Top Trails of 2005?
Trails.com has released their "Top 100 Trails of 2005" list, with the first Washington entry coming in at 19th out on Cougar Mountain. We're not trying to cry over spilled trail mix here, but the list seems awfully biased towards eastern routes. Honestly, not a single trail from Utah, a state that boasts a record-setting 5 national parks? Similarly, nothing broke the top 100 from Montana, either. But there were 4 from New Jersey, and 12 (twelve!) from New York state, including the top spot.
A rightfully deserving Washington trail, the Alpine Lakes Loop in the Central Cascades snagged the 43rd spot, but seeing nothing from the Pacific Crest Trail makes us suspicious as well, when at least 3 different locations along the Appalachian landed in the top 50. It can't be a conspiracy, because Trails.com is located right here in Seattle, right?
It turns out that their "voting methodology" was really to look at data from their site: page views, trail information downloads, and trail ratings. In particular, we find the page view piece of this methodolgy suspect as a way of evaluating "best" of anything; the fact that someone visited a web page about a given trail is not necessarily related to whether it is a good trail, much less a Top 100 trail. If it had been based more on ratings, then we'd feel a little better about it. But even then, Trails.com couldn't really claim that the Top 100 are based on popularity and "usage" in 2005 as they claim, unless they mean site usage. Talk about being led down the garden path.
