Background

Back in March, I posted this question on the Puzzling Stack Exchange asking how many clues were needed to create a 4x4 Hidato puzzle with a unique solution.

Sometime after this, I took a break from doing this until recently, when I decided to try to make a minimally clued 7x7 Hidato.

I have currently created the following 7x7 Hidato with 16 clues, and am currently working on figuring out whether this is the minimum or not.

Goal of Hidato

Fill the grid with consecutive numbers such that they connect orthogonally and diagonally.

The puzzle

+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
|1 |  |30|26|  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |20|  |
|  |35|  |  |  |  |19|
|37|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |39|13|  |  |  |49|
|40|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |42|43|46|10|  |7 |
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+