Navigation/Route questions

Former Member over 8 years ago

1: I've watched videos of creating routes and downloading to the watch, most of these are cyclist and using streets to create their route. I will be hiking with no roads or trails and was wondering if I could create a route on the computer and then download that to the watch. I'm hiking public land with private land interspersed. I want to be sure I'm not trespassing by creating my route to walk around property lines.

2: Say I go for an unplanned/routed hike. Can I upload my path and saved way points from the watch (of this hike) to the computer and view them on an aerial map?

3: Say I see something in the distance that I may want to hike to in the future. Can I save an estimated way point on the watch for a coordinate that I'm not physically at to view at a later date?

I'm new to this and fairly ignorant about gps watches so please keep that in mind in your answers :) Thanks in advance.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

(1) I've hiked with my Fenix 3 and followed a route (in Garminland these are "courses"). I had done the hike before, so I built a course to follow from the previous track log. It worked well. Below is a photo of the watch on that hike, the map page shows what you've covered so far and what's to come, it also shoes you a little arrow for which direction to go. We hit the trail at around 4 am and had some trouble following the trail in the woods and the dark, the watch told me when we lost the trail at the end of a switchback.

(2) Any time you go for a hike or bike ride or swim or whatever, if you record it on the watch, it will wind up on the server with a pretty map and charts. The watch is a data logger. It's other things too, but it's a recording device.

(3) I haven't used either, but there are "project waypoint" and "sight and go" modes that are supposed to do what you say.

It will take some time, but also be worth it, to sit down and build a list of waypoints for the areas you hike regularly. These might be peaks, camps, trailheads, water sources, or anything else that will be relevant to you and help you orient yourself or gauge your progress. See the second image below.

Following a course while hiking:

No real destination, but fun. The watch has no course, but I've set up waypoints:

Elevation while following a course (bike this time), notice the red arrow telling me which way to go: