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Buck30 - Other Trail Journal - 2024

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Brian (Buck-30)
Begins: Apr 3, 2024
Direction: Westbound

Daily Summary
Date: Wed, Sep 18th, 2024
Start: Myrtle Beach
End: Myrtle Beach
Daily Distance: 0
Trip Distance: 2,385.0

Journal Stats
Entry Visits: 495
Journal Visits: 12,153
Guestbook Views: 904
Guestbook Entrys: 74

FCL Summary and Planning Entry

At the end of an obscure thru hike I usually like to provide as much
planning / notes as I can for future hikers. We were the first hikers to
attempt and to finish the FCL other than its creator Kevin. I've got plenty
of thoughts, but keep in mind these are just my OPINIONS. You may not agree
with me, you may not like what I like or hate what I hate.

Additionally, I mention below a GPX file I've put together with our water
and other waypoints and reroutes around the various private property
issues. Feel free to email me at briantanzman@gmail.com for the file if you
plan to hike the FCL. This may also eventually be incorporated into Kevin's
GPX file on his blog.

OVERALL:

The FCL is an excellent route. It's quite difficult to sit at home and map
out a route that is 2400 miles, scenic, hikeable and on public lands. I'd
say that Kevin really succeeded in creating an amazing hiking experience.
For my hiking friends that want to do something adventurous and scenic I'd
definitely recommend the FCL. I don't have a good way of describing the FCL
in a sentence or short summary. It's not completely a mountain trail, it's
not completely a desert trail, it can't really be put into any typical
category. I think the best way to get a sense for the trail would be to
read my previous entry summarizing the 9 sections. Probably the one
category I could put it in would be the type of trail that is very eclectic
in type of tread: singletrack (good and bad condition), lots of old 2
tracks, dirt roads, some XC (cross country) and small bits of pavement. If
you are the type of hiker that only likes to be on singletrack trail like
the PCT then this hike is definitely not for you. But if you like a route
that is super eclectic, always changing and sometimes challenging then the
FCL is right up your alley. These are the types of routes we like best.

DIFFICULTY

Overall I'd say the FCL is a difficult trail, but totally doable and in the
wheelhouse of any experienced hiker. It's so eclectic that there are plenty
of easy 2 track miles and plenty of hard XC or trail miles. There are
plenty of weather issues, some water issues, some crappy towns, some
private property issues, some "mapset/data" issues (more on that later),
there's no accurate mapping/GPS track (yay!), there's really no waypoints
other than water, there's no data book or guidebook and there are no other
hikers to be found. None of these things are unusual at all for a new long
route and I don't think any one of these thoughts are incredibly difficult,
but put together and with the long distance of 2400 miles I would
definitely call this a difficult route.

We've hiked a bunch of these newer long routes (Desert Trail, Hot Springs
Trail, Great Basin Trail, Deseret Hiking Route, etc) and to date the only
hikers that have followed in our footsteps seem to be very strong and/or
experienced hikers. That's not to say someone with less experience couldn't
do it, but they just don't seem to do it. I think the biggest factor is
there just aren't any other hikers out here. Most hikers just aren't
looking for a solitary experience like that for 5 months. So just a general
observation, but not a rule.

TERRAIN

I don't have a perfect estimate of this but here's my best guess:

Dirt roads and 2 track jeep roads that no one drives on: I'd guess about
43% (I needed to round to 100%) of the FCL. This is the typical linchpin of
a newly created route. It's basically singletrack trails that are side by
side and great walking.

Higher grade dirt roads: 10%. Dirt roads with occasional vehicles.

Singletrack trail: 35%. Usually found in only certain sections such as the
Highline Trail, Arizona Trail, Uinta Highline Trail, CDT in Colorado and
trails on the NNML.

Pavement: 7%. There were 4 major paved road walks. About 25 miles on day 2
leaving Santa Fe, about 10 miles walking into Vernal, Utah and 20 miles or
so leaving Vernal on quiet country roads, about 20 miles on the Maybel to
Meeker private property reroute and the big one, 50+ miles after the Sangre
de Cristos in Colorado to cross the San Luis Valley and get into the
mountains of New Mexico. Beyond this there were a few miles here and there,
nothing really big and mostly walking in and out of towns along the FCL. I
wouldn't consider the pavement to be much of an issue on the FCL other than
the San Luis Valley one.

