?
- Yes, but only because it is adding another complete track for each new hike, not because any existing hike changes size. A year of weekly walks produces a file that is roughly a year's worth of single-hike files added together, not a file that grows on its own.
- Will importing a whole-history file give me one giant activity or many separate ones?
- It depends entirely on where you send it. Software built to handle a trip history reads every track as its own activity. Many single-activity upload forms read only the first track in the file and ignore the rest, so the same file can behave very differently in two places.
- Can a whole-history GPX file be split back into one file per hike?
- Yes — since every hike is already its own separate track inside the file, splitting it apart is mostly a matter of writing each track out to its own file rather than cutting a single track in half partway through.
Recording your own routes
TrailCam is an iPhone app that records your route with GPS, keeps video clips, photos and voice notes pinned to the spot where you took them, and exports the result as GPX 1.1 or CSV. It is free to download.