Do you find navigation/route finding easier when you’re hiking uphill, or downhill?
I feel like uphill is harder to find the correct path, but I tend to accidentally get off trail more often when going downhill.
There’s a hike I want to do that climbs a tall peak. It starts on a popular trail that ascends to a ridge. When the trail reaches a saddle between two peaks. The popular route turns right and follows the ridge to a different peak. The one that I want to do turns left and follows a faint trail to the peak I’m trying to bag. From the top of the peak, there’s another ridge trail (called Tiki Ridge) that leads down to nearly where you begin, turning it into a loop hike.
Tiki Ridge is super obscure and almost never hiked, so there’s not much of a trail on it. People who have done it describe the trail being really hard to follow, and have nearly cliffed-out by taking a wrong turn off the trail.
Since I know Tiki Ridge will be the harder portion of the loop navigation-wise, is it better to do that section going up and then loop down the popular trail, or do the popular trail up and then come down Tiki Ridge?