XC (cross country): 5% or so. This doesn't seem like much but when it comes
you will want to have some experience with navigation. Generally the XC on
the Blisterfree routes are easier, he's good at mapping XC along fencelines
or things that act as "handholds". Some of the other XC on the FCL can be
more challenging like climbing out of Spring Canyon in Capital Reef or
Daniels Trail in Dinosaur National Monument. Overall there's not a lot of
XC on a day to day basis.

SECTIONS

READ THIS!!!!

A previous entry details the 9 sections of the FCL (as named by me, not
official). *Here is a very important decision to make on your part. *The
FCL overlaps and parallels a bunch of different routes already in
existence, most of which Kevin did not know about prior to his 2021 hike.
These routes have been around longer, vetted more by their creators and
hiked many times by other hikers. As a result these are just better vetted
and a bit better routes to hike. This is not meant as an insult to Kevin in
any way. The difference is just that Kevin mapped a route at home and then
hiked it once. These other routes are much shorter and have been vetted and
tweaked over many years by their creators and then even received further
feedback back from other hikers. It's almost certain these other routes
will be slightly better in many ways. Here's a very brief summary, see the
previous more detailed entry as well:

Section 2: Grand Enchantment Trail, created by Blisterfree like 20 years
ago, hiked by hundreds of people probably. This is the one trail I will say
you really, really should use. The FCL closely follows the GET, but not
close enough and does a lot of trespassing. This area of New Mexico has a
lot of private property and large land grants from Spanish times. The GET
has been intricately routed to pass through these miles as legally as
possible. If you hike the FCL route through this section, you will be
trespassing a bunch and if seen or caught the land owners will almost
certainly think you are a GET hiker which will cause Blisterfree a lot of
problems. Please take the GET for these miles, it's better routed anyways
and legal. You can purchase the excellent materials from Blisterfree.

https://www.simblissity.net/grand-enchantment-trail-mapset.shtml

Section 4: Mongollon Rim Trail, also created by Blisterfree, more recent,
like 5 years ago. The FCL and MRT are very similar for these miles. There
are a few differences and I'd say the MRT is a bit better if I had to
choose, but the differences are not a lot of miles so I'd leave it up to
the FCL hikers to choose. The MRT has an excellent set of resources to
purchase which is a bonus, you can purchase these materials from
Blisterfree.

https://www.simblissity.net/mogollon-rim-trail-mapset.shtml

Section 5: Arizona Trail, the FCL uses the AZT for about 300 miles.
Purchasing the FarOut app guide will be very helpful for water information
as you hike.

Section 6: Deseret Hiking Route, created by Larryboy around 2020. This is
also a choose your own way to me. The FCL and DHR are reasonably similar
except for the FCL's really excellent route through Capital Reef (the DHR
branches off west over the also excellent Aquarius Plateau but we thought
the FCL Capital Reef route was better and would highly recommend it). There
are a bunch of other smaller differences too. Personally I think it would
be helpful to have the DHR materials for a slightly more vetted route
(especially the climb up the Wasatch Plateau that the DHR nails with a very
hard but doable route and the FCL has a route that goes but looks much more
brutal). See Larryboy's blog about getting his free materials, he just
requires proof of 1 day of trail maintenance, get to work!

https://www.lbhikes.com/2019/12/dhr.html?m=1

Section 9: Finally there is the Northern New Mexico Loop (NNML) also
created by Blisterfree around 2011. The FCL and NNML are fairly similar
except for a significant 90+ mile section around Wheeler Peak and beyond.
The FCL does a significant amount of Native land trespassing at this point
versus the better routed and vetted NNML which also goes through a stellar
section of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. I'd recommend
getting the NNML materials purchased from Blisterfree and incorporating
this route into the FCL.

https://simblissity.net/northern-nm-loop-mapset.shtml

DATA AND MAPS:

Kevin did an amazing job of creating the Four Corners Loop. He's probably
slightly less good at having super cleaned up maps and data. Here's a long
discussion of what is available, my thoughts and how I managed it all.

