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[at-l] CDt

Kahley wrote "I've listened to a hiker who did it in 96
and I believe it was his experience that the trail does not yet exist
in anyway we generally think of.  Long stretches were neither opened
or maintained.  That is unless he had totally lost the trail....."

From my research, supposedly the trail is completed in Montana except for
two miles across a scree slope, mostly completed in colorado (though the
Official route is not always the best route and Jim Wolf recommends
alternate  trails), in Wyoming they are about to begin a study (20 years
after the trail was begun) to determine the route, (although the Wind River
section is pretty well determined), and in New Mexico they can't even get
people to talk about the route.  The Indians say not on our land, the
spanish land grant owners say not on our land, the mines say not on our
land, the Nature Conservancy says, not here, so the Forest Service says,
just follow the highway for a few hundred miles with no water. No problem.

The fun of the trail is that it is a pick your own route trail.  Every hike
is unique.  You look at the maps, determine your route, get out there,
change the route, get lost, find a new route, get snowed on, move to lower
elevations, etc.  The official mileage varies from 2700-3100 miles - and I
would say that there is no way of knowing how far you actually end up
hiking. You have to be flexible.  Some of the guidebooks are very old,
written before the trail was begun.  Part of the planning is reading old
newsletters to pick up ideas from people who have been out there.  "I went
over Mt. Taylor.  I went over ..."  Or the rancher who writes, I don't want
people on my land, so here's a possible way around it."  

To do it right you need over 300 USGS topo maps - we can't afford that,
either financially or to carry all that weight, so a lot of the planning is
done on forest service maps - which aren't topographic.

That's probably more than anyone needed to know - but I am very involved in
planning our trip two years from now - and very excited/scared.  We did take
map and compass courses and wilderness first aid - but it is still scary.

Ginny O.
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