[Talk-us] Caliparks re-tagging paths?

Kevin Kenny kkenny2 at nycap.rr.com
Sat Mar 26 15:26:00 UTC 2016


On 03/25/2016 07:09 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> I wouldn't call it wiki-agitiation; anyone is welcome to propose
> something on the wiki - if this were done at the outset then we could
> have avoided all this brouhaha.
>
> Personally I don't quite understand the concept of a "social path". A
> path is a path is a path; if two paths look the same then we'll tag them
> both as e.g. highway=track or highway=footway or whatever is
> appropriate. If one of them is official and the other not, or if one of
> them is allowed to use and the other not, that can be shown through
> extra tags like access=* or operator=* or whatnot.
>
> I'm not sure what the legal status of a "social path" is, either. What
> does "this path is considered unauthorized" mean? Does it mean "we'll
> have police escort you elsewhere if we see you here", or does it just
> mean "you can't sue us if you trip and break your leg here"?
>
> In England there are situations where a public right of way goes through
> someone's garden. I'm sure the owner of the garden would love to somehow
> hide the way from the map... but do we?
>
> IMHO the contents of the highway tag would normally be something that
> can be determined from aerial imagery, without consulting the managing
> authority.
Frederik's comment sounds like an attempt to force-fit American
realities into a world view based on the European experience. We have
a wilder continent here, and our world is rather messier than what I
understand Europe to be.

There are enormous tracts in North America where the land is
government owned, and access is open to all comers. Many of these are
designated wilderness areas, where the land is supposed to give the
appearance of being "untrammeled by Man", where "Man is a visitor who
does not remain."

In these areas, a trail is a fairly tenuous thing. The marking may be
just a splash of paint or an axe cut on a tree, and even that may be
limited to once every few hundred metres. The path will likely not be
developed beyond some clearing of brush and hardening of the
treadway. The hardening is likely to be no more sophisticated than
moving some native stone or laying some split logs across muddy
spots. Few of these trails are visible from the air at all.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/14018094576 is pretty typical of a
well-marked trail. Splashes of paint like the one in the foreground
are typically the only waymarking for many kilometers. The treadway is
fairly obvious in the picture, but that was taken in early spring,
right after the thaw. I still had crampons in my pack, because I'd
needed them only a week earlier. The trail would be considerably more
obscure if the brush had had time to grow out, or if there were fresh
snow. (Snowpacks of a couple of metres are not unheard of in that
area, by the way.)

In most of these areas, it is perfectly lawful to travel off trail -
although it is extremely foolhardy to do so without proper equipment
and skills. Being off-trail more than a day's walk from the nearest
highway can leave a razor-thin safety margin. Nevertheless, there are
popular destinations, remote lakes and high peaks for example, that
have no official trails leading to them. ('Popular' here is a relative
term. If you are likely to run into another party in a day's hiking,
its "popular".)

Sometimes, the easier routes to a popular destination become visible
because people have broken through brush, moved blown-down tree limbs
aside, and trodden down low plant growth. These turn into what are
often called "herd paths" in the East and "social trails" in the
West.

In the New York state forests, which is where I do a lot of my hiking,
hikers are officially requested to avoid the use of herd paths. They
typically are not sustainable (for one thing, they usually climb
grades too steeply and become water channels), and they likewise are
difficult to follow (they do not have even the blaze every few hundred
metres, and they have a way of simply petering out). Moreover, they
make a visible human impact that is inconsistent with the "wilderness"
designation. Parties traveling off trail are also requested NOT to
walk in single file, so as to distribute their impact and keep from
forming new herd paths.

The trail maintainers in these areas routinely take actions to
disguise the turnoffs to herd paths - breaking cairns that mark them,
piling brush across them, and so on. Placing signage discouraging them
would most likely be worse. There is no signage on the official trails
except at the trailheads, registers, and some of the most major
junctions. (There are some herd paths whose use is officially
condoned, and others where the authorities turn a blind eye, but these
are exceptions.)

Even the "abandoned logging roads" are not what you might expect. Many
of them date from before the era of mechanized logging, and never in
their history had a wheel roll upon them. They were cleared just
enough that logs could be brought out on sleds in the deep snow of
winter. They would always have been oceans of brush and mud in the
summer.

I really am of two minds about mapping the herd paths. For one thing,
the authorities generally do not want them mapped, to discourage
use. For another thing, I'm not sure that the safety argument actually
holds water. https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/14038042332 is a
picture of a typical unofficial trail. To my eye, that abandoned road
is fairly obvious. Would it be as apparent to the typical visitor to
that forest? Would it be a safe shortcut or escape route? Doubtful.

The trail conference maps, the National Geographic ones, and so on
show only the handful of unofficial trails that are condoned or at
least accepted, and even they bear a prominent legend: "WARNING:
Unmaintained trails and woods roads shown on this map may be
indistinct and difficult or impossible to follow, even for experienced
hikers."

This isn't a matter of "get off my lawn." It's a matter of "there's no
promise that there's a path there at all."

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin




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