re: maps,

[cburnett]

1. last I checked www.hikertrash.net maps are of 2003. what are peoples thoughts on them still be useful after 5 years of re routes?


2. are the guidebooks' maps any more recent?


3. JMT set, is it necessary if i'm not leading the herd?
"snow print"

[Token Civilian]

1) The trail doesn't change all that much over the years. Biggest change is around Glacier in Washington. I suggest the original route.

2) Doesn't really matter. They're plenty good enough. They're 50000:1 scale, better than the full color JMT set (at 62500:1) for navigating the trail on snow. In any event, the trail is quite well marked and unless you're in snow, you won't need maps to navigate per se. Follow the signs and description / narrative in the guide book.

3) No, they're not necessary no matter where you are in the herd. I was ahead of the main wave leaving KM in the high snow conditions of '06 - June 14th departure (but not the first by any stretch of the immangination - folks went in at least a week to 10 days ahead of me). Seldom did I have foot prints to follow (they appeard to melt out almost from day to day and even when I could see them, they were unreliable - how do you know the people who made them weren't lost?) I had the color map set and found that they weren't necessary. Due to the smaller scale compared to the guide book maps, they showed less detail, making them less useful for finding my way along the trail in the snow. The only thing they were useful for is that they showed a broader swath around the trail, including some of the bail out routes. By the day after Forrester they were stashed deep in my pack. I have a slighly used set for sale.......

In general, I'd suggest that the guide books, data book and yogi's on trail pages are all the paper work that folks would find useful. Even then, the data book is the readers digest version of the guide books. If you skip over the blah-blah-blah descriptions of geology and the flora and fauna, the description of the trail is pretty decent in the guide book. I used it, especially when the description pointed out potentially tricky junctions, camp sites and the like. Yogi's pages were quite useful to me for the town maps and water source descriptions / reliablity commentary. Some people argue they're not needed - I suppose in a strict sense, they're not NEEDED, but I found them quite handy and well worth the cost and weight.

[chai guy]

1. I ditched my guide book in favor of the Hiker Trash maps for the entire state of Oregon, and never used them for actual navigation (just glanced at them a few times in camp). I did end up taking a rather long detour back to the PCT just before the Oregon/Washington border which probably could have been avoided if I had the guide book, but it was no biggie.

2. The "maps" in the guidebook are essentially useless, they are too small to really see, they give you a general idea of where you are, but the pages are too small and the scale too large to really use them for actual navigation (imho). I just used the guide books for the narrative directions (and someone could make a fortune by simply cutting out the flora and fauna crap, as well as the personal opinion bs in those books and just stick to the facts).

3. I agree with Token, not neccessary. By the time you get to the JMT you'll be well versed in "reading" the trail, I also found that you're often not "on the trail" for the portions leading through the snowpack, in which case everyone blazes a new way, it's just a matter of finding a line. He's also right about those tricky trail junctions and campsites and fire roads leading into towns. The maps are generally useless when it comes to that stuff (again because of scale, those trail junctions never show up), and the guidebooks (I like Yogi's better than the others) are often a great help in those situations (with the exception being when they tell you to "go past the first jeep road to the better, more established jeep road" and you're standing at the junction of what appear to be 26 well develop jeep roads, WTF??)