How current is your map?

“CAUTION, BACKPACKING THREAD FOLLOWS...

Planned a last-minute trip in the Sierra's this past weekend. We were to hike in to Barrett Lake from Wright's Lake. Since we would be skirting in & out of Desolation Wilderness on the west side, I relied a lot upon my Desolation Wilderness Trail Map, one of those Tom Harrison waterproof, tearproof jobs, for trip planning.

Well, to make a long story short we had some difficulty finding our cutoff trail from the Rockbound Trail. Finally found it, but had a lot of trouble staying on it...very poorly marked, and, after about 1.5 miles in no trail signes at all. In exasperation, we ended up bushwhacking out to find a OHV jeep trail on our own.

This bothered me a lot...losing your trail in this remote an area is not a good thing... Upon returning to the car, I pulled out my big map of the wilderness (usually don't take it as it weighs an extra 2 -3 oz's, LOL). Turns out that there are two trails shown on my Harrison Map that ARE NO LONGER THERE! They apparantly were left off about 2 years ago, because they were seldom used and are no longer being maintained. BUT...Tom Harrison is still selling these maps everywhere...

From now on, if I'm in a remote area like this, I'm going to check out the trail on a couple different maps!

BTW, TOPO still showed one of the two missing trails, but not the other. Better, but not great...”

“IMHO, Harrison maps should not be relied on exclusively for trail information. They definitely don't indicate switchbacks very well.

I am finding that you really have to look at two or three different maps and/or topo CDs, plus Secor to really nail down some of the lesser used the trails.

For example, the PCT south of Crabtree is something you think would be easy to find agreement on using most maps, yet several maps I have dissagree.”