Contents: Routes, tracks and waypoints

Routes, tracks and waypoints
Routes
Tracks
Waypoints

Routes, tracks and waypoints

In the context of GPS navigation the words routes, tracks and waypoints have particular meanings. It’s worth understanding what they are before learning how they are saved in a ‘GPX’ file.

Routes

A ‘route’ is a series of points that you create in a route planner, that marks your route.

I think that’s exactly what you’d expect a route to be. These points normally mark the turns on your planned walk and a highlighted route will help you navigate your hike accurately.

A simple manual plot will draw straight lines between the points in the order that you create them. All the points’ positions are saved very precisely using latitude and longitude coordinates. If you use enough of them, you can plot your intended route very accurately. Some route planners may save elevation information with the route points. Although not essential, this can be useful for providing height related information.

Something like 100 route points might be enough to mark your route accurately for a day out in the mountains. Once all the points are plotted, the route may be saved and used for navigating with.

The left hand image above shows part of a route being plotted around the Carn Mor Dearg arete, up Ben Nevis and down the easier zig-zags. The green triangles mark the plotted route points and they are numbered in the order they should be walked. The second image shows the final saved ‘route’. It closely follows the paths. Should you choose to use my favourite yellow/red colour scheme then you can’t mistake the route for a contour or a stream.  

The third image shows a very zoomed-in view of Ben Nevis’s summit and the cliffs around Gardyloo Gully. Almost certainly corniced in winter it should be given a wide berth. The map shows the individual cairns that mark a safe line and the saved route errs on the cautious side. That could be safely followed in a whiteout and the summit cairns would be about 20m to your right as you walked.

A highlighted route makes accurate navigation easy.

Tracks

A ‘track’ is a series of points, recorded at frequent intervals by your GPS device of your activity. eg A walk or bike ride. 

Your GPS handheld or phone will record exactly where you are at regular intervals, creating an electronic breadcrumb trail. Those breadcrumbs are called track points. Every time the GPS records a track point position, it will also include the date, the exact time of day and your elevation in the track point information.

Depending on the device or app, you can choose to have the recorded track showing as you go, or not. The track points appear as a continuous line. At the end of a day the recorded track may be saved as a GPX track file.

If I want a fairly accurate record of my walk for the day, my Garmin eTrex 20x will record a track point every 10 metres. A I0 km walk would result in 1000 track points being recorded. The Garmin will also record a track using a fixed time interval. As often as every second is possible or it has an ‘auto’ mode where it will make intelligent decisions about when to record trackpoints. A few phone apps may have similar options (Locus Map 4 and OsmAnd both offer tracking interval settings).

The time of day and elevation information recorded with track points means tracks can be used to analyse your day out. eg Speed can be calculated and so animated 3D visualisations work very well with tracks.

The picture above shows a track I recorded whilst flying my paraglider over the mountains in the Lake District.  The track elevation data shows the upward spirals I flew to gain height in hotter rising air. An animated 3D visualisation would also show the paraglider slowing down or speeding up because of the timestamps accompanying the track points. Similarly, 3D visualisations of hikes over mountains work well.

A keen fell runner could use the track to see how long it took to do different mountain sections; how much height gain or descent was involved etc.   

Waypoints

‘Waypoints’ are standalone points that are not part of a route or a track. Independent spot locations. They might be used to mark mountain peaks, water sources or a camping spot.

As a minimum, a waypoint will have lat/long coordinates to describe its position. However associated information can include a name, comment, description, elevation, time, symbol and what type of waypoint it is. eg You could mark a camp spot with a tent symbol and a mountain summit with a peak symbol.

If wild camping on a dark and misty night and you need to go on a hunt for water, not being able to find the tent on the return journey is a danger. Your tent might be pitched hundreds of metres from your route or a water source. You might use a standalone waypoint to mark the tent before you head into the mist.  

If you’re peak bagging you could mark all the peaks with waypoints.