What is Summit Bag?
Summit Bag is a peak-bagging tool that automatically identifies the peaks and cols you've reached from your Strava activities. Connect your Strava account and it checks your rides and runs against a database of over 500,000 geographical features, building a collection of every summit and pass you've crossed. No manual logging.
There's a free tier and a Premium subscription. Summit Bag's public pages don't list the Premium price or spell out the free tier's limits; those are shown after you sign in.
It's a one-person project by Phil Bellamy. A first version launched in 2017 with only the Wainwrights and no map, and stopped working after a few months; he rebuilt it from scratch during the 2021 UK lockdown and relaunched it in November 2021.
Key Features
Automatic peak detection
Summit Bag checks whether your activity's route line passes within 70 metres of a known peak or col (a wider radius for a handful of popular peaks whose summit location is disputed) so summits get detected with no manual logging. In the UK and Ireland it draws on the Database of British and Irish Hills plus OpenStreetMap; everywhere else it uses named, height-tagged peaks from OpenStreetMap. The database syncs with those sources roughly quarterly, so a peak you add to OSM today shows up here in a few months rather than tomorrow.
Col recognition
Beyond peaks, Summit Bag tracks cols: the low point on a ridge between two summits, which is to say a mountain pass. That's the half of the product aimed at cyclists, since a Tourmalet or a Madeleine is a col rather than a peak.
Interactive map and list views
Your summits on a map or in a sortable list, from a lifetime view down to a single region. Premium adds a 3D satellite basemap.
Strava activity descriptions
Summit Bag can append the peaks you bagged to the activity's description on Strava. It's an option you enable yourself in settings (it's the reason the app asks for Strava's upload permission). Since December 2022 it can also add cumulative elevation-gain totals: yearly for running and hiking and for biking, and per winter season for ski touring.
Groups and leaderboards
Anyone can build their own groups. Leaderboards are Premium: top 100 athletes for a group, top 10 for an individual peak or col, covering the current and previous month.
Manual bags
Premium users can record a summit that never made it onto Strava, from the individual peak or col page.
Who It's For
- Trail runners and hikers working a list: the Munros, or a set of peaks and cols they build themselves
- Cyclists collecting cols rather than peaks
- People with long Strava histories, since the back catalogue is loaded in bulk when you sign up or go Premium
- Not people who want a standalone log. Peakbagger has its own database and manual logging; Summit Bag's whole premise is that Strava already has your GPS and should do the work
How much does Summit Bag cost?
The basic tier is free. Premium is a paid subscription, and its price isn't on Summit Bag's public pages; you see it after you sign in. Paddle handles the payments, the terms offer a refund for any reason within 14 days of your order, and you can cancel under Settings, then Subscription, keeping Premium until the paid term runs out.
What does the free tier actually give me?
Automatic detection from your Strava activities, and building your own groups, which the FAQ says is open to all users. Recording a bag by hand is Premium. The exact free-tier limits aren't on the public pages; they're shown after you sign in.
How does Summit Bag detect peaks?
It checks whether your activity's route line passes within 70 metres of a known peak or col, then adds any it finds to your collection automatically. A few popular peaks with debatable summit locations use a wider radius. Peak data comes from the Database of British and Irish Hills in the UK and Ireland, and from OpenStreetMap worldwide, refreshed roughly quarterly.
Why aren't my activities or peaks showing up?
Usually it's a permissions issue: you connected Strava but didn't grant permission to view your activities. Fix it under Settings, then Strava Link, which also lets you reconnect if the wrong Strava account is linked. Other causes are a very long activity with a low-detail route line, a temporary sync glitch.
How do I reprocess an activity?
Open the activity in Summit Bag and click "Reprocess Activity" under the map. Or rename the activity by a single character in Strava, which prompts Summit Bag to reprocess it. Reprocessing pulls a more detailed route line, which helps when a summit was missed.
Does it write anything to my Strava account?
Only if you switch it on. Summit Bag asks for Strava's upload permission so it can append bagged peaks to your activity descriptions, and that feature is disabled by default. You can leave it off and the rest of the app works normally.
Does Summit Bag work worldwide?
Yes, with a caveat about data quality. UK and Irish peaks come from the carefully curated Database of British and Irish Hills. Everywhere else, coverage is whatever OpenStreetMap has: named peaks with a recorded height, plus cols tagged as saddles or mountain passes. A summit nobody has tagged in OSM won't be detected anywhere in the world.
Does it work for running, cycling, and hiking?
Yes. Summit Bag works with any GPS-tracked outdoor activity on Strava. If your activity has GPS data and you reached a summit, Summit Bag will detect it.
