Hi, I'm a newcomer to the Garmin line, and I just bought an Etrex Touch 35, primarily to handhold while hiking. (I'll save my rant about how buggy it currently is for another post...I was warned about the dangers of being an early adopter, but I didn't listen.) My main purpose is to plot out my desired hiking path in Basecamp as a route, no matter how curvy and complex, and to transfer that route to my device and use it for navigation in the field. These hiking paths I'm creating are usually off-road, and not automatically routable, so I often use the "Direct Routing" profile and use many points to shape my route. For the most part, I have been successful. I either create the route by manually inputting points on the Basecamp map, or I create a track by dragging the pointer around the map and then let Basecamp convert that track to a route. And for the most part, I can usually get that route to show up on my Etrex Touch 35 unchanged. That's not the problem.
What I have NOT been able to figure out is this...I would like to accomplish this simple task, which seems natural for a hiker. I would like to create and shape my route with many points in Basecamp...I would like almost all of the points to be shaping points...I would like to edit, say, one point in the middle to be a regular via point and change the name of that point to, say, "Scenic Vista." Then, after transferring that route to my device, and while hiking that route with my Etrex Touch 35, I would like the route to follow the path as it was shaped in Basecamp, obeying the shaping points...But I would like the shaping points NOT to show up as blue pins all over the map, NOT to pop up in the guidance window on the map screen when navigating, NOT to be listed in the Active Route application, and NOT to be used for calculating Trip Computer data fields such as Distance to Next, Time to Next, ETA at Next, etc.
In other words, what I WOULD like to see when navigating this route is...I would like to look at the map of my route and only see icons for the starting point, the "Scenic Vista," and the ending point, but the shape of the route should still follow the shaping points...I would like the Active Route app to list just the starting point, the Scenic Vista, and the ending point (with distance to each), and the data field for Distance to Next should show my distance to the next regular via point, like the Scenic Vista, not the distance to the next shaping point.
I know I'm a beginner, so maybe this is a question everyone already knows the answer to, but two points are worth making:
1) Can I do this? If I can't do this, it seems absurd, because it's such a natural concept for a hiker who's using this device as a hiking GPS. The whole point of hiking off-road is to plot routes across the land and be able to shape that route as I wish. Usually the foot-paths I'll be following are not on the map, and sometimes there's no footpath at all, so the route is entirely in my hands when creating it in Basecamp. That means I'm going to end up with a lot of shaping points. Yes, the Etrex will follow the route, but what a mess it becomes if every shaping point becomes a normal via point after transfer! Data fields like "Distance to Next" are just going to keep calculating the distance to each and every shaping point along the way?? I may have 100 shaping points along the route! And if I select Active Route, I don't want to see all 100 shaping points! Holy mackerel!
2) What's curious is that I can almost accomplish this by creating a Track instead of a Route in Basecamp, transfer the Track (not the Route), and then navigate to the Track (instead of to a Route) on my device. Interestingly, I create my curvy, complex track in Basecamp...I transfer the track to my device...On my device, I select Where To? and I select the new track. Now, the Etrex appears to create a route from the track and overlays a magenta line on the map as the route. The route follows my desired path exactly...And what surprised me is that if I go to Active Route, the ONLY points shown are Starting Point, Ending Point, and then a couple of new points that the Etrex seems to gave generated on its own, namely High Point and Low Point (for the highest and lowest elevation points on the route). Sometimes, if the track goes up and down in elevation multiple times, the new route will include several new points labeled High Point, Low Point, High Point, etc. These are points I never had a hand in marking or creating myself. And, if I had previously loaded a Waypoint or two on the device which the track happens to cross, then the newly calculated route would also include those Waypoints as points in the Active Route (even though I had no hand in inserting those Waypoints into the route...the Etrex did it itself). Furthermore, these points and ONLY these points (Starting Point, High Point, Low Point, Ending Point, and possibly a Waypoint here or there) are the only points that show up on the Route map, they are the ONLY points that show up in Active Route, and my data field "Distance to Next" always shows my the distance to the next one of these points only. I'm not an expert, but I assume that the shaping points are still in the new route somewhere, because the path is shaped the way I want, but if they are there, I can't see them anymore, anywhere. That part is great. The reason why this method is not ideal for me is that after this route is created in this way on the device, I cannot edit the route (i.e. I cannot add a via point for a Scenic Vista, I cannot remove an undesirable marked point such as "High Point" if I don't want it, etc.) I appear to be stuck with whatever "points" the device has attributed to my Active Route. I could create a Waypoint for the Scenic Vista, have the device navigate to the track again, and hope that the Etrex includes the Scenic Vista in my new route, but if I end up with two High Points and one Low Point that I really don't care about, I have no control over that.
It seems like it should be possible to create the route the way I'm describing in Basecamp and have it appear correctly on my Etrex Touch 35. The fact that the Etrex can create a route from a track itself (with Where To? and then choosing a track), and maintain the desired curvy shape of the route but show only a few points (instead of dozens of shaping points), suggests to me that the device is capable of following shaping points without displaying them. I used this method just yesterday while hiking off-road through the woods (no foot-path)...I created the track in Basecamp, transferred to my device, used Where To? and selected the track on my device...The route created by the device was perfect, and as I walked the route, the Etrex compass constantly pointed me in the right direction along all the twists and turns of my route through the woods, even though I never once saw a "via point" on the map or in the Active Route list other than High Point, for example. But again, I had no control over adding or subtracting via points from the route the device generated.
Basically, all I want is that when my friend says, "Hey, how long until we get to the Scenic Vista?" (which is not my final destination), I should be able to look at my Trip Computer data field for "Distance to Next" and see the answer, as long as the Scenic Vista is the next major via point, without being distracted by dozens of shaping points or device-generated High Points and Low Points. (I also hope that the Distance to Next field would show the distance I'll travel along the route to my next via point, and not the straight-line distance which is irrelevant to me.)
Thank you so much for your time and help. I am so grateful to have found this forum...Trying to figure out the learning curve for these Garmin devices as a beginner has been extremely difficult. I sincerely appreciate your time in reading this long post.
- Dave
