Tuesday 1 November 2016

Garmin Etrex routes with more than 50 waypoints

I have a Garmin etrex 25 Touch.

Supposedly capable of creating routes with upto 250 waypoints, but boy this has had me beaten for ages.

So like most other people I have ended up following tracks, which are effectively breadcrumb trails. One disadvantage of this is that you get no aid other than looking at the GPS and seeing where you are & where you want to be. I.E. You get no beaps at turn points.

If I create a route with over 50 waypoints & load it on to the Etrex & try & follow it I get an error saying "Only 50 points can be used for follow road navigation".

I have now found a solution/work around that appears to work.

  1. on your etrex click on 'Routing' & set the Activity to 'Prompted'
  2. Create a track (not a route) using your chosen tool. I often use gpsies.com setting the number of points to < 250.
  3. open the track in Garmin's 'Basecamp' software
  4. right click in the track & select 'Create route from track'
  5. you can view the new route & note the number of waypoints is < 250. The activity in my case is set to 'Mountain Biking'. this is fine.
  6. using Basecamp copy the route to the Garmin etrex.
  7. turn on the etrex, & once in the chosen sport, MTB in my case, select 'Routes', then select the chosen new route, select 'Go', then instead of the annoying message, 'Max 50 points...' you get a menu & select 'Direct Routing'.
  8. & off you go

Happy navigating.