Trails on Maps vs reality

Alltrails is the same. This spring I was doing a long day hike and turned out a few km were through really difficult marsh and bushwacking, adding over an hour.  I think in this case the trail may have been passable in winter snowshoeing but they didn’t make that distinction.  I’ve also had the opposite from Alltrails, having to post hole nearly up to my knees 5km on a section of “winter” trail that was really a summer trail. That was brutal

Another time Alltrails showed a section as unconnected and impassable but in turns out there was a whole two track vehicle trail linking.  Made a big difference to my route.  Several times I’ve also found their trails to be completely overgrown or non existent.

You make do, but I’ve had to sew up shirts and deep clean footwear after improvising.

There’s many old trails where easy access has been cut off. They get to be overgrown or may revert back to animal trails with many offshoots and dead ends. They ended up being recorded and drawn into the geological maps. The map applications don’t necessarily weed them out.
Google Earth will give a decent view. Look for changes in vegetation. Often there’s a break between different shrubbery such as buckthorn and manzanita. Ridge lines and logical paths. Wear long pants and know somebody has been through there once. You might be the first person in 20 years.

Some guide books are decent. Others just list a whole bunch of trails. The rangers usually know best. Local hiker boards. If they can’t tell you much, it’s usually because not much is known.

I do a lot of exploration in my backpacking, and I really enjoy it. I often go back to the same wilderness areas many times and gradually build my knowledge about routes and geography. I’m happy for whatever information I can find from maps and guidebooks, but I don’t expect them to be perfectly accurate. However, I know that many backpackers are mainly focused on covering miles, so they depend on accurate information and well-marked trails.

I frequently find big discrepancies between trails on maps and trails on the ground. Some well-marked trails are on some maps and not others, and trails that are marked on some maps don’t exist in the real world. And obviously the specific route of a trail can deviate markedly from what you see on a map. Sometimes this is probably just due to the trail being re-routed. When I find major discrepancies, I often go back and map it carefully myself with waypoints. I’ve accumulated a lot of my own routes over the years.

That said, I think that USGS quads are probably the most conservative. I’ve rarely failed to find a trail marked on a quad, although the conditions can obviously be pretty bad due to deferred trail maintenance and routes may have changed over time. It can be fun to compare quads from different years, or to use old quads to find abandoned trails that may still be usable. However, there are a lot of decent trails that are missing on quads.

Gaia is pretty spotty. The Gaia maps often show trails that aren’t shown on quads, but they’re not always real in my experience. Sometimes you might find a social trail, but sometimes a trail on a Gaia map is a total fantasy.

And I have NEVER found calling a ranger station to be very helpful.

I find Apogee Mapping provides some very good hiking oriented 7.5’ quads. They are basically USGS quads enhanced for very clearly marked trails and shading that makes the topography pop. They are expensive at 10 bucks a pop at Avenza, the gps app we use, but I prefer them to the free, plain USGS quads if I use the area a lot. However after a season of hard summer rains some of the higher trails become more faint and overgrown. You can’t blame the map makers or guide books for that. It simply happens. We have also experienced some rock slides recently and they can do a number with trails and the occasional flash flooding can do a number on the route plans. I’ve found some Ranger Stations can offer good intel while a few have folks answering the phone who seem to be indoor oriented folks who don’t have a clue. But with some pressing I’ve gotten them to find a Ranger who can call back with very specific info. That and the hard core locals can help but it’s always an adventure. We keep a bigger radius of detailed maps than we will need so altering plans will work better.
Never found anything to be 100% accurate.

Good to know I’m not missing something obvious.

Also: Dan that is very similar to what I like to do and for a lot of the same reasons.

I kind of think I may go back to using TopoMaps+ instead of Gaia. One of the main reasons I switched was because I thought Gaia would be much more accurate since it’s used by so many more people. The look and feel of TopoMaps+ is buttery smooth and pretty. Plus is has an overly that let’s you know who’s land you’re on and if it’s private or public which I like for avoiding private property while bushwhacking.

Those Avenza maps do sound nice for my heavily trafficked areas for accuracy though.

