Comments on: Tracks and Routes

By: Tom Gould

Tom Gould — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:15:33 +0000

A track is necessary, vs. a route, when navigating in Bush Alaska. A straight line between waypoints could get you killed by dropping you into open water, in the winter or run aground in the summer.

By: Adam Holladay

Adam Holladay — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:20:32 +0000

With a Garmin oregon 300 the distance from waypoint to waypoint is as “a crow flies in a straight line”. This gives a very deceptive distance. The “as a crow flies” will be 4 miles. In reality, the ACTUAL distance traveled could be 7 miles. When planning a 7 day backpacking trip on the CDT it is very important to know ACTUAL distance from start to finish! This will give the person a REALISTIC distance, thus they know how fast/slow they will have to travel to get from start to finish and a very good estimation of how much TIME it will take. The Delorme pn-40 will allow you to do this. A huge difference when planning an extended backpacking trip that covers 20-100 miles.

By: Rich Owings

Rich Owings — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 18:24:14 +0000

Paul,
On most mapping programs, creating a route between waypoints on a trail will give you the straight-line, as the crow flies segments mentioned above. On DeLorme Topo USA, you can actually route along the trail, giving you an accurate estimate of the distance you will travel. Which doesn’t help much in anything other than trip planning or creating a map. However, DeLorme’s GPS PN-20 can route along trails in the field. It comes bundled with Topo USA 6.0.
Love your photos BTW. Spent some time in the Palouse when my wife was at WSU.