I almost never ask myself that question because I almost never have a place in mind where I feel I need to be when I backpack.

I love having my GPS with me. I don't break it out as much as I used to when I first got one, but I do use it sometimes to help decide where I will go next or spend the night. I like my printed maps too, and almost always use them to view the bigger picture and my GPS mainly for quickly locating where I am on those maps if I want to figure out how far I have to go.

Since I don't spend a lot of time on trails, and rarely take a specified route, I tend to judge time and distance based on how long I've been moving and a general idea of the terrain I need to cover to get where I want to go. It's really more of a gut feeling I rely on than hard data.

If I'm heading back to the car I just make sure I have plenty of time to get there. On the rare occasions that I've found myself trying to beat the sundown back to my car I've always been able to pick up the pace, and since LED lighting I haven't had to worry much about that.

On the way back, there have been many more times that I really didn't have a very good idea of exactly how much further I had to go. Since I knew I had plenty of time it didn't really matter. I have been a bit disappointed more than once by getting back earlier than I really wanted to though, and kicked myself a bit for not meandering more on the way back. Whenever that happens I always ask myself the exact opposite of that question