Backpacker Magazine Continental Divide Trail Mapping Project
San Juan Wilderness - CDT - Wolf Creek Pass to Trout Lake out by Williams Creek - CO - August 2007
Trip theme: "Hey Bro" or "Can you believe how lame Backpacker Magazine is?"
This trip was "sponsored" by Backpacker magazine in an effort to definitively map the CDT from end to end. This sounds silly for an established trail but it turns out that the CDT is notoriously poorly marked on the trail and none of the existing maps are very accurate. Backpacker magazine had people apply to become part of the effort. The volunteers would map their section of trail with GPS, take lots of pictures, and write up a trip report. Backpacker would provide mapping support and give the volunteers lots of cool stuff for their troubles. Sounds good in theory, in application it didn't work out so good. Turns out that guys who publish magazines are terrible project managers. Our section had two groups assigned to the same piece of trail, unbeknownst to either group, and all the free goodies never turned up. And to boot our assigned section of trail was probably the best mapped/marked in Colorado. So the mapping thing was primarily a bust but we sure had a nice week long backpack in beautiful country any way.
I've included links to our official product so you can see what we did. If nothing else we have a nice week long trip laid out that someone could do complete with campsites and water locations.
Trimble Outdoors - CDT - Wolf Creek Pass to Trout Lake out by Williams Creek - This is the official product of our work as posted on Trimble Outdoors