Making plans, so checking on the many sources for good hikes in an area. First, because it’s Six Rivers National Forest (mainly), I glance over the Forest Service topographic maps. There’s not a lot of trails showing on there in the area, but there’s three heading up to a selection of lookouts. There’s also a bunch of quarter mile spurs. Why? What sense do these make?

I check the USGS, but these are generally older and the information was supplied by the Forest Service anyway.

For the basic well known things, check AllTrails. It says you can cross country up Black Lassic. (I knew that already.) A community content tab appeared a few years back and you can find some good things here sometimes, but it’s always buried in a load of strange. There’s a bunch of strange in this area. Strange strange. Usually there’s a lot of long bike rides, but not here. Someone has apparently hiked the river underneath the reservoir. That’s fancy.

Hiking Project will often have a different set of trails. Actually, I find this a much more useable app for finding trails. Some of that is because even the free version will let you easily have the whole state downloaded. (It’s funding by outdoor venders and if they encourage you to wear out your gear, you’ll buy more gear.) Unfortunately it only has the nearby National Recreation Trail I already know about.

Geocaching can actually be a good lead on hikes. I used to live by Ojai and trails that weren’t on the map would be lined with geocaches every tenth of a mile, which made finding them easy. And you know people go there because they did and left geocaches. Logs on those are often better about telling about the trail than AllTrails reviewers. Here, you might get someone marking either a start or a destination they think is awesome. It takes more work to find these hints, but they tend to be excellent when you do. (I had a great hike in Colorado getting to a geocache specifically set at someone’s special place. I was the second signer after 7 years, so I’m disappointed with my fellow finders. It really was a special place.)

Peakbagger is another niche way to sort out some possible hikes, specifically to peaks. (And lookouts. Good for lookouts, which are generally on peaks.)

And of course you’ve got to check OpenStreetMap. People drop trails on here that are found nowhere else. Okay, sometimes it’s nonsense. So I look at this southern portion of Trinity County… and it’s a web of residential roads. Someone went through marking a few of the big routes as tertiary roads and there’s even a secondary road. Most of those are only roughly along the actual road, and it’s not just an offset problem. And there’s only a few points to represent those roads. Humboldt to the west and Tehama to the east have much better marked roads, although they too are residential streets in this area. Those counties are richer. Trinity has one incorporated area in the whole county and it’s at the other end. Their single hospital is still at 100% utilization of ICU beds because there are 0 of them. (Counties in New Mexico are screaming, “Luxury!” Counties in the east aren’t understanding why this is important since everything in the next county is so close. It’s all relative.)

Anyway, the roads are WRONG. I must FIX them. And almost 5 12 hour days (after an hour on Saturday, I went out for the regular volunteering to pull out invasive marram grass from the sand dunes, then back) of correcting and adding and sometimes even subtracting, there’s still a lot to do. Finally looking at roads, I’ve learned a lot about roads. I’ll need to rewrite the bit on them I did for my blog post trying to encourage a reader or two into editing.

Eventually I’ll have to actually sort out my plan too. It’s hot out there and only getting hotter. Plus lightning. It’s also getting closer to when the Lassics lupine will bloom. Always good to look up the designated Wilderness and other special areas. You might find something exciting that way, too. I hope I get to see the Lassics lupine blooming.