In the past, I’ve only mapped the part of my large outings that specifically stood out as needing it when I got to the end. It means I haven’t mined the full potential of map updates possible based on my travels. However, after hiking the West Elk Wilderness, I was determined that I really should sort through every track and create improvements. New philosophy: The more I add, the more likely someone else will decide OSM is useful, except it needs some help here, and start adding too. Actually an old philosophy, but I’m trying to implement it more completely.

So what happened in West Elk?

I hike using a combination of maps. When I’m in a National Forest, I can use the georeferenced PDF files the Forest Service publishes. These are the new vector based national map (USGS) with FS data superimposed. They are supplied in 7.5” quadrants by the same names as the older USGS maps. I point OruxMaps at a folder of folders of all the maps for a degree square and it picks out the right one for the location I’m looking at and presents it. It’s a very nice system, but the quality of the data varies by forest and even by ranger district. Sometimes it’s a little off, sometimes a lot. It’s nice to have a second opinion. It’s also nice to have something that covers outside the forest. For that, I have Open Street Map, which I can take with me via the files at Open Andro Maps. These are supplied by state and I have all of them downloaded and try to update states I know I’ll visit before going. The accuracy of these varies by all sorts of things.

In West Elk, a number of trails are faint and the general nature of the FS to be only mostly in the right place became a problem. Additionally, there’s a few alternate routes that didn’t exist on the ground. OSM had everything that was real, even if faint, and was missing those trails that didn’t have so much as a cairn to mark them. It seemed to be right on.

That was nice except one of those trails that was on the FS map and missing on OSM was part of my plan. So I followed good trail and desperately needing the trees cleared trail and those few feet have slid away and I ended up going high and nearly getting into trouble on the peak trail and rerouted but not maintained trail and faint trail and maintained trail and soggy hail covered trail and came to the worry inducing area. The trail was indeed not there. It’s also open country and hikeable, but would be a whole lot easier with a trail. I tried finding trail a few times and failed. I might have been close to finding trail when I gave up and went for North Baldy.

After North Baldy, I started to get the first hint that the OSM wasn’t so perfect. I made my way down to the FS trail, which isn’t far from the peak, and found it quite definitely there over the pass. It was quite definitely there down the north side. It was getting iffy again, but following big cairns across the glacial valley where I eventually camped. Just before reaching well used trail, it vanishes again. The next morning, I made my own way to the trail quite a bit higher up than the intersection. I met hikers along the way and asked about the junction and they said they’d not seen anything. One had been noticing the cairns and so won a debate when I assured that they do correspond to a trail.

Now comes the area immediately around West Elk Peak where the tables have turned. OSM has extra trails that aren’t on FS maps. I debated with myself and ultimately decided to go up the peak, the wilderness high point. This was along a very nice informal trail that was marked on OSM. It gets faint in areas where the ridge is wide, but it is all easy travel, suitable to call a trail.

The trouble starts on that peak. We looked out and spotted a small fire started by the lightning of the day before. I know this is different, but I’m from southern California and I have looked out and spotted fires and started calculating “Is that along my one single route out?” before and I don’t like the idea of walking toward a fire. The day’s plan was walking toward that fire before turning away again. It also was going past this swampy area full of mosquitoes.

OSM offered an alternative! There’s trail over there on that ridge and down that way to catch where you want to be, it said. As the clouds gathered in for another round like the day before, I decided to go for it. I got as far as the class 2 knife edge which wasn’t at all comfortable with a full pack. Well, the route itself only needs a quick hand to get up and down as it goes. Does it become class 3 if a fall off the side can cause injury even if the route itself doesn’t need continuous hand and feet? Surely not, because then even some class 1 isn’t class 1. Anyway, I wasn’t having the exposed class 2.

Nothing had indicated that this trail would be different from the last. No one had bothered to note that it is not actually visible or marked. My software renders the “trail_visibility” attribute. No one had bothered to note that it isn’t just a walk. My software renders the SAC hiking scale too. Probably no one had bothered to note it’s informal, but my software doesn’t render that, at least not that I’ve noticed.

My impression was that someone had once had a fun hike that they liked very much and stuck on the map thinking it would be funny. It wasn’t feeling very funny at all as I headed back toward the wilderness high point with thunderheads looking like they wanted to get started any minute. Then I found my own way down and hiked toward the fire and across the swamp and up the side and experienced the mosquitoes.

Oh, and I camped just short of the well used camp that perhaps should have been marked too.

But wait, there’s more!

The next night I got distracted by talking with folks and ended up camping at a lake that is illegal to camp at. I don’t hold it against the OSM editors that they hadn’t marked it. I do think the FS should have. I found the rest of the broken sign to tell me of it the next morning. The destruction of the sign was from a falling tree rather than malicious. Unusual, I know. Malicious sign destruction seems all too common. Then I went off to follow some trails.

None of the trails went quite the way either map said. In fact, I seemed to have moved into an area where OSM lines were copied off USGS lines. I did this once, too, but have decided not to unless I can confirm them. The simple fact is they’re wrong. I know one spot where the 1966 map is correct but the 1974 had a trail moved over to the next, wrong canyon. It’s the most recent. Going up the wrong canyon, or even along the ridge instead of the canyon, pops up from time to time. I’ve seen a spot where a telephone line was removed to leave just the trail, which is marked with the same dashes, except they actually removed the trail over part of it. There’s lots of weird errors. Then there’s just the fact these trails move a bit. I eventually decided that there are other ways to hike on the USGS lines than by copying them over to OSM. In the forest, USGS lines often come from FS data and they tend to match unless the FS updated. (Honestly, I tend to take these matching as a bad sign for accuracy.)

I went around the side of the lake and caught the trail I thought I wanted. Well, I wanted the one that mysteriously doesn’t quite connect (per the map) but I knew definitely connected for what little was left of it from explorations the day before. Somewhere further along it would split again. One would go down a meadow area, but I wanted the other. It went through the trees and my ultimate determination was that not only did it not exist now, it had never existed anywhere near where shown. It was a difficult hike in beetle killed forest. That line on the FS map, well, these things happen. But that line on OSM? It shouldn’t have been drawn.

So I had a lot of edits I wanted to do even though the area was well covered in lines already.

Now that I’m finished writing up all the hiking from these last bunch of months, I’m stepping backwards through time and editing.