There's basically just one thing provided, on Kevin's website there is a
file to download from Caltopo that includes the entire FCL route and
information. Here's what the file includes:

Tracks of the FCL mapped at home by Kevin, these are not recorded while
hiking and the at home mapping is a bit so-so. A lot of straight lines and
not always using the "snap to" feature of Caltopo which draws better lines
(but is still only somewhat accurate). The tracks are coded into
sections/states. There are a lot of them and then dozens of others that are
unlabeled. Kevin walked most of this route but didn't always, sometimes he
called an audible and went other ways.

The file also includes waypoints, mostly water waypoints, some other
helpful waypoints and a lot of random "marks", see more on that below.

One thing to note is that we like to plan, probably more than others who
might attempt the FCL. I actually enjoy data and planning and frankly don't
have many other hobbies in the off season so I spent a fair bit of time
planning the FCL. I'll note below which steps a future hikers might not
necessarily absolutely need to do.

Here's what I did with these tracks and waypoints and why:

A) I first sorted the entire Caltopo file into Folders for the 9 sections.
Currently the file is so huge that it freezes (on a desktop computer or GPS
phone app) if you are lucky or doesn't open at all as warned on Kevin's
website. It will basically break any app used on your phone, especially the
popular one Gaia and the Caltopo app as well. By sorting the track and
waypoints into Folders I can have the data open in the Caltopo app and only
open the Folder/Section I'm currently hiking. If I want to view another
Section I can easily just click to view that Section folder. This allows
the App to run smoothly. Later in the year I'm going to work with Kevin to
fix his current file into this format (sorted into Folders by State
probably) so it works for everyone this way in the future. This is
basically essential.

B) Next I had to choose what routes we were going to take. We decided to
mostly follow the existing routes as discussed elsewhere like the GET, MRT,
DHR and NNML. I purchased these from Blisterfree/Larryboy (or I had
previously already owned them) and imported them into "my" FCL route. I
then deleted Kevin's sections for these miles as I wouldn't be quite going
that way (although as noted much of these miles overlap, I just went with
the better mapping of the more established routes). In total, these
previously existing trails are about 50% of the FCL. This step is also
basically essential for a future FCL hikers (I mean you could choose to
skip this step by only following Kevin's route which is totally fine but
it's still an essential step to think about).

I also downloaded free tracks for the AZT, CDT and Uinta Highline Trail and
replaced the FCL tracks with these so I had the most updated/accurate
tracks.

C) Next I focused heavily on Kevin's "unique" routes (i.e., not the routes
we chose above). These were Sections 1 (Santa Fe to Albuquerque), 3
(Western Connector), 6 (Capital Reef Section of the DHR and Utah Section),
7 (Northwestern Utah) and 8 (Colorado). In total, these miles are about 50%
of the FCL. This step is optional for a future FCL hiker.

We basically remapped all of Kevin's "unique" sections. The mapping was
sometimes straight lines and didn't seem to always use the "snap to"
feature of Caltopo mapping which would at least map along the mapped trails
and roads and be more accurate mileage/routing than straight lines. We also
mapped using satellite view to better map things and fix the snap to
mapping as that is also only so accurate. We left ourselves waypoints where
trails looked to disappear or were confusing to help ourselves while on
trail. The result of all this was that instead of having Kevin's tracks in
many track sections we just had like "Section 3 - Western Connector" that
was 200 miles and tidy and clean and more accurate. Like I said, I like
planning and I like to be prepared. A strong, less planning hiker could
certainly not do all this and just follow Kevin's tracks, but you'll have a
bit more trouble on trail I'm sure. But that's probably totally fine for a
lot of hikers.

We also researched a lot of the singletrack trails as we knew nothing about
them and only occasionally would there be a waypoint with a tip or warning.
Even with our research we still ran into occasional problems, but now with
my daily detailed journal you could probably figure out which trails are
easy/fine and which are harder/problematic.

