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Trail markers vanished after the storm, we got lost for 3 miles near Moab
We hiked the Copper Ridge loop last Saturday and every second wooden post was just gone, probably blown down or washed out. My GPS died about 40 minutes in so we had to rely on cairns and the sun, which was rough because the path splits three ways at the dry creek bed. Took us an extra 2 hours to get back to the truck, and my buddy keeps saying we should have turned around at the first missing marker. Has anyone else dealt with park crews being slow to replace markers after a big weather event, or do you always carry a paper map as backup?
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gray_gibson25d ago
The "we should have turned around at the first missing marker" line is easy to say after the fact, but that would have been the wrong call. Losing a few posts on a loop trail does not mean the trail is gone, it just means you pay more attention to the cairns, and cairns are honestly more reliable out there anyway since storms knock down wood but rocks stay put. Park crews can only do so much after a big weather event, they have hundreds of miles of trail and a small staff, so waiting on them to fix every post before you hike is not realistic. Your buddy wants a rule that makes him feel safe, but turning back every time a marker is missing means you never finish anything. If you had a map and knew how to read it, that dry creek split would not have cost you two hours.
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