For some time now, I have been thinking about how to develop a good resource for long trails here on Summitpost. In particular, the Pacific Crest Trail seems to demand something a little in depth than what is presently available (no disrespect to the pages current maintainer).
To this end, I was thinking it would be great if there was a route or area page that was held by en elf or someone else who functioned as the pages proctor. The main page would be fairly bare bones. The current page could even work, but it would be great if it was more dynamic and collaborative.
The real meat would come in the form of route contributions. It would be really cool if there was a communal effort to post sections of the trail as individual routes. This way, locals or people with intimate knowledge of a certain stretch of trail could post in depth explanations of what to expect, contribute detailed, relevant images, and be a resource for those looking to get beta on a precise location. For example, I am very familiar with the PCT as it runs from Gumboot Saddle to Parks Creek, down here by Mount Shasta, but the PCT near Belknap Crater in Oregon is totally foreign territory to me.
This same format could be applied to the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, Hey Duke Trail, or whichever long trail one wanted to develop. Like so many other contributions here on Summitpost, this could easily become the best resource for the given subject available on the internet.
I think it would be really cool to have some projects that members could collaborate on. Of course, this idea could be fleshed out a lot more and I am tired and hardly cogent. Any thoughts or improvements or is this even useful or realistic idea?
