The Vasquez-Hudson Route

The Route

You can view the Vasquez-Hudson Route in Nakarte (minus the waypoints) or in GaiaGPS (minus waypoint labels). You can also view the route in CalTopo (with labelled waypoints), but you may have some difficulty viewing it as the route file size is too large for Caltopo and it may not load, especially on older computers.

The file is too big for a Google Earth link, but you can download the KML below to upload to Google Earth yourself.

You can download the route, with complete tracks and waypoints:

• Download GPX

• Download KML (Google Earth)

• Download JSON

The CalTopo map and app are the best viewing water information at the moment, as the waypoint labels are visible. Also, water waypoints show up larger and are colored blue for easy visibility when zoomed out. You can edit the waypoints in many map/GPS apps to change the color, size and appearance. For example, in Gaia you can manually change each water waypoint to a blue water drop icon.

If you hike this route, feel free to upload your own edited/altered version based on my GPS tracks and waypoints. Just please give a link to this page as the trip report is needed as a supplement to the GPS track and waypoints.

If you plan to hike this route in 2025, come back to this page in early 2025 to download a new GPS track and waypoints. I will be making some small improvements in the future.

Trip Report and Trail Guide

The full trip report and trail guide can be viewed separately on this page.

The Challenges

1. Weather and timing

Timing and weather are the biggest challenges at the beginning (south to north). If you start too early, you will have problems with snow in the southern Arizona sky islands and especially in northern Arizona - or mud in certain areas of northern Arizona if you are there right after the snow melts. This of course depends on the levels of snowfall. For example, in 2023 a heavy snowfall winter blocked most Arizona Trail hikers from completing their spring northbound hike.

Then you must get to southern Utah and the Hayduke Trail at an early enough point to not be there for the early summer heat. To be honest, you probably can’t get to southern Utah during the best time for a spring Hayduke Trail hike. This is roughly mid-April to the end of May (unless you can do the snow in Arizona, or if it’s a very low snow year). If you don’t feel like doing some snow hiking followed by a hot hike with limited water sources, then connecting the Arizona Trail to the Hayduke Trail is probably won’t be enjoyable.

After southern Utah you may need to slow down your hike or you will get to the Uinta Mountains of northern Utah too soon, and find yourself on endless wet meadows, snow patches and impassable high passes. After this is a challenge familiar to what Continental Divide Trail (CDT) hikers face: the low and hot basins of southern Wyoming. This is a hot trek across sage and desert. If you don’t do well in heat, you won’t like this section.

After this there is just the minor issue of getting through Knapsack Col (12,248 feet, 3733 meters) in the Wind River Range. If you are there too early, you will be blocked by steep snow slopes and a high cornice in the saddle. But there is a low route option here (you will unfortunately miss out on some nice scenery).

Then it’s a sprint to the Canadian border before snow blocks your passage through Glacier National Park.

Also, thunderstorms are a regular occurrence.

2. Rough terrain

The Vasquez-Hudson Route includes some scrambling. These are very short sections that are unavoidable. They are generally in the range of 3.1 and brief 3.2 sections in the Yosemite Decimal System (explanation here). I provide alternate routes to avoid the worst sections, but you miss out on same amazing areas (the western sections of the Grand Canyon, for example) or you will add quite a bit of extra distance.

River and creek crossings are not too serious. But if you have problems with swift currents above your knee, then this route may not be for you.

3. Isolation

This includes isolation from the nearest road and town, and isolation from other people. The map shows your isolation from civilization. As for people, I had about forty 24-hour blocks of time where I saw zero people. And even more days where I saw a person or off-road vehicle in the distance or passing by, but I spoke to nobody. Your only connection will be a satellite SMS/beacon. If you fall and hurt yourself in a canyon or on a steep north-facing slope, you will likely not be able to send a distress signal on your device, and nobody will be coming along the same route. In the waypoints I’ve listed the isolated location where I had a cell/mobile data signal (Verizon or T-Mobile). I had an eSIM card that switched between Verizon and T-Mobile, depending on what signal was better..

4. Resupplying

Similar to challenges on the CDT. You will often have to choose between a long food carry (6-8 days) or an exit to a road where you can hitchhike into a small town. This may cost you a full 24 hours or more. And then there will resupply locations that are just gas station convenience stores. Read the full report for exact details and instructions. The good news is that mailing a box of food to yourself general delivery works at every post office along the way just as it does on the CDT and PCT. Note that this comes with a 30-day limit for general delivery pick-up. Post offices that hold packages for longer are a feature of certain small trail towns on the PCT and CDT, but not anywhere else.

5. Animals

Same as the CDT: rattlesnakes, mosquitoes and grizzly bears. Fairly rare on all counts. Your timing determines where you will hit peak mosquito season. For me it was along the lakes and wet meadows in Yellowstone. My personal sighting tally for grizzly bears and rattlesnakes was four each (plus three black bears).

