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Warning: a ranger in Yosemite told me I was planning my trip all wrong
I was at the visitor center last Friday, all excited to show him my 4-day loop near Cathedral Lakes. He looked at my map and just said, 'You're going to hate that third day. It's a 14-mile slog with zero water and you'll be facing the sun the whole time.' I'd only looked at the miles, not the actual trail details. He sketched out a different route on the back of a pamphlet that added a lake stop right in the middle. Has anyone else had a ranger totally save their trip from being miserable?
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the_morgan4mo ago
Rangers have saved my butt more than once. I was dead set on a summit hike in the Rockies until one pointed out the afternoon lightning storms that roll in like clockwork. He rerouted me to a lower ridge with better cover. That kind of on the ground knowledge is pure gold. You can stare at maps all day and miss the real world stuff that makes or breaks a hike.
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valgibson2mo ago
What about the stuff that changes day to day though? I ran into a ranger in the Wind Rivers who told me a beaver dam had washed out and flooded a creek crossing I planned to use later that same afternoon. Maps and trail conditions from last week didn't show it obviously, but he had just walked past it on patrol. That's the kind of real time update you can't get from a website.
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karen_martin4mo ago
Maps don't show where the bugs get really bad in July! A ranger in Maine once warned me off a campsite near a pond for that exact reason. Saved me from a swarming nightmare.
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