A ranger will know if a trail is maintained. They may know a little about other trails. Often just hearsay. If they don’t know, very few will. The cowboys, the hunters, and the pot farmers and they’re not telling. Follow the drainage and straddle the ridge lines. Follow the animals. That’s how they were made in the first place. There’s trails everywhere.

>Follow the animals

Good advice.  Deer trails are gold when bushwacking fishing lakes, they gotta drink too and know the paths of least resistance through bluffs

And then you get the casual directions to an awesome off trail route miles away, from a trail passerby, to “go up, when you see the clearing in the trees”, at such and such point. Took me two seasons of trial and error to find that right clearing. All the mistakes lead to unintentional awesome adventures and that’s the way I look at it.

Years of people telling me that you can’t go that way, then proving them wrong.

I lean more towards calling the forest service has never produced very useful information

Look at satellite pictures

Some, more local websites with humans have useful current information

Some of the non-USFS trail data on Caltopo and Gaia comes from openstreetmaps.  This is a crowdsourced database.  I.e. it may only be as good as the contributors.  I did a hike in Dolly Sods three years ago and one of the trails shown on the maps no longer existed.  I suspect on purpose because it connected Dolly Sods to the adjacent wildlife refuge.  After bushwhacking some distance I found the old trail.  It was the only way to get back to my car without backtracking for miles.  When I got home I deleted that trail segment off of OSM.  I wish more people would participate in OSM.  It’s only as good as the people who are contributing to it.

I have never gotten good info from the forest service except when talking to a ranger out on the trail, and that is not not only not a common occurence, but obviously not useful for planning a trip other than the next one you take after you meet the ranger. I think if you want reliable recent trail info, then the best place is a discussion board specific to the area where you intend to go, as opposed to anything like Alltrails.

Many years ago I found the Green Trails map I was using had the trail on the wrong side of the creek.  I notified them of the error when I returned home.  Several years later they corrected the error and sent me a corrected version.

What designates a trail?

Many trails were once made by jeeps with winches, carrying chainsaws. Those on horseback. Backcountry bushwhackers tying together the bear trails. Every creek and every ridge is a trail changing with the snow and floods. They follow the contour lines on a map. It’s the path of least resistance. You pick most any spot on the map, somebody has probably been there.
The Forest Service can tell you about maintained trails. All the others, you have to find. Not through some app. When I hike backcountry, I don’t report to them. I may tell a few folks who I find responsible.

This problem is why Bryan Conant made his color-coded maps (different colors match up to how maintained the trail is, from well-maintained to “I couldn’t find the trail.”) and his website, Hike Los Padres. I always go there before I hike in the Los Padres to check comments about the trail or water or whatever.

There’s a plethora of online posts on well-travelled trails, but it would seem neglected trails wouldn’t have any online info even before calling the Forest Service (U.S.).  An acquaintance took a trail that was well marked on a Aldo Leopold wilderness map .. only to discover it probably hadn’t been worked on for ages .. maybe back when the CCC built the deng thing from near Hillsboro NM.

After poking around online., sometimes the FS is helpful and even a volunteer at the main station’s gift shop may have overheard something. A number of years ago, I was able to get info from the FS in New Mexico on which of their trails got regular maintenance vs those that didn’t (recall the Pecos had color coded maps at a major TH .. probably bleached out by now).  Of course those getting more visits by hikers, horse riders, etc.. got the most maintenance.
I posted elsewhere that trail maintenance was falling behind due to monies being reallocated to fight wildfires, so I always assume even a trail may end up like a military obstacle course.  Secure eyewear, full fingered gloves, tough pack, and will soon add nylon hiking/climbing pants to the gear list.

Here’s something that recently happened to me. I hike a trail near my home for fitness. It’s about 4.5 miles and 1000 ft of elevation gain round trip.

Last year parks and rec changed the trailhead name. This year they took the one trail, changed it into three different trail names, and changed all the signs. My Gaia topo has the original trail name. My old guidebook has the original name.  Frustrating.

I now use my old tracks to hike the same route before all the name changes. It was confusing. And old guide books won’t have the new names.