Understand route and day outputs

TRIPS gives you two main ways to inspect a plan:

• route-level outputs
• day-level outputs

Both matter, but they answer different questions.

Route-level outputs

Route-level outputs help you understand the trip as a whole.

Use them when you want to answer questions like:

• Is this route broadly within my capacity?
• Which version of this plan looks more realistic?
• Is the route mostly limited by distance, steepness, load, time, or accumulated strain?

Route-level outputs are especially useful when comparing one itinerary against another or one set of assumptions against another.

If you want the full screenshot-driven walkthrough for the route-level cards and charts, read How to use route diagnostics.

Day-level outputs

Day-level outputs help you inspect the route one day at a time.

This is usually the most actionable planning view in TRIPS.

Use it to look for:

• unusually long days
• unusually hard climbs or descents
• backloaded days that hide the hardest terrain late
• days that consume too much time, energy, or margin

If one day looks disproportionately hard, the best next step is often to adjust campsite placement before changing physiology assumptions.

If you want the full screenshot-driven walkthrough for campsite controls, day-load lenses, focused day cards, and daily charts, read How to use day-level diagnostics.

How to read difficulty signals

TRIPS uses difficulty indicators to show where strain is concentrated.

You do not need to understand the internal math to use them well.

The practical question is:

Which days or route sections stand out as unusually demanding relative to the rest of the plan?

Use those signals comparatively:

• compare one day against another
• compare one itinerary against another
• compare conservative and aggressive input sets

These indicators are usually most useful as flags for where to look next, not as final judgments on their own.