The last thing with the tracks is there are multiple routes at times,
usually Kevin hiked one of them and usually there is a brief comment why so
you'll have to decide which route to take. There's also dozens of small
unlabelled tracks. I may try to clean this up with Kevin later this year.

D) Next I focused on the waypoints. First off, Kevin, self-admittedly is
the worst typer, good luck reading some of the waypoints, some are so
mistyped that we literally had no idea what they are saying and it was a
fun game to play, I wonder what this was meant to say! I think maybe he did
voice to type while hiking and taking waypoints.

The FCL water waypoints are the bulk of the waypoints and these are really
good. We found them to be very accurate and beyond helpful. I will always
be grateful to Kevin for carrying 12 liters of water when he wasn't sure
where the next water was so we didn't have to! There are some other
waypoints here and there with tips. Lastly, there are sometimes "marks"
which basically say "mark" with a timestamp which is how Caltopo does a
waypoint you take and don't want to name. I think Kevin generally did this
when he was on a trail or XC and wanted to try and provide some further
guidance, like "Mark" the trail is here. Or sometimes he went off his track
as it wasn't properly mapped or he found a better way and would leave a
trail of "marks" to show his way. But then he never updated his actual
mapping after his hike so you have a track that wasn't hiked and a trail of
"marks", this is partly why I remapped all this. Basically when we saw a
trail of "marks" we assumed there was some sort of issue, like, problem
area, start taking some "marks"! But not always, at times there would be a
trail of "marks" on perfectly good to follow trail so we never always knew
what to think about these.

Lastly with the waypoints I sorted them into Folders so Caltopo would open
more easily as discussed above, I hope to do this with Kevin's file later
in the year as I mentioned.

E) The final step was creating mile markers for the entire 2400 mile route.
I never understood how hikers could hike without mile markers! I guess on a
daily basis you could add up the FCL shorter tracks and make estimates on
the resupply section or daily miles.

I basically took all of the Section tracks from the various trails (GET,
MRT etc and ones we created ourselves from the remapping), combined them
into one large track and then in Caltopo created mile markers for the
entire route, my track was 2,320 miles in total (the actual amount walked
is of course more due to the inherent undermapping on a computer vs walking
of around 5% I usually estimate). I then spilt these mile markers into 500
mile section Folders so they could all be turned off other than the section
I was hiking so the app would run smoothly.

Final note, both Kevin and I used Caltopo for our online mapping of the
FCL. On trail I used the Caltopo app as well which I really like these
days. Heather uses the Locus app which is also really good and has a ton of
features. I know Gaia is most popular and I know has Folder and on/off
features so everything I talk about above can also be done in Gaia I
believe.

WATER

Overall water is pretty good on the FCL. Kevin had it really rough being
the first hikers, we had it much easier with his water observations. We had
a fairly wet year overall and had all of Kevin's water sources and some
additional ones. I can't think of a key source that Kevin had that was dry
for us. I have a GPX file that includes all of our water observations that
I can provide anyone who emails me. Note, I only took observations for the
FCL Sections that were "unique" and did not take observations for the GET,
MRT, AZT, CDT or NNML since these have ongoing updated water charts you can
access when you purchase those trail materials (see Section Summaries above
for more info on that). Also I didn't take water waypoints for a few weeks
in Colorado as there was a ton of water, I've noted in the waypoints where
these observations stop and start again.

The quality of water varies but I'd say was pretty good overall. You'll
have to drink from brown dirt cow tanks at times, but less than usual I'd
say for a big new route!

RESUPPLY:

The resupply towns are a pretty standard mix for a 2400 mile trail. A lot
of small mediocre to good ones and a smattering of larger towns. See my
previous Section Summary entry for details on every town we visited.
Overall there is plenty of resupply and we only sent a few boxes ahead
while on trail (North Rim Grand Canyon, Fairview, Alpine Lodge - all
avoidable if you don't mind longer carries or an insanely expensive gas
station in Fairview). We probably should have sent one to Forest Lakes as
well, the selection and pricing there was awful. It seemed like the first
half of the route the lodging was cheaper (like maybe a $ 70 average) and
the second half it was much more expensive (maybe a $ 100+ average and
numerous closer to $ 125). Our longest food carries were about a week which
isn't bad.

