[Talk-GB] Advice please: Goat tracks in mountain areas

[Mark Goodge]

On 06/02/2022 20:16, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Gruff Owen wrote:
>  > I'd very much appreciate your views on this and would be interested
>  > if similar Ways have been discussed in the past?
> 
> I've just discussed this with a qualified mountain leader with a lot of 
> experience of Snowdon. They say:
> 
> "I know this area pretty well and I don't believe it exists. The route 
> indicates it goes off on the outside of the final zigzag as you climb 
> the Pyg track. I've sat there many times waiting for groups and there 
> isn't a path off, on or near that corner.
> 
> "I suspect it's been picked up because the OS 1:25k map shows a grey 
> line of crags that could be mistaken for some kind of boundary, which in 
> turn lots of people mistake for a path."

It's not visible in the aerial view on Google, Esri or Bing, although 
the Pyg track very clearly is. There is something that looks like it 
might be a very faint track on Google's aerial view, but it doesn't 
follow the route that's been mapped on OSM and, I think, is just an 
artifact of the ground conditions.

> As such I don't see the value in keeping it in OSM. We have already 
> correctly recorded the legal possibility of walking it (i.e. it's within 
> an access land polygon). It isn't a path legally, historically, or on 
> the ground. The eastern end (alone) is perhaps an animal track, or a 
> line of crags, that the occasional walker has followed. There are 
> thousands of those on hillsides across Britain, and we don't map those 
> as paths either.
> 
> If Gruff and a local mountain leader don't believe it's a path, and it 
> doesn't have any particular legal path status, then we shouldn't keep it 
> as a path. OSM values on-the-ground survey above all else, and we have 
> two surveys here saying "not a path".

I'd be inclined to agree.

Mark