Route Planning

There are two main purposes for the route card. The first is to leave with a responsible person so in the event of your being overdue they can alert the rescue services. If you are back always make sure they are aware, similarly if you have changed your plans and will be late back, since this avoids un-necessary call-outs. The second is to give you an idea of how long sections will take, and allow you to adjust your route depending on time and conditions.g on time and conditions.

The description below is the type of route card I use in Snowdonia. Additions for walking with groups in other areas may include the noting of escape routes. The link is to a Microsoft Word document with an embedded Excel worksheet used to calculate the route. This next section should be read in conjunction with it.

The route card

The first line is the date for the walk followed by the start time and the party. These are self explanatory.
To open the route double click on it. The speed should be entered in kph and this is used for the rest of the plan.
There is space for 15 points, and for each the following can be entered:
1. A description of the location
2. The 6 figure grid reference for the point
3. The bearing to the next point
4. The distance to the next point
5. The height of the current point
6. The height gain to the next point
7. The time is calculated using the speed, and 10 min for every 100 m climbed
8. Extra time can be used to add time for descent or rest
9. The expected time is calculated based on the above given the starting time.
The total distance, height gain and time are given at the bottom of the route
The weather report for the day should be entered
Finally the latest time of arrival can be entered.

The links below is a route planning application I wrote three years ago. It enables you to
1. Set up parameters such as speed and map scale.
2. Apply rules such as Tranters rule
3. Enter a route
4. Edit a route
5. Print a route
6. Work out gradients, times, energy usage.
7. Print an accident report form.

There is no manual, however the software should be fairly self explanatory. Note that windows 95 is needed for the installation wizard version, although the program will run under DOS or Windows 3.1. For this reason a plain zip file has been included as well. This will run on any system with DOS or Windows (it was written on a 386 with 8MB of RAM!!). If using this please read the readme file. If you have any suggestions for improvements please e-mail me and I will do my best to accommodate your suggestions. If some of the program seems a little "over the top", I wrote it shortly after ML training, and was trying to help re-enforce some of the concepts from the course.
Note: Fitness is the time it takes you to climb 300m in 800m. It is used when applying Tranters correction to Naismiths rule. This correction allows for your fitness when calculating the total time for a route.

Back to navigation