How to Plan a Hiking Route With Distance and Elevation Gain

Most hikes that go wrong don't go wrong on the trail. They go wrong the evening before, when someone picks a route because it looked nice in a photo and never asked how far it was, how much it climbed or what time they'd need to start. A hiking route planner fixes that, but only if you give it the right questions.

This is the method we use before every day out: pick a realistic target, estimate the time, choose the shape of the route, then plan water, escape routes and daylight. At the end we'll walk through doing all of it in the TrailX Route Composer.

Start with two numbers: distance and climb

Distance on its own tells you very little. Ten kilometres along a river and ten kilometres up a mountain are completely different days. So we always plan with two numbers together: distance and total elevation gain (the sum of every uphill metre, not just the difference between start and summit).

The easiest way to set a target is to look back, not forward. Think of a recent hike that felt comfortable, where you finished tired but happy. Note its distance and climb. That's your baseline. For your next route, raise one of the two numbers, not both, and by a modest amount.

A few rough markers help:

• Under 300 m of climb: most of the effort is distance. Good for building up.
• 300–800 m: a proper hill day. You'll feel the climbs, and the descent starts to matter.
• Over 1,000 m: a big mountain day. Pacing, food and an early start become essential.

If you're browsing for ideas, TrailX trails list distance, total ascent and a difficulty grade on every page. The grade leans heavily on elevation gain and distance for hiking routes, so it's a useful first filter before you dig into the details.

Estimate your time with Naismith's rule

Once you have distance and climb, turn them into hours. The classic method is Naismith's rule, devised by a Scottish mountaineer in the 1890s and still the starting point for most hiking time estimates:

1. Allow 1 hour for every 5 km of distance.
2. Add 1 hour for every 600 m of ascent.
3. Add your breaks on top.

Here's how that works out on real routes from TrailX:

Look at the Spodnje Vetrno and Penobscot rows. They're only a kilometre apart in length, yet the extra 555 m of climb adds more than an hour. That's exactly why we never plan on distance alone.

Where Naismith goes wrong

Treat the result as a baseline, not a promise. The rule assumes a fit walker on reasonable paths, with a light pack and no stops. It doesn't account for:

• Rough ground: boulders, scree, roots and snow can halve your pace.
• Steep descents: the rule gives no time for going down, but a long, steep descent is slow and hard on the knees.
• Heat, altitude and heavy packs: all of them slow you down, sometimes a lot.
• Group pace: a group moves at the speed of its slowest member, plus the time it takes to regroup.

After a few hikes, compare your real times with the Naismith estimate and work out your own correction. Some people are consistently slower than the rule, some faster, and both are fine once you know it. If you want to see where on a route the time actually goes, our guide on how to read an elevation profile covers steep sections, false summits and descents in detail, so we won't repeat it here.

Loop or out-and-back?

The shape of a route changes how you plan it.

Loops give you new scenery the whole way and often feel shorter. The catch is commitment: once you're past the halfway point, turning back may be longer than carrying on. Check where the hard section sits. A loop with its steepest climb near the end is a very different day from one that gets it done early.

Out-and-back routes are simpler to manage. You know exactly what the return looks like, because you just walked it, and you can turn around at any point without getting lost. They're the better choice when you're testing a new distance or the weather is uncertain. Remember that a 10 km out-and-back means 5 km in and 5 km back, and that the climb you enjoyed on the way up becomes a descent on tired legs.

Point-to-point routes need transport at the far end. Plan that before you set off, including what happens if the last bus has already gone.

Plan water, bail-out points and daylight

A good plan isn't the route you hope to finish. It's the route plus every decision you'll need to make along the way.

Water

Work out where you can refill, not just how much to carry. On a long hot day you'll want far more than on a cool forest walk. If there's no reliable source on the route, carry it all from the start, and don't count on streams marked on a map in late summer. Our gear checklist is a good reminder of what else belongs in the pack.

Bail-out points

Mark two or three places where you could leave the route early: a road crossing, a hut, a lower path back to the valley, a bus stop. Know roughly how long each escape takes. If the weather turns or someone in the group is struggling, you won't have to think it through from scratch while tired. A topographic map is the best tool for spotting these, because contour lines show which side paths stay gentle and which drop steeply.

Daylight and turnaround time

Work backwards from sunset. Take your Naismith estimate, add breaks and a safety margin (we like at least an hour), and that tells you your latest sensible start time. Then set a turnaround time: the moment you head back regardless of where you are. On an out-and-back, that's simple. On a loop, set it at a point where you can still take a bail-out. We wrote more about why this habit matters in 10 small habits that make every hike better, and the TrailX safety guidelines cover what to leave with someone at home.

Using a hiking route planner: step by step in TrailX

Here's how we put all of this together in the Route Composer. Planning is free; you only need an account to export the GPX.

1. Choose the Hiking profile. The Composer has four profiles (Hiking, Cycling, On-Road and Off-Road). Hiking routes along footpaths, which is what you want.
2. Click the map to add stops. Start at the trailhead, then click along the way you want to go. You can add as many stops as you like, and each one is named automatically, which makes the route easy to read back. For a loop, finish near the start; for an out-and-back, add a stop at your turnaround point.
3. Read the numbers. The Composer shows distance and an elevation profile for the route. Run them through Naismith's rule and compare the result with the daylight you have.
4. Check the terrain. Turn on terrain relief (hillshade) or 3D terrain to see where the route climbs a ridge or drops into a valley. Switch base maps if you want a different view of paths and landmarks.
5. Look at the weather along the route. The forecast is shown along the line, not just at the trailhead, which matters on routes that go high.
6. Find water and bail-outs. Points of interest along the route help you spot huts, villages and other useful places to break or leave the route.
7. Compare two options. Build a second version, maybe a shorter variant or a different descent, and compare A and B side by side. Often the best plan is the one with the gentler descent, not the shortest distance.
8. Export the GPX. Save the route and load it onto your phone or GPS device. If you've never done that before, our step-by-step guide to creating a GPX route and the GPX on iPhone and Android guide walk you through it.

A quick A vs B example

Say you have a free afternoon and you're choosing between two loops: something like the Bukit Timah Hill Loop (9.8 km, 423 m) and the Penobscot Mountain and Jordan Pond Loop (12.2 km, 368 m). On paper the second is 2.4 km longer, so it should be the bigger day by a clear margin. Naismith narrows the gap: 2 h 40 against 3 h 03, only 23 minutes apart, because the shorter route climbs 55 m more.

When you compare two routes like this in the Composer, look past the totals to the profile. Where is the steepest part? Is the descent long and steady or short and steep? Which one gives you a way out halfway? Those answers usually decide it.

On the trail

A plan only helps if you can follow it. Download the map before you leave so you aren't relying on signal. In the TrailX app you can save regional maps and individual trails for offline use, get turn-by-turn voice navigation along a trail and an alert if you wander off route. Record your track, too: next time you sit down to plan, your real time against the Naismith estimate is the most useful number you'll have.

If you'd rather start from a route someone has already walked, browse hiking in the United States or hiking in the United Kingdom, open a trail you like and use its distance and climb as the starting point for your own plan. And once you've walked a route you're proud of, you can publish it on TrailX for the next hiker.

Where to next?

• Plan your route: open the Route Composer and try the Hiking profile.
• Read the climb: how to read an elevation profile before a hike.
• Use the map: route planning with a topographic map.
• Make the file: create a GPX route step by step.
• Find a trail: browse hiking destinations around the world.