# garmin oregon 450t and strava



## tim208 (Apr 23, 2010)

Hello

I am really new to gps and strava. I have never felt the need for a gps until a 130 mile solo river trip. the maps worked fine, but i thought a gps might be kind of cool. so i got an oregon450t and have not used it much. I also just joined strava. Is there a way to connect the two? 

do you download a strava app onto the oregon? Basically a noncomputer geek but very good in the woods is lost with this new technology, how do you do it? is the oregon not a good gps for this type of stuff? I know the oregon is not a fitness gps.

I have only needed a gps one time in my life, and that was to let the forest service know where a body was that was killed in an avalanche. 

thanks for the help.


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## Pedalfaraway (Jan 19, 2004)

*It will work fine.*

Your Oregon can upload files to strava just fine.

All you need to do is record a ride with it, and when you are finished connect the Oregon to your PC with the USB cable. Then go to strava.com, log in, and click the upload activity button in the upper right. If you have not downloaded and installed Garmin Communicator it will prompt you and give you a link that will allow you to do so.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Pedalfaraway said:


> Your Oregon can upload files to strava just fine.
> 
> All you need to do is record a ride with it, and when you are finished connect the Oregon to your PC with the USB cable. Then go to strava.com, log in, and click the upload activity button in the upper right. If you have not downloaded and installed Garmin Communicator it will prompt you and give you a link that will allow you to do so.


I just tried this with my Oregon and Strava does not recognize it directly. Neither does Garmin Connect. You have to do a manual upload. A couple of ways to do this.

Here's what I do and what I recommend:

I manage my GPS data on my computer with Topofusion. I keep copies of everything on my hard drive. That way, if an online service goes under or I want to switch or whatever, it's easy. I create a new folder for every year so I can sort everything. There's a button in the program (there's a download button in every program) that tells the software to search for activities on your GPS. The program gives you a dialog with all the activities in the "Active Log" or any new saved activities in the device. It does not show "autosave" progress if you set your device to autosave when the active log gets full. You click on the activities you want to save, and tell it to save selected activities. Then you choose where to put the files (and choose names for them), and those files then appear in Topofusion.

Now you should know where those files are. If not, Topofusion has a bar at the bottom that will show you. Go to Strava, then upload, then choose the manual upload option. Navigate to the folder containing your activity, select it, then upload it.

Another way of doing it that will be quicker for getting it on Strava, but will require you to do the other steps in reverse if you want a copy on your hard drive.

Your Oregon will appear as a removable hard drive on your computer. It will be assigned a drive letter. On my computer, it's drive L:, but on yours it should be something different. Go to Strava, select the upload activity button, then choose the manual upload option. Navigate to the drive for your GPS. If you have a removable memory card, there will be two. Choose the one with a "Garmin" folder, then go to the "gpx" folder, and then the "Current" folder. The file, "Current.gpx" will have the most recent activity you've done unless you saved it on the device.

Saved tracks will have the dates in the name in the gpx folder, along with other files you might want to load onto your device, like waypoints or geocaches or whatnot.

I don't recommend this method as much because it's easy to forget to save a local copy. You upload to Strava and think you're done. If you use a free Strava account, you can download your files individually, but not as a group and other folks with free accounts also cannot download your rides. You don't want to get stuck trying to figure out how to export a bunch of rides from Strava because you have overwritten the activities on your GPS already.

If you've done a long activity and have your Oregon auto-archiving, then those auto-archived track bits will go to the "Archive" folder. Dealing with those is a little more tricky, so just worry about getting a basic file uploaded first.


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## Pedalfaraway (Jan 19, 2004)

Works with mine. Maybe the latest communicator does not support the Oregon. I have not upgraded in a long time


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Pedalfaraway said:


> Works with mine. Maybe the latest communicator does not support the Oregon. I have not upgraded in a long time


On mine, it repeatedly tries to find my Forerunner 310XT, even though it's not connected, the ANT+ dongle is not attached to the computer, and it's not in the room. It refuses to find the Oregon that is on, plugged in, and detected by the computer.


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