TIL the hard way that trail maps on my phone can betray me in the Smokies

Last month I hiked the Gregory Bald loop in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and my phone's offline map kept showing a stream crossing that just didn't exist on the ground. I had checked three different apps before I left, all of them said there was a bridge about 4 miles in, but when I got there it was just a muddy gap with no bridge anywhere. I wasted 45 minutes bushwhacking upstream looking for a safe spot to cross, and the water was up to my thighs in late November. Turns out the trail rerouted two seasons ago and most map apps still had the old route listed, only the park's official PDF had the update. Now I always download the actual park service map for any route I do, even if it's just a backup, because my phone's GPS is useless when the trail data is wrong. Has anyone else run into outdated route info on a popular app that got them into a jam?

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danielr9922d ago

Yep, the "bridge" that doesn't exist is the worst kind of betrayal. I started triangulating with two offline maps plus the ranger station's paper copy after a similar thing in Shenandoah. Even the park's official PDF can lag, so I check the trail condition page on their site the morning of the hike now.