On identifying the most time-saving walking route in a trackless mountainous terrain

A procedure is presented to find the most efficient walking route to inspect 16 rain gauges within a mountainous location on the Faeroe Islands. Measured walking times on varying slopes and crossing shallow rivers were used as inputs to establish a friction-based cost surface. Subsequently, a cost path analysis led to identification of a web of least-cost paths between the locations. Finally, the most time-saving route to visit all rain gauges in one round trip from the base camp was found using network optimizing software.