I hiked the Wind River Range out of Skyline, then out of Boulder Lake. Noted that Sacred Rim is an informal trail. Skyline is a very well used location and except for the lack of marked signs, it was well mapped. In fact, when I came to well used junctions, I usually had those on OSM even if they weren’t official. There wasn’t much of trail visibility or difficulty marked, but such is the usual state of things. Those unofficial trails should be marked informal, too, even if they aren’t rendered any differently. There were missing trailhead details. Not much to add here.

Incidentally, how would one mark a trail register? Corrals?

I actually looked for corrals and only found one person asking how to mark them, getting not much of a good answer, and the thing they were wanting to mark is actually an arena anyway. Corrals are temporary holding pens for life stock that are frequently found at trailheads in the western USA. Are they unique to the area? Both trailheads I hiked out of here in the Winds had them. These are specifically for horses and mules. I’ve also encountered a larger breed of these for rounding up cows and once one for rounding up sheep.

Then on to Boulder. Not much to add here either. The waterfall. Then I got to the southern portion of my hike. I was hiking south on the Highline Trail. In this section, the CDT follows Fremont instead, so there’s not the input from that chunk of hikers. Anyway, as I left Junction Lake for Dream Lake on the Highline, it got steadily dimmer, but there were trail signs. It was pretty much gone by the time I hit a trail perpendicularly. This trail was extremely well used. It also wasn’t on any map I had. Not on the Forest Service. Not on OSM. Not on the Beartooth I purchased in Pinedale. There seemed to be a marker on the other side where Highline should be, but then markers turned and paralleled this trail on the other side of a small patch of trees. It was supposed to go straight. I decided to try it, but once it turned away from Dream Lake, I decided the land is too open to worry about trail being there or not. I made my own way to Dream Lake. I supposedly crossed Highline again, but I sure didn’t see it.

So that area needs fixing, but I didn’t do enough in it to know what it needs fixed to. (The location is this area that needs fixed.) I didn’t get any signs until I meandered around on official and unofficial trail. (It was the most used trail at each junction, so I guess this part, I actually chose the common route.)

Then I went off to Rainbow Lake to take an old trail up and around to Middle Fork Lake. This old trail wasn’t mapped on OSM, but is on the Forest Service topo and Beartooth. The trail is fairly clear up to the pass between the lakes, but down to Middle Fork, there’s not much. So this got added. The signs indicate that this is no longer a maintained as continuous trail since one side has been renamed and the other side renumbered. I did add in visibility and such things, too.

There’s some cool stuff that would be really fun to hike in this area that’s not mapped on the FS and I’d like to try them out. I’ll have to get back sometime.

Then I returned via some well mapped stuff and nothing much was needed. There’s a cabin ruin.

Oh, I found some spots where trail was called “Continental Divide Trail”. It’s not. It’s Fremont or it’s Highline through here. These trails already existed and have their own names. The CDT just travels along these trails. It does not replace the trails. It just uses them.