I'm currently thru hiking the Appalachian Trail, using a Garmin Fenix 7.
Every day, I create a route for my days trip, usually around 15 miles exclusively on the Appalachian trail. The easiest way I've found to do this is to use the route creator on the Android Garmin Connect app.
Unfortunately, like so much of the software from Garmin, it's broken in a way that makes it, and by extension the $800 watch that relies on it, useless. It seems that the route planner is only capable of routing on trails that have "popularity" on the heat map. This should be no problem, since the AT is literally one of if not the most traveled hiking paths in the world. Yet, tons of sections of the trail have gaps where the Garmin Connect app can't create a route on. The only way around this is to split up my days hike into several separate routes that exclude the section that isn't available. Alternatively, I can use "go to" on the watch to try and navigate, but that often results in erraneos routing that causes ClimbPro to not work correctly for some reason, so that's out of the question as well.
Here's how you can reproduce it: Create a custom route, set the first point on the Appalachian Trail in Erwin TN ( 36.1049726, -82.4485369 ), and then set the second point to the peak of Unaka Mountain ( 36.1338613, -82.2965559 ) and watch as Garmin Connect creates a convoluted route that goes onto the highway, all to avoid the gap that Garmin Connect seems to think exists on trail instead of just routing on the AT like it should.
I figured I could rely on a $800 piece of equipment for hiking on a well traveled path, but it seems like that was too much to ask (this is far from the only hair-pulling issue I've had with the watch and the app for the past 350 miles on trail).
Moderator: you'll need to use the course creation feature using Garmin Connect Web - https://connect.garmin.com/modern/courses