Appreciation post: the ranger at Mount Rainier who told me to flip my map upside down
I was 2 miles into a 14 mile loop near Paradise last month, totally turned around at a trail junction, and he glanced at my map, flipped it 180 degrees, and said "you're holding it like a steering wheel, not a compass" which somehow fixed everything, and now I want to know if anyone else has gotten trail advice that simple that actually stuck.
Laughed way too hard at the steering wheel line because I have absolutely been that person. My version of this was a guy at a trailhead who watched me study the map for ten minutes, point at a random line, and then ask me if I was trying to get to the mountain or run away from it. Turns out I had been reading it upside down the whole time and the "wrong" way was actually the right way. Simple stuff like that sticks with you forever, way more than any fancy GPS ever did. That ranger deserves a raise for a one sentence fix.