WEATHER AND WHEN TO START:

See my previous Section Summary entry for weather info by section. When and
where to start is an easy and difficult question. The easy answer is to
start in Santa Fe around April 1 and hike clockwise, finishing in Santa Fe
around early to mid September. There isn't going to be a perfect weather
window to do a 2400 mile trail like this. Under this scenario here are the
potential hardships: You'll probably have lingering snow issues in early
April on the early GET miles in the Sandia and Manzano mountains. See the
Section Summary entry for how we handled this. If you are a bit slow
southern Utah could get quite hot, but most likely you should be there by
around late May or early June and it should be fine. Summer in general is
just going to be hot but not brutal. July and August in Northern Utah and
Colorado will be hot at times but nothing crazy. The Uinta Highline Trail
can hold snow very late into the year. In a low snow year July 1 is
probably fine, in an average or above average snow year it's going to be an
issue on a couple of very steep dangerous passes (Dead Horse pass
specifically). If you are highly confident with an ice ax and spikes you
will probably be ok. We decided to skip the UHT (it was a higher snow year
which also snowed a lot lately in April and May) and flew back to it at the
very end to complete our thru-hike. Kevin had a low snow year and barely
touched snow on the UHT. Dinosaur National Monument is low, desolate and
hot when you will most likely be there. We got unlucky with a huge heat
wave and it was 108 for several days, not great but we survived. You'll
then be in the Colorado mountains for its typical afternoon thunderstorms
and then you'll be in New Mexico in August as the monsoon season begins to
tail off maybe. We had a lot more rain than Kevin in New Mexico, it was
pretty annoying.

So that's a summary. I honestly can't think of a better time or place to
start the FCL. Since it's a loop you can basically start anywhere at any
time, but I don't know what would be better. You can think and research it
if you think you might have a better idea.

Quick update note: A hiker asked me on Instagram if he could possibly start
a FCL hike in summer and go CCW (counter clockwise). Here was our quick
response:

"So that actually could work. You'd definitely want to do more research but
I'll assume a June 15 start and say a 5 month hike. High level you'd head
CCW on the NNML at about the right time (I guess beginning of Monsoon
season but usually ok I think), hit the Colorado mountains around July 1 or
so which should normally be ok. Then you'll just have a typical hot summer
wrapping around Colorado and Utah, we did our way as well. Your timing for
the Uinta Highline Trial would be good. The next thing would be southern
Utah and Capital Reef maybe around mid-September, could be hot but
definitely doable. Then you'd pass through the Northern AZT in early
October which is probably getting cold but ok and then your finish on the
GET in mid November is late but probably also doable. I guess any big snow
year could throw a wrench in or early snow storms".

TIME

It took us about 5.5 months and about the same for Kevin. I typically find
that the type of hiker who can do a route like this is faster than us,
sometimes a lot faster. So I'd say 5.5 months is on the high end, but we
only hiked about 18 miles or so a day and took our fair share of zeros
along the way. The weather window is wide enough to take your time or speed
up if that's your thing. If you do speed up keep in mind that a decent snow
year in Arizona and you could have snow on the Kanab plateau. You could
also have snow in Utah if you are early and especially on the Uinta
Highline Trail.

PERMITS

Not many. You'll need a permit to camp in the Grand Canyon if you decide
not to do a rim to rim on the AZT, you'll need a permit to walk across
Dinosaur National Monument and a permit in Capital Reef National Park. See
the previous Section Summary Entry for more discussion.

PRIVATE PROPERTY

READ THIS!!!

One thing that is currently unique to the FCL is that there is a fair
amount of trespassing! Not great. This might have been ok when it was just
one person, Kevin, but it doesn't really work when a trail is being shared
or promoted and there might be more hikers. There are 3 types of private
property (PP) issues I noted:

First, there are like a dozen smaller issues throughout the loop where the
FCL trespasses but there is a pretty simple way around. We tried to avoid
PP the best we could and I think we made big improvements here. The GPX
file I've put together identifies all of these PP issues and maps
alternates around them.

