After completing a multi-day hike I did with my family in the Austrian Alps I felt inspired by Elizabeth Easter to visualize our four-day trek above the valley floor and eventually up the glacier to the summit of the Großvenediger (3666m a.s.l.) using R and Rayshader
I did not track the route using a smartwatch in this case as I do not own one, I have simply created a route on Alpenvereinaktiv.de From there the .gpx file is available for download. However, you can easily modify this script to accept .gpx files exported from your phone, watch or GPS device.
A rectangular bounding box is created around the coordinates of the gps route. To create a 3D representation of the mountains, elevation data is downloaded from Amazon Web Services Terrain Tiles using the elevatr package
A satellite image overlay is downloaded using the ArcGIS REST API with some help from functions written by Will Bishop
Finally, the 3D object is plotted with rgl and shading is added using the rayshader package, some labels are added and the route is progressively rendered.
The resulting .png files can then be combined into a video or .gif using your favourite software, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CC.
The final video can be found on YouTube