Warning: The official mileage for the John Muir Trail is way off

I just finished the whole trail last month and tracked every step with my Garmin watch. The guidebooks say it's 211 miles, but my actual distance was 234 miles from Happy Isles to Whitney Portal, counting all the side trails to get water and camp. Has anyone else found their real hiking distance was way more than the map said?

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3 Comments

angela5876mo ago

Eh, maps never get it right anyway lol

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paigep856mo ago

My GPS tried to take me down a one way street the wrong way last Tuesday. It was a road that's been there for at least twenty years. How does the data get that messed up for so long? I've started double checking everything on my phone map with an old paper atlas I keep in the car.

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milarodriguez6mo ago

My cousin in Denver had her GPS try to route her through a fence where a road got removed five years ago. The map companies rely on people reporting errors, and if no one in that area bothers to send a correction, the bad data just sits there forever. I read that some of their street info still comes from old government surveys that are totally out of date. It makes you wonder what else is wrong on there that we just haven't found yet, doesn't it?

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