Full trip report (with photos) forthcoming, but here's a brief look at things. I took off from my home in Santa Fe, just 1/2 mile or so from the plaza, on Tuesday morning with little planning or preparation. My bike shop/trail running store was broken into on the prior Saturday night/Sunday morning and after a coupla days with insurance/police/clean up &tc. my partner convinced me to head out of town for a bit. I downloaded the route onto my phone the night before and started on the trail 12 hours later. One thing of note: the .gpx could use a little cleaning up. The section to Lake Katherine from Skyline was an out & back on the official track with the alternate to Spirit Lake before rejoining Skyline trail appearing as the sole continuous line on the track, which I followed. The "official" route in the guidebook takes Skyline from Puerto Nambe to Lake Katherine and continues along Skyline where it intersects with Winsor. I (and Pam, author of the route) believe this still counts for the FKT as I followed the most up to date .gpx available, even if it differs from the guidebook. Other than that deviation I followed the official route (and .gpx track) exactly and walked into the Taos Plaza Thursday night just before 9PM. I got the first hotel I saw and met the singer from Arcade Fire at the hotel's restaurant which was weird.
Athletes
Route variation
Standard route
Multi-sport
No
Para athlete
No
Gender category
Male
Style
Unsupported
Start date
Finish date
Total time
2d
12h
42m
0s
Verification
GPS track(s)
Report
Comments
I believe Bailey is wrong about the error he's reporting in the gpx file. Here's why:
This is not a huge deal, but the Spirit Lake alt route is two miles shorter and 750 feet less elevation than the official route of the thru-hike, as documented in the gpx file, the guidebook, and on the SF2T website. However, as Bailey mentions, going to Spirit Lake is one of the documented alt routes for the thru-hike. Going to Spirit Lake is not a problem. But the gpx file doesn't send people to Spirit Lake.
I emailed Bailey about this a week ago, asking him to clarify what he's saying here because I have not been able to reproduce the error he's describing, and no one else I've spoken to has experienced this issue with the gpx file. He didn't respond, so I'm posting here.
Bailey's and I's first back and forth about his issues with the route is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMhRue4Mfwh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link.
Sorry to post this at all. Or to stir anything up. But no one else has had the problem with the gpx file that Bailey is reporting. No one has had any other issues with the gpx file, either. Hopefully Bailey will share more information so we can get this cleared up. It is of utmost importance that the gpx file for the route be accurate, so if there is an issue, I want to correct it asap.