Took a shortcut through a cattle ranch in Montana and it saved me 3 miles of switchbacks

I was hiking the Bob Marshall Wilderness last month and totally misjudged a map contour line, ended up staring at a 600 foot drop. An old rancher on a quad told me to follow his fence line through a private easement instead of backtracking, and it cut my day down by 4 hours. Has anyone else gotten lucky with a random local pointing out a bypass off the official route?

3 comments

3 Comments

grace_allen2d ago

Tbh, private easements like that can cause access issues for other hikers down the road.

kim81923d ago

You ended up staring at a 600 foot drop" - man, I feel that. I did something similar in the Sierra Nevada once, took a "shortcut" down what looked like a gentle slope on the map and ended up sliding on my backside for a quarter mile with my pack scraping behind me like a sled. An old guy flyfishing down by the creek saw me limping through the willows and just pointed upstream with his rod, mumbling something about a game trail that cuts off two miles of riverbank. It saved my knees from another hour of tripping over roots, and I felt like a real idiot for not asking sooner. So yeah, random locals with shortcuts are basically trail angels in work boots.

irismartinez23d ago

Ngl, that old guy with the fly rod is basically a legend. I had a similar thing happen in the White Mountains once, a guy in a beat up pickup just waved me over and pointed at a faded trail marker I'd walked past three times. Saved me a whole extra mile of bushwhacking. Locals really do know the land better than any map.