I was planning some hiking trips for this summer that will involve travel in areas that have no trail data, at least in the TOPO 24K for the region.
I understand that if there's no trail data but I want to view some sort of route that uses the underlying map data, I can use the "route-to-track" option. That is, for A->B->C->D, where A->B and C->D have routing data, I can:
1. Make autoroutes for A->B and C->D
2. Convert those to tracks
3. Make a direct route (or a track) for B->C and
4. Join all of these track segments together to get one long track.
This works since my Oregon lets me follow a track.
Interestingly, I found that while tossing together a route that was off a trail, BaseCamp chose to do some direct routing in some places and not in others.
In this case, it went A->B->C->D->E and C was nowhere near a trail or any other routable point. So I got:
A->B - auto-routed on trail
B->C - direct-routed
C->D - direct-routed
D->E - auto-routed on trail
Then I tried this in another spot, but no luck, I got an auto-route that went up-and-down-and-around using trail autoroute data, essentially doubling the length of the hike.
Is this just a lucky fluke or is there some way to make BaseCamp forcibly go direct between two (off-road/trail) points of an otherwise auto-routed route?