[wiki summary]

Among other thought provoking questions... should you post pictures for the 2018 NWH Calendar? Reminder: Deadline is Nov 15, 2017!

[Bernardo]

I was hiking on a not so secret trail not so long ago where I normally don't see any one, but where I do sometimes see somebody. I've been going there for years. Well on this occasion, I ran into a party of elderly hikers and a rather polished looking woman stopped me and I felt snootily asked how come I knew about this trail. I feel like I would have met her expectation if I had said, I just moved here a week ago and found this GPS track online and that's why I'm here, and, by the way, I can't wait to get home and tell my 500 closest friends tonight on Facebook. Instead, I just laughed at the foolishness of her question and said accurately I've been coming here for years. In our short interaction, I was left with a sense she had a huge sense of entitlement. The very nature of her question indicated to me she didn't really know what was going on with this trail which I knew based on my frequent use saw some routine amount of traffic and that total solitude was not to be expected. Anyway, this thread reminded me of that incident. She had probably been using the trail once in a while her while long life and had an unrealistic view of the wilderness in Pugetopolis.

[neek]

One reason I can think of for not posting detailed route data is liability. While the site disclaimer claims to apply to posters, viewers aren't required to acknowledge it and I don't know if it would hold up in court. Sorry, but it's the world we live in. Aside from that, of course discretion should be used. The compromise I use is to manually sketch in a route and note that it's very approximate. Probably not good enough for everyone's taste, but good enough for me. It's also probably worth asking yourself "what is the point of this TR, ego boost or genuine utility?" before submitting one, and having the courage to not post if there is doubt. Attempts at obfuscation can backfire though. Every time Bootpathguy posts, the first thing I do is try to figure out where it is. In the process I learn about the area and then want to go there. Also, the most compelling TRs will attract the most eyeballs, and therefore the most boots (if the relationship is proportional) - so make yours as boring as possible, with ugly pictures! Unrelated, I wish this site didn't allow normal users to create polls. While this thread has generated an interesting discussion, some people who run across the yes/no results might not realize that an ambiguous question administered with no sampling strategy is completely meaningless.

[Kim Brown]