Route Choice
Planning a Route Across Backcountry Terrain
Route planning is the decision made before the compass comes out: given a start and a destination, which line across the map will the ground actually let you travel well? The straight line is rarely the fastest, and on complex terrain it is often the slowest.
Break the leg into segments
Long legs are easier to navigate as a sequence of short, confident moves than as one heroic bearing. Look at the leg and find natural breakpoints, a trail junction, the end of a lake, a ridge crossing, and treat each as a small navigation problem with its own technique.
Handrails
A handrail is a linear feature running roughly along your route that you can follow without precise navigation: a trail, a stream, a forest edge, the shoreline of a lake, or a fence line. Following a handrail is faster and far less error-prone than holding a bearing through trackless ground.
Catching features and attack points
Two ideas guard against overshooting:
- Catching feature: something obvious that lies just beyond your target, a road, a river, a sharp slope. If you reach it, you know you have gone too far and can turn back a known distance.
- Attack point: a clear feature close to the target that you can reach easily, from which you make a short, precise final approach. The hard navigation is reduced to the last short segment.
When the direct line is the slow line
In Canadian backcountry, the cost of the straight line is often vegetation and water. Dense regenerating forest, alder thickets, blowdown, and wetland can slow travel to a crawl and hide your features. A longer route that follows open ground, a ridge, or a shoreline frequently arrives sooner and with better position certainty.
Weighing options
| Route type | Faster when | Risk |
|---|---|---|
| Direct bearing | Open, gentle, short distance | Drift, dense cover, hidden climb |
| Handrail route | A linear feature parallels your line | Adds distance |
| Contour around | Steep ground between you and target | Easy to lose count of features |
Build the plan, then commit
A workable plan for a leg names the handrail, the attack point, the catching feature, and the final bearing, in that order. Once you commit, navigate the plan rather than constantly re-deciding; second-guessing mid-leg is where most position errors begin.
Always plan against current conditions: water levels, recent blowdown, snow, and seasonal closures change what the map promises. Treat the printed route as a starting hypothesis the ground will confirm or correct.