Oregon Hikers

With the new Google editing tools rolled out today, I was able to select that non-existent Warren Lake Trail that shows on Google maps.

I suggest about 20 more of us do that and maybe they’ll listen this time. I submit an edit like this about once a year for the last 5 years, but this new tool lets you select the particular segment you want to report.


I always say something about the terrain being rugged and it being a liability for them to have on their map. That their source map (mid 90s USGS) was wrong and never should have been there. blah blah blah.

Your map is zoomed in pretty close, but I think I know the trail you refer to. I keep thinking it would be fun to do a winter TR on that trail, pretend I was unable to follow it in the snow, but sure it must have been there, followed GPS as closely as possible. But other trips keep getting in the way. The problem here, as you mention, is that U$F$ says there's a trail, so who is Google to dispute that? Reminds me of the garbage map published by Nat Geo that shows a planned trail alignment in the Mt Hood National Forest, rather than the existing trail alignment, because Nat Geo sacrifices real verifiable truth in favor of an administrative plan. Reason 382 I think National Geographic is a joke.

I too have thought about taking a precision GPS out there to walk the trail and put a track on the map to forever confuse everyone who sees that trail then sees my track and just can’t find it in real life.

aiwetir wrote: ↑

March 12th, 2021, 6:21 pm

I too have thought about taking a precision GPS out there to walk the trail and put a track on the map to forever confuse everyone who sees that trail then sees my track and just can’t find it in real life.

You bastard!

Now you’ve got me thinking. Maybe we should just blaze a trail here and then there will be no more confusion.

aiwetir wrote: ↑

March 12th, 2021, 6:23 pm

Now you’ve got me thinking. Maybe we should just blaze a trail here and then there will be no more confusion.

Except that people will walk the trail and then later read posts online insisting there isn't and never was a trail there. I say we do it. Trail party!

and some people will complain we're ruining the wilderness

Yep, it's wilderness, guys. Just an extra degree of criminalization.

Like many others, I've attempted a recon of that "trail", nose to the ground, sniffing out the least vestige of a tread. Nothing there - but I suspect it was planned at some point and then forever after recycled by the cartographers.

bobcat wrote: ↑

March 14th, 2021, 4:49 pm

... I suspect it was planned at some point and then forever after recycled by the cartographers.

Sad that we live in an era where cartography has been reduced to the proliferation of data, regardless of whether it's valid.

The fake trail has been on USGS Gorge quads for something like 40 years, way before when any of this was thought of as "data." (I can't remember the earliest map I found it on, but I think maybe it was the 1987 USGS revision - they're all archived online now.) At this point, I don't think they're actually "updating" any of those maps, just recycling them into newer releases. (Eg, the 2013 USFS map for that area is the same as the older USGS one, just in scalable high resolution; the 2016 USFS is the same as the 2013 version but with better forest shading, etc.) Think of it like a cascading error, like the alignment of the 400 under Indian Point, or Moffett Creek trail. The real problem is when that error gets copied again into something digital and widely used, such as Google maps or Gaia.

Michael - any success with your push to remove it? The last time I tried to get a trail segment removed (the user trail to the ROA arch), the local Google maps powers that be restored it. Getting this stuff fixed seems a bit of a Sisyphean task. Why the USGS/USFS haven't removed it yet is beyond me (maybe they're waiting to hit 50 years of it being fake??), but is probably due to it not being a priority or budgets precluding revisions or something.