6. Water carries

Several times I carried 6 liters of water. Other times I carried 3 to 4.5 liters. It will be better for you, as you will have my water info. I was overly cautious and often carried too much, often arriving at a great water source with 2-3 liters still remaining in my backpack. But you will still have to do some heavy carries regardless.

7. Road Walking

Do you hate road walks? Most of the “roads“ are just wide dirt tracks, and they are often in scenic areas with little to no traffic. But there are significant road walks in central Utah, southern Wyoming, and southern Montana.

When to start

I started at the Mexican border on March 11th and arrived at the Canadian border on September 11th. However, I was getting back in shape on the trail (I don’t train in the off season) and I had foot problems to manage for the first 4-6 weeks and that slowed me down even more. If you feel that you are in the top 50% in terms of pace, speed and daily distance (compared to the average thru hiker), the you could start as much as two weeks later than I did. Still, you must manage the timing due to snow and then heat, as outlined above. The faster people who started at the same time as I did ended up complaining bitterly as they hiked through snow and sticky mud in northern Arizona. I arrived much later and the trail was mostly dry.

Southbound?

You can start from the Canadian border at the same time as the CDT hikers do. You must wait until the snow melts out of the high areas in Glacier National Park. This is roughly mid-June, but it can vary year to year based on snow levels and your comfort with hiking on the remaining snow. You will need to do your own research in the time leading up to your start.

The main challenge in following the Vasquez-Hudson Route southbound is that my notes on water sources may not be relevant in the fall by the time you get to southern Wyoming and then southern Utah. The small streams and springs I listed when I walked by in June and July may be dried up by August. I really don’t know.

Can you get to the Mexican border before getting blocked by snow in Utah or northern Arizona? I really don’t know.

Is the Vasquez-Hudson Route an original route?

In the general sense, probably not. I’m sure somebody has done a similar route in previous years. Connecting the Arizona Trail to the Hayduke Trail and then going east on the Uinta Highline to eventually connect with the Continental Divide Trail is an idea that likely has presented itself to more than a few people who have looked at a map off all the long distance thru-hikes in the American West. In fact, once I got on the CDT I was told about a hiker doing the same thing that same year (2024). And I’m sure in previous years somebody has done something similar. Unfortunately, none of those trips have been posted online - and if they have my internet search has not found them.

So, the “Vasquez-Hudson Route“ refers to my variation on this general route.

How useful are other guides and apps?

As you can see on my GPS track, I provide very few waypoints for the Arizona Trail until the Grand Canyon. I expect people to use the FarOut app for the Arizona Trail. It’s not a good app, but the updated water comments will be useful - as will comments on snow levels. For the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), it appears that the route joins the CDT at the beginning of the Wind River Range, but I do so many alternate routes - some original - that I wouldn’t bother with FarOut until north of Butte (so just buy the “Northern Montana“ section in the FarOut app store, not the entire CDT route). Even then, I don’t really stick with the CDT until the northern-most sections of Montana: Scapegoat Wilderness, Bob Marshall Wilderness and Glacier National Park.

For the Hayduke Trail, you may find other guides and reports useful if you want to do a different route than I did. In that case, you need to dig through as many online trip reports as possible - the original route is not as good as the variations. I say “Hayduke Trail“ as any manner of connecting the national parks in southern Utah and northern Arizona seems to fall under that name.

Where’s the name from?

If the unofficial Hayduke Trail can be named after a fictional character, then why can’t my unofficial route? Vasquez and Hudson are characters in the 1986 film Aliens. Vasquez is full of energy and confidence, while Hudson has cold feet and wants to go home. I alternated between these opposing moods while on this route. Some days you are Vasquez, and some days you are Hudson.

Or maybe it’s because the route starts at the Coronado National Memorial. Where the conquistador/explorer Francisco Vásquez de Coronado entered modern-day Arizona on a northward expedition. And the route ends just north of Triple Divide Peak in Montana, the hydrological apex of North America, where the continental divide actually becomes a three-way split in terms of water drainage. The divide between the Pacific and Atlantic is now joined by a drainage to the Arctic Ocean at Hudson Bay - also named for a historical explorer. So, from Vasquez to Hudson.

There is a third possible reason for the name....

Permits Needed

Exact and comprehensive permit instructions are included in the trip report and trail guide. Generally, American national park permitting for the backcountry focuses on camping permits, not permits to be there.

For Arizona, as of 2024, you don't need a permit to hike anywhere on the Arizona Trail (AZT), aside from the mandatory entry fee for Saguaro National Park. However, you do need a permit to camp in a few places. These are unavoidable in Saguaro National Park and Grand Canyon National Park. For Colossal Cave Mountain Park, it is a very short section and you won't need to camp there. The national park permits are easy and can be done online (Saguaro) and in person when you arrive (Grand Canyon). Grand Canyon gets a bit complicated when you re-enter the park farther west. Read the trail guide for more info.

Southern Utah is easy. You can get through Zion National Park in a single day. You also don’t need to camp inside Bryce Canyon National Park, as the route is close to a boundary with a national forest where you can camp without a permit.

