Distance + Waypoint Crib Sheets

When first starting to go hiking and backpacking, my planning ranged from non-existent at worst to minimal at best.

As the trip distances have increased and the proximity from civilization has decreased, the amount of planning and preparation has necessarily needed to grow.

recent crib sheet for a 44 mile day

In addition to a paper map, phone with mapping, and a watch for tracking distance, one of the items I’ve started to create and find immensely helpful for my routes is a crib sheet which lists waypoints with the distances between each (bonus points if I include an elevation profile).

Not anything particularly fancy, they typically consist of something like the following:

Point A
4.5 mi
Point B
3.2 mi
Point C

They are useful for a variety of reasons I can immediately think of:

Bite-sized distances: Because my usual daily runs tend to be around 7 miles or less, so having small waypoints helps me break down the daily distance into manageable chunks. It is hard to remember what 40 miles is like, but it is easy to remember what 3 miles is like.

Water stops: Knowing where water will be is one of the most important parts of any trip. Including those points on the crib sheet helps visualize how far between sources making it easier to know how much to filter and carry.

Nutrition breaks: When I know how far I have until the next stop and whether or not it is a climb, decent, or flat, it helps me know if I should push for another mile before refueling. Sometimes if I am near the top of a climb, I might wait to choke down a bar as I find it uncomfortable to eat while power hiking uphill.

No unwieldy maps: I love a good map and bring one with me, but pulling it out every 15 minutes because you can’t remember if the next stop is 1, 3, or 5 miles away gets old quickly.

Emergency scenarios: While I’ve not had any real SOS emergencies, I imagine that knowing the distances to important points on the route in front or behind me would be important should one occur.