Planning a Trip with Terrain Navigator

Suppose that your friends gave you some vague directions about taking a series of logging roads to get to the trailhead. The trail wasn’t very well marked, but when they found it, it climbed steeply for a couple of miles to the summit. However, the last time you listened to your friends, the short pleasant hike that they described turned into an eight-hour death march through thick underbrush and straight up a rock face. This time, you decide to use Terrain Navigator to get a better picture of this little outing.

1. Look on the map for a trail. You want the one that goes to the summit of Fuji Mountain. (Only one trail goes to the top.) As you follow it down, you see that it intersects with an unimproved road — probably the logging road your friends told you about. The symbol for a trail on USGS maps is a single dashed line. Lines with two sets of dashes indicate an unimproved road.
2. Click the Marker tool on the toolbar, move the cursor to where the road intersects the trail, and click to create a waypoint for the trailhead (the beginning of the trail). The Marker tool looks like a pyramid. This creates a GPS waypoint at that location named Mrk1. Click the name and rename it Fuji Trailhead.
3. Use the Marker tool to create another GPS waypoint at the end of the trail. This marks a waypoint at the summit of Fuji Mountain. Rename this one Fuji Mountain (see how in Step 2). With these two GPS waypoints set, you now know where the trail starts and ends. If you’re using a GPS receiver, the first waypoint will help you find the trailhead, and the second waypoint will help you reach your final destination. You can manually enter the waypoints in your GPS receiver or have Terrain Navigator upload them for you. Be sure that the map datum matches the datum your GPS receiver is using.You can set the map datum in Terrain Navigator by choosing File➪Preferences➪General.
4. Click the Track tool on the toolbar to draw your planned course of travel on the map. The Track tool, which looks like a pencil, works by drawing a line from the last place you clicked. However, it doesn’t allow you to freehand draw like with a real pencil.
5. Follow the trail by clicking the mouse (like playing connect-the-dots). Trace the trail that heads up Fuji Mountain, starting at the road intersection. After you click, the current length (in feet or miles) of the track is displayed in the status bar below the map.
6. When you’re finished, right-click and choose Finish Track from the pop-up menu.
7. Edit the track, giving it a name and changing its color if you like. Move the cursor on the track that you just created, right-click, and choose Edit from the pop-up menu. You can now name the track (use Fuji) and change its color if you like. You can upload the waypoints and track data to your GPS receiver before you leave on the hike to help with your navigation. Use Terrain Navigator to turn a track into a route. A route is a course of travel that’s broken up into a series of waypoints that define segments of your trip. You navigate between the route waypoints to reach your final destination. Typically the number of track points is reduced when you convert a track to a route. Thus, there’s not as much detail, and you end up with straight lines instead of curves. If you want to upload a course of travel to your GPS receiver, it’s more efficient to use a route than a track. To convert a route, right-click a track and choose Create Route from the pop-up menu. Even if you don’t have a GPS receiver to which you can upload waypoint, route, or track data, you can use Terrain Navigator to find a trail, print a map of that trail to take with you, and determine the distance of your hike. Just remember to bring your compass!

You can upload data from topographic map programs to your GPS receiver or download waypoints, routes, and tracks from your GPS receiver to the map program. For example, you could overlay a track you recorded with your GPS receiver on the electronic map to see where you had been. Check the map program documentation or online help to find out how to interface your GPS receiver.