Not only did changes in NPS staffing and competing park priorities hinder such planning, such an effort might have to begin with what constituted a trail. Some “trails” were simply fire roads, though at no point did the NPS consider the entire network of motorways to be trails. Many of the motorways had simply been abandoned after 1971, while others were signed as trails even though little effort beyond sporadically brushing one of the two vehicle tracks. Where foot trails instead of roads had been constructed, only some of the routes could be called “engineered” as the product of location study followed by stationing, where calculations of curvature and grade were evident in addition to provisions for drainage devices and finish grading to check erosion. Building the “PCT Alternate,” for example, proceeded without the engineering step apart from what was already in place along the old Rim Road or trail segments such as the one to Discovery Point built during the 1930s. Some calculations of the park’s trail mileage included the paved walkways at Rim Village, Park Headquarters, and along Rim Drive (a total of three miles by one reckoning in 1974), though the figure for what the NPS maintained as unpaved trails could vary drastically depending on when or who did the reporting. In 1974, for instance, NPS officials figured that 41.3 miles of unpaved hiking trails were maintained for that purpose. Twenty years later, however, the maintained mileage supposedly shot upward to 85, at least according to the park superintendent.199
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| The route of an “alternate” Pacific Crest Trail as it appeared in the 1994 volume of Nature Notes from Crater Lake. Map by Susan Marvin, courtesy of the Crater Lake Natural History Association. |
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