How to decide whether an unmarked trail is correct to follow?

handyman_hank

I've been hiking/trekking for about 20 years now, and in the last few years more often than not, I have used the trails that are not really frequented. I tend to do those not so long (12-13 miles) loop hikes, where I start from point A, may be ascend/descend to point B, detour to point C and the take a different approach to point A. I have a habit of NOT relying on GPX/KML/KMZ files to blindly follow, instead I rely on conversations with local...

Originally asked by WedaPashi on Stack Exchange (outdoors) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

This is how I go about it, I might be wrong, weird and non-conventional than what you follow, but this is what I have learnt over the years, and I see a lot of hikers (that are certainly better than me) do. Eyeball it -- Pick the one that appears more frequented than the other. If a trail appears to be slightly better, then its better to follow it and improvise on it later if required. See if it follows the contour you want to be at -- I typically avoid going up or down the trail unnecessarily if I know that the contour where I am, and where I want to go is easily connectable, the people who engineered these trails decades ago are far better than us in understanding the contour and...

Full answer by WedaPashi: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/30439 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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