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Unpopular opinion: following every trail review ruined my trips for a while
I used to read every single review on AllTrails before hitting a route, especially out in the Sierras near Bishop. Some guy said the Red Lake trail was "easy" so I packed light and nearly ran out of water. Another review said something was "scrambly but doable" and I showed up in trail runners on a Class 3 ridge. After 3 near misses I stopped reading reviews altogether and just studied the topo maps. But then my buddy pointed out I was avoiding common warnings about snowmelt in June. So now I check reviews just for the date stamps and skip the opinions. Has anyone else found a middle ground on how much to trust those ratings?
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nancy9291mo ago
Yeah I do the same thing now. I filter by date and only look at photos from the last 2 weeks. Did a ridge hike near Mammoth last summer where the reviews said "no snow" but some guy posted a photo from 3 days before showing a big patch. Looked at the location tag on his photo, found the snowfield, packed microspikes. Passed like 4 groups who had to turn around. Ratings are useless but the photos with dates are gold.
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