If you find yourself in a situation at night, it's dark, the trail is faded and hard to see, here's an excellent method for moving as quickly as possible. This is a "military style" approach, and works best with three or more teammates.

Send one teammate ahead to scout the trail, keeping one teammate at the last known point (this is the "trail position", or sometimes called the "safety") on the trail. The third or fourth teammates (the "cover position") follow the lead or "point person". As soon as the point person validates the trail path, they stop and wait. The third and fourth teammates catch up to the point person.

Either the original point person moves out on the same tactic, or you send one of the cover persons out as the new point. While the new point person ranges out to find the next confirmed trail section, the safety moves up to the confirmed point.

The operation starts again.

If there's serious doubt about a trail section, you can send two points out, and leave one safety behind. Or, if the point and cover positions are pretty sure they are not on the right track, the safety can strike out on another path option, which restarts the process again very quickly. The safety then becomes the new point person, and the original cover positions continue after the new point, remaining in their cover position. The original point now becomes the new safety. In effect the safety has just leap frogged ahead as the new point.

Communication between all positions is key, and critical to keeping things runing smoothly. This also means you can't range out farther than it is easy to communicate back to your teammates.

This method allows you to quickly cover uncertain terrain and attack multiple route path choices as quickly as possible.

This method works best for trekking, but can be used for bicycle legs as well.