switchback

switch +‎ back, originally used to describe zigzag railways.

switchback (plural switchbacks)

1. A zigzag path, road or railway track; especially a railway track in which the train travels in a reverse direction at each switch [from 1860s]
   • 2019 April 25, Samanth Subramanian, “Hand dryers v paper towels: the surprisingly dirty fight for the right to dry your hands”, in The Guardian‎:

     Already, we enter some airport bathrooms through a brief switchback of walls, so that we don’t ever grasp a door handle.

2. A hairpin bend.
3. (dated, Britain) A roller coaster.

switchback (third-person singular simple present switchbacks, present participle switchbacking, simple past and past participle switchbacked)

1. (of a path etc) To zigzag.

   Synonym: zigzag

   • 2015 June 25, John Henderson, “A secret range of stunning mountains? Hikers, meet Slovakia's High Tatras”, in LA Times‎:

     I climbed 6,683-foot Velka Svistovka, not the highest mountain in the Tatras but arguably the one with the best view. I started from Zelene pleso chata (pleso means "lake" and chata means "hut" in Slovak), and right after turning the first corner I started switchbacking.

• dogleg
• hairpin

• switchback on Wikipedia.Wikipedia