Garmin Explorer+ Turning Waypoints into a Route/track

Waypoints are waypoints, not a route. With the waypoints, you can navigate from one to the next in the field, but you do have to know the correct order.

The "real" way to do this is to bring up the map at explore.garmin.com so you can visualize the waypoints. Involves making both waypoints (in the Library) and the specific collection containing the waypoints visible on the map. Now use the tools on the Explore web site to draw a route. Place the route in one of the collections which is sync-d to the device. Sync. You should now have a usable route on the device.

Sorry, I probably was not clear. What I meant to suggest originally was to manually draw a route on the map at explore.garmin.com by connecting the waypoints you've already uploaded.

Alternatively, if Alltrails has a track (as opposed to a collection of waypoints), you can export a .gpx track from Alltrails. Import it into the explore.garmin.com web site as a route. Add the route to a collection that syncs with the device. Sync. The route will be on the device.

This is what I tried to load as a GPX file: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/north-carolina/linville-gorge-loop

I got a bunch of error and then they showed up as waypoints.  Should I reach out to Garmin instead?

Not enough info. Allrails allows you download the route in a number of different formats, including gpx route and gpx track. Those are two different animals. In particular, in the explore universe, a route is limited to 200 points. If you get it from Alltrails as a track and upload to explore as a route, it SHOULD thin the track to produce something with few enough points to work as a route. Whether or not the result is usable depends on the topology of the original track. This loop does not appear to have a lot of switchbacks, which is the type of thing that causes the thinned route to not match the track well enough.

I do not know what will happen if you download from Alltrails as a route and upload that directly to explore. The original Alltrails route is likely to have the same number of points as the corresponding track - more than 200. If the upload to explore thins it, then all will be well. If not, you might get upload errors.

If you post the gpx file itself, I'll be happy to have a look. You might have to zip it up first. I can't remember if the forums allow posting .gpx as an attachment. They do allow .zip.

You can also try Garmin support. Since third-party data is involved, the amount of help you'll get probably depends on the particular support rep you get.

Linville Gorge Loop.gpx.zip

This contains a series of discrete waypoints and a long track. I'm at work and not in a position to do anything complicated with it right now. It looks to be well-formed. The only things I notice a quick scan are:

1) The file does contains both waypoints and the track. I don't THINK this is an issue for the explore web site import, but I don't know for sure. If all you got was the waypoints, you might try splitting the file and separately uploading the portion with the track.

2) Alltrails is unnecessarily (in most cases) expressing names and descriptions as CDATA. This is technically valid, but that does not mean that explore would find it acceptable. It's just unusual to see it. Probably standard for Alltrails, I've just never examined one in detail before.

3) The track itself has an empty name and description. The empty name, particularly, might be a problem for the explore site. Again, I don't know for sure, though.

4) Some of the waypoints have duplicate names. Explore MIGHT treat subsequent instances as a replacement for the prior one, rather than as a new waypoint. I really doubt this, but if you have missing waypoints, this might account for it. Or not.

5) The file doesn't use any schema extensions. That makes it about as vanilla and transportable as possible. This is a good thing.

If you can capture at least a few of the error messages that occur when you try to upload this to the Explore web site, that might tell us something.

Edited to add: The track looks to have maybe 2600 points. The explore site does have a track length limit, but I think it's 10,000. This one ought to be OK.

Lunch time on the day job. Just imported this as a track into my account. Got both the waypoints and the track. Although I'm not familiar with the area, the whole thing looks fine to me.

Did not try uploading directly as a route. However, I successfully converted the track (as a copy) to a route. That worked. The resulting route is obviously coarser than the track, but appears usable.

Not in a position to try syncing the route, but it ought to be fine.

Thanks!  I actually downloaded it as a GPX route and it seemed to load.