Do I need an active plan to create new routes

What issues do you experience with creating courses in Explore app?

Note that Explore app creates courses, not routes, it may seem like an insignificant difference but in the world of Garmin it's an important difference. So in Explore app you create a course and the course will follow the roads and trails by default between the course points you place.

In Explore web you can only create routes, and the route in Explore web will consist of straight lines because Explore web does not calculate the path according to the map. This is done when you load the created route on a Garmin device, according to the active map on that device.

You do not need an active inRreach subscription for this functionality to work.

Whenever I try to create courses in my mobile app I click on a point on a trail and the course takes off in some weird off course loop or reroutes the last segment into a new path with an unnecessary loop. I try to grab the points and drag them but the whole map drags.

When I delete and re enter the points multiple times it keeps doing the same thing till I give up laughing at how ridiculous this is.

Ah yes, that happens sometimes unfortunately :( The app will sometimes use unexpected paths that don't make sense. And especially when editing an existing course, the course will often get messed up with straight segments.

I only use Explore app if I need to plan something ad hoc when outdoors. For all other course planning I use other platforms (Komoot and AllTrails, but there are others as well) and them import in the Explore app or directly in my device.

All I was trying to do was create a course I've ridden many times in the past on a river parkway to see how many miles it is. Gave up. I'll ride it again and see on connect or Strava.

Did you set the appropriate routing type when you were creating the course? I think default is hiking but you can switch to others (Road Cycling, Gravel Cycling, Mixed Surface Cycling, Mountain Biking, Running & Walking and Mountaineering). You can switch by selecting the middle of the three icons at the bottom of the view when creating a course.

It may give you better results (haven't tried it myself because I use Explore app only for hiking activities).