As expected, there’s not much to worry about on the Mineral Belt Trail. It had some signs missing and has a few less now. There’s a picnic area that wasn’t marked. It was a boy scout project. (Says on the sign.) It includes sighting tubes for the local mountains! Ah, but how do you mark those? I gave it a go.

I hiked a big loop with Busk Creek and the Highline Trail and CDT. That first was a nice trail in terms of the area traversed. I was surprised. It was a very hard trail to follow. I was finding trail continuing along the east side of the creek after I should have crossed, then it just stopped suddenly. It didn’t fade and get hard to follow. It stopped. I had to circle back a little further than indicated to find a way across and soon came upon a trail marker on a tree on the far side. The trail is marked for winter use with orange diamonds and otherwise not marked. It was clearly a road once and further up it was obvious. It gets enough use that when the old road becomes impassible, there’s obvious trail heading up the hill and around. There’s very few markers in the middle and lots as it turns to cross the creek again. That was an odd crossing. There was a lattice bridge with the water flowing through it. It was built on 8x8s that didn’t quite reach to anything on the sides. Somehow it held my weight. There were pallets nearby, but it wasn’t actually built of them. The spot would not make a good ford. I decided to leave the line of trail that didn’t cross the creek since the crossing looked so uncomfortable (even if I did do it). Maybe there’s something there the person who drew it knew about? There’s hints that this line was an outright guess. It wasn’t well placed where trail was obvious (due to being obvious road of cleared rocks) and the first crossing wasn’t right and it didn’t get all the way to the road. I cut off that and moved the line to a closer spot and connected it and drew it along to where I’d found it. There was a larger orange marker at the top, but otherwise no signs. Onward, the only real problem was the extra name on the trail. (The trailhead is Native Lake but the trail is Highline.) There were some missed corners and missing sign. I’ve tried to find a real name for the trail the CDT follows, but it’s just CDT where I see it. It’s getting called Colorado Trail, which happens to also follow here, but the person is incorrect on which follows which. I couldn’t be bothered to change that.

I hiked Elbert. Also well mapped except a really big corner that was missed. There’s trail work happening to reroute the north trail to somewhere better and the first spot was this corner. The second is still happening and so the trail will have to be moved in time. There are some spots where someone marked small extra trails that parallel the main trail. How are these supposed to be useful? There’s extra trails just going a little way off, too, and maybe those are. It was named as a descriptions, so I gave it its proper name. The south trail has had its rerouting and even has that up! The name was right on this one even though it’s popular to call it east. Then there’s CDT labeled as CT again. Whatever. I looked for some proper other name and didn’t find it. There’s a few old logging roads in the area that are getting hiked and although I’d have found it good information to have them mapped, I didn’t decide to do it.

Someone who doesn’t know that anything over 3 on the SAC scale is climbing was marking the SAC scale at one point. There’s lots of equipment needed for trails that are no more than scrambling according to them. Some of that had been corrected. I didn’t tackle the rest…

Hiked a big loop over Galena Mountain and along a ridge and down from Deckers Lake. There’s an old trail with one trail marker to suggest it was official once. I decided to put it on as hard to find and informal. Otherwise, my route was on CDT and off trail. I did add the Bear Lake Trailhead and fix the roads to it and added the trail that connects to the CDT. It’s information I’d wanted and not found. The FS put the trailhead on the map, but it doesn’t have any trail and is hard to see exactly where it is supposed to be marking.

Hiked another loop over Buckeye Peak. This had a lot of off trail too. Back was along some roads that had a lot of transposed points. I fixed up the road system and added the tent cabins that Ski Cooper rent. They’re sort of tree houses but not quite. Actually added in some of the perennial creek that was just sort of missing while having seasonal stuff above. Other than moving water features away from trails to their actual location so the trail doesn’t randomly cross it when it doesn’t, I don’t normally touch water features.