For this area beside the Blue Ridge Wilderness, I started out by adding what I knew of the Dangerous Park Trail and the Pueblo Park Interpretive Trail. There were a few miles of Dangerous Park already on the map, but they didn’t get all the way to the park. Unfortunately, the trail was diverging from what the Forest Service claims at the point I left it, so the little bit to the northern terminus includes guesswork. There’s some trail visible there.
I then worked on stuff in the wilderness and primitive area near the state line. It looks like someone has added in the trails from FS information (including attribution) in this area. I had a couple of adjustments based on my GPS, but the trail routes look good. I’m not sure if these are downloaded tracks or copied from the FSTopo. I’m seeing some changes between the two. The tracks that can be downloaded are more recent. I added signs to the mix. Guideposts and an information board. And parking.
I wanted to add the trails that connect to Dangerous Park, so I took the time to figure out downloading FS trail data again. There’s only about 4 different ways. Do they all connect to the same database or is it possible does one have to choose the right one to get the most recent data? All kinds of regulations are encoded into the tags on these trails. There’s also an indication of the state of the trail in “trail class”. Class 1 and 2 are generally represented here. Class 1 is minimally maintained and tread is intermittent and indistinct. Class 2 expects tread to be continuous, but still rough. Class 3 is continuous and obvious tread. These are trail_visibility statements! Always good to have that included.
So I got those trails added and while I was at it, I adjusted a few roads onto their route and added names and numbers. Lots of roads were called Saddle Mountain that are actually something else including a main one that is the Frisco Divide Road.
I also noticed that while someone added the bit of Dangerous Park I increased, they also added a line for WS Mountain, which heads south from the same area. I’m not sure why they did this as there was already a longer line for it already existing.
As I poke around the area to write this entry, I’m also seeing other things that need done. I didn’t add the information board that is by that trail or the little bit of road for parking at the trailhead and now I’ve seen a missing trail on the wilderness side. Oh dear.
Those not withstanding, I may be done with these edits. The earlier excursions were in Chiricahua, which has been mapped exceptionally well including trail visibility, SAC difficulty, trails are really on route, guideposts are there. Well, that’s what I remember from hiking it before, anyway. Maybe I should still check it? There were excursions along the CDT south of Lordsburg and the trail definitely isn’t perfect there, but I have limited feelings about the value of improving it. My personal improvements would be to move it so it climbs a thing once in a while instead of plodding along service roads for cattle water. It’s so much better when one gets high up. But that’s something to tell the folks who decide on the route and if they agree, then map it. There were excursions that were off trail. Nothing to map there.