A friend called my usual route planning 'lazy' and it stung a bit
I was telling a hiking buddy about my plan for a 4 day loop in the Wind River Range, just linking up the most popular trails from the guidebook. He flat out said, 'That's the lazy way, you're just walking the highway.' He was right. I was just connecting the dots between the big lakes everyone goes to, not thinking about the terrain between them. So now, I spend an extra hour with the topo map before any trip. I look for the little dotted lines, the unmarked passes, and the drainages that might let me cut over a ridge instead of going all the way around. Last trip, I found a perfect high route that saved me 5 miles of forest walking and gave me a whole afternoon alone on a ridge. It's more work, but the payoff is huge. How do you guys find those off book connectors?