Second, there are a few major trespasses that are really hard to avoid and
require major reroutes or just trespassing. The 3 that come to mind are:

1) The Giant Hole in the Cibola National Forest. See the Section Summary
entry, Section 3 for more information. This is the biggest trespassing
issue of the entire FCL and a huge routing issue. Your choices are either a
really major 15+ mile trespass across private lands or a huge reroute using
the GET/CDT that adds about 100 miles (although these are really good miles
to add!). I personally can not suggest you trespass across this land.

2) The Meeker to Maybell area. See the Section Summary entry, Section 7 for
more information. This issue has been basically solved, our reroute is in
the GPX file.

3) A day or so out of Glenwood Springs, along the Cottonwood Divide there
is an about 10 mile PP section between National Forest lands. There really
is no reasonable solution to this other than to walk through. It's very
remote cattle land and you are unlikely to have an issue, but no
guarantees. I've mapped out a slightly more remote option than the FCL.

The third trespass type is just where the FCL closely follows the GET as
I've mentioned elsewhere in this entry and also in the Section Summary.
I'll just repeat this again, *please* *take* *the* *GET*. The FCL just
trespasses too much and will eventually cause the GET issues if you have
issues as people will assume you are a trespassing GET hiker.

Feel free to email for my GPX file which should help with a lot of these
issues as well as my water and other waypoints.

WILDLIFE

Decent but not amazing. Probably the highlight were all the moose we saw in
Colorado and the 2 Bighorn Sheep we saw at a Highway rest area on the NNML.
We saw a few rattlesnakes, a couple of bears, some elk, lots of deer.
There's less cows than I would expect for how much BLM land we were on.
There's definitely sections with cows but overall not too bad

FIRES

Always an issue our west these days. I guess fires could be an issue on a
majority of the route. We were quite lucky to only have 1 minor fire
reroute the entire trail. Kevin had one as well. I'd say we were both
pretty lucky. New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado use Inciweb to report and
track fires:

https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/

Utah doesn't use Inciweb and instead of uses this harder to use State site:

https://utah-fire-info utahdnr.hub.arcgis.com/

BUGS

We basically had no bugs until southern Utah and then from that point until
the CDT in Colorado we had a steady stream of all kinds of flies (some
biting) and mosquitoes. At times it was pretty annoying. I've had much
worse on other trails, but it was a long stretch out here where we had
daily bugs. They peaked at the wet Flat Tops Wilderness and then oddly went
away when we were in the CDT mountains and never really came back. I'd
suggest having some DEET from southern Utah onward and an enclosed tent at
this point too or bug netting like Heather.

OTHER HIKERS

You'll basically never see backpackers other than on the AZT although most
likely you'll be on the tail end of thru-hikers and not see many and on the
CDT in Colorado you'll see Colorado Trail hikers who are taking the West
Collegiate route. Other than that you won't see anyone other than the
occasional day hiker or backpacker on a more popular trail (like the Uinta
Highline Trail). If you are alone, expect to hike all 2400 miles alone.

GEAR

There's really nothing specific I can think of that is needed on the FCL
that you wouldn't carry on any long hike. The weather is kinda all over the
place for a 2400 mile loop. Typical 3 season gear is appropriate. We liked
having the silver umbrellas for not just the heat but also the rain by the
end of the hike. A large powerbank was nice for longer sections. I would
consider long pants essential for some of the XC or overgrown trails.

CELL PHONES

We both had Verizon and had decent service the entire trail. Definitely not
everyday but most days I'd say we had service. Certain areas we could tell
AT&T was better, but I can't really say which would have been better
overall. The only notable exception is the Uinta Highline Trail where for a
week we only had reception once, on Anderson Pass.

If you've made it this far and have other questions feel free to email me!

briantanzman@gmail.com

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Journal Photo

Four Corners Loop (FCL)

The Four Corners Loop is a new 2,400 mile loop across New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado created by Kevin "The Animal" and hiked by him in 2021. For more information visit:

https://www.fclta.org/

 

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