Units of the Buckeye Trail

A "section" is a defined unit on the Buckeye Trail.  It's broken up into 26 of them.  They range from about 45 to 65 miles in length.  In the beginning, the sections were divided at approximately 55 miles each.  Over time, moving the trail off-road either increased, or decreased that mileage.  Presently, I know that the Buckeye Trail Association (BTA) no longer has any official limits on total section lengths.

A subdivision of a section is "segment."  They refer to trail adopter assignments.  These are not very well known outside of BTA Headquarters, section supervisors and trail (maintenance) adopters.  But they are on official record.  And their sizes can vary much more.  Ideally, a maintainer probably shouldn't have much more than 3 miles off-road, 10 miles canal and rail trail and 20 miles on-road.  But if I section can get more volunteers, those numbers can be smaller.  But on occasion, it could have a volunteer with more time to commit to the BTA than usual, or there could be a gap to fill, so maintenance could be larger?

I'd recommend that the best way to express the trail to others when one doesn't know the section or segment is to just refer to it as a "portion" or "trail portion."  That unit is vague and not already in use officially.

Log 2015022101

I just received a couple updated and replacement maps from the BTA.  And where I have merged it's tracks from the BTA GIS/ GPS Data Depository before, and some had working elevation profiles and measurement, not all work like that.  Take Stockport Section for instance, I've been able to get it's track segments merged into one so it's entire length appears as one entry on my hand GPS.  But the elevation profile shows errors and it does not have a "measurement" tab in the tracks "properties" menu regardless of whether I convert it to KML or GPX.

While I was merging Stockport's tracks, I paid special attention to what direction the segments were facing before I merged.  And while the were all in order, my merges were still coming up with errors.  I'd like to blame this one on "pilot error."   I have a gut feeling that it probably is, but when working GIS tracks, I'm at a loss sometimes.  Even though what I work with is more point and click, working with KML and GPX directly relates to the XML computer programming language.  And I've had a basic computer programming class before and this feels like there's an elusive flaw in my logic, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

So, I left the Stockport as it is for now and moved on to New Straitsville Section's track segments.  Using Google Maps Engine to recreate the on-road trail, I downloaded it's tracks and that brought the section down to 50 segments.  I wasn't able to get the measurements tab to work with the tracks as they were.  So, I did a conversion, leaving every track unmerged into KML to no avail.  I then did it to GPX and I now have both.

I renamed the tracks to split merging New Straitsville Section's track segments into 4 parts.  I want to see if an entire 50mi+ section is too large for GPSVisualizer to keep track of?  Or was my method of converting the segments into GPX first and commanding it to compute the track statistics the right thing to do?

I just got word that Google Maps Engine will loose it's support on January 29th, 2016 and that I have to start shopping for another product.  I subscribe to the "pro" version. Can you hear nails screeching on a chalkboard right now?

Log 2014012501

I completed my task of merging the Buckeye Trail track segments in to just one for each section, plus known by-passes and spurs.  But some of the elevation profiles could not be computed, either because my laptop isn't powerful enough to do it, or the merge corrupted some of the data?  That's a task for another time.  Right now, I have tracks that can be uploaded to the GPS.

Log 2013100401

I haven't written a log in 6 days.  With out looking, I'd say my entries have probably been sparse.  I check out of Basecamp Golf and am now checked back in at Basecamp Foxtrot at Mary Jane Thurston State Park in Grand Rapids of Wood County.  There is some question as to how long I can stay here because the park is scheduled to fill up sometime around the Apple Butter Festival on 13 October.

I may be loosing brake fluid in squirts.  I noticed this on gravel when I pulled in to a parking area earlier.

On my way down from Harrison Lake, I stopped to reinspect the lower Defiance segment of the Defiance Section. This is some road and three portions of off-road along the old Miami and Erie Canal.  I've done a bunch of work on it already, but with those 9 fallen trees in the way and having to cut them with a hand saw, it's making the work come out to be a bit lengthy.  And like the work done in the Athens Unit, it's difficult to plan and prioritize the work load in a way that I can perform it in one sweeping motion.  Today on the Lower Defiance Segment,  I made a note of every thing that still needs to be done and I hope that I can do it more quickly.

I think I have about 5 downed trees left.  A couple days ago, I groomed the on to off-road aperture.  There was two or three young growth apple trees, whose canopy's had crashed and impeded the trail's 7 foot ceiling.  I had to clear quite a bit of them.

Otherwise, I'm seeing pruning and blazing on about two miles or so of the off-road Buckeye/ North Country National Scenic Trail.  The north portion looks the best.  It's worst is about 0.5mi of overgrowth in the center.