For the long sections inside both Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area you can fill out free permits at self-serve stations on the trail.

Capitol Reef National Park has a free but mandatory backcountry camping permit. You can get the permit by emailing. Check the trail guide for more info.

Wyoming is straight forward. For Grand Teton National Park you can easily plan your camping inside the neighboring national forest. The Teton Crest Trail regularly goes into the national forest where you are free to camp without a permit.

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway is annoying - getting a permit requires traveling by car to a permit office far away from the trail. So to avoid a permit, you need to do a very long single day hike to reach national forest land. The full trail guide will outline your options.

Yellowstone National Park is very friendly to Continental Divide Trail (CDT) hikers (that’s you). You can get your camping permit over the phone a few days ahead of time, or in the ranger station at the entrance. Full info in the trail guide.

Montana is more complicated. The Blackfeet permit is easy (a quick and cheap online permit to walk across Indian land). There’s a link in the trail guide to the online Blackfeet Nation Fish and Wildlife Permit that you need. But Glacier National Park is a time consuming process. You need to take a shuttle or hitchhike to a visitor’s center to get a permit in person, and you won’t likely get the itinerary you want. More info in the trail guide and in many guides to the CDT.

Finally, crossing into Canada requires a passport and citizenship in a country with visa-free travel to Canada (see the list here). But there is an alternate ending that goes up to touch the border without crossing into Canada.

Suggested Apps and Online Resources

For the Arizona Trail get the FarOut app and buy the Arizona Trail guide. For northern Montana you should buy the "North Montana" CDT section on FarOut. You don't need the full CDT guide.

Get an account on Recreation.gov and download the app. This will make permitting easier at some of the national parks. You can also use this to book campsites in national forests.

eSIM - If you aren't American and your mobile company doesn't have a good roaming plan for the United States, I suggest downloading an app that sells virtual eSIM cards and data packages. As of 2024, Airolo is a good choice. I was able to buy data packages that switch between T-Mobile and Verizon depending on which had a better signal. My waypoints include remote areas that had a cell/mobile data signal from one of these two companies.

Hotel booking apps are useful in the big towns and in the city, but much less useful in the small towns. Many motels do not making booking possible through any apps like Booking.com or Hotels.com. So an app will not let you know they exist. But they are on Google Maps and usually have a link where you can check prices and book a room. Usually the motel will redirect you to a tool called ResNexus to book and pay.

Gear Guide

Not too dissimilar to the Continental Divide Trail. You can look at the various gear and clothing guides for that trail. If you want to avoid hitchhiking to resupply in towns as much as possible, then I suggest a higher volume backpack that does well with heavy loads for longer food carries.

As for clothing, the Arizona Trail northbound in the spring can get quite cold and snowy at higher altitudes, then suddenly you are in hot and low southern Utah. And then after that you will be on high ridges and the Uinta Mountains where you need cold weather gear again. This is followed by a hot stretch in southern Wyoming before jumping right back up to elevation in the Wind River range.

You could do some gear and clothing switches. I didn’t, as I don’t live in the United States, and easily mailing gear back and forth to a friend or family member is not feasible. But if it was, I would have often traded out my sleeping bag and mailed away my cold weather gear until I need it again. The full trip report and guide will discuss this in more detail regarding the when, where and how.

I won’t provide my gear list as it is fairly close to a traditional backpacking list with a heavy weight. I acknowledge that very few people will want to do something similar.

Mandatory Gear

First, legally required gear:

"Wag Bag": While in Flagstaff, Arizona you should buy a "wag bag." It's a plastic bag that you poop in. Don't worry, they don't leak. You need them for many narrow canyons in Arizona and Utah. They are legally required in some places. I won't list all the locations, just know that you need them until Torrey, Utah, after exiting Capitol Reef National Park. REI has them in Flagstaff. You can also buy these elsewhere online. To be safe you can buy them online at REI ahead of time and pick up your order at the Flagstaff store.

Bear canister/bag: For nighttime food storage you must have a bear-proof bag or a bear canister in most areas starting at the Wind River Range in Wyoming. So in Lander, Wyoming you should buy these items - or in Pinedale at the latest.

Gear that every hiker should have, aside from the usual:

Bear (pepper) spray: I would get it in Lander or Pinedale in Wyoming, as you will soon be in grizzly bear country. It’s not legally required, but most hikers in the backcountry carry it. Some women thru hikers carry it for entire thru hikes, including in areas with no bears - it works quite well on men as well as bears.

Satellite Messenger and Personal Locator Beacon: Not legally required, but still "mandatory." Garmin, Zoleo, whatever... You need one. You will be in very isolated areas.

A 20,000 mAh power bank. At minimum. You’ll need a larger or a second power bank if you are a heavy user (taking video, using GPS excessively, listening to music all day, watching videos at night). You should know your usage levels. I use the most reliable brand: Anker. On the AZT I saw two dead Nitecore powerbanks, and I keep seeing complaints online. If you want to be as safe as possible, then get two 10,000mAh power banks instead of one 20,000mAh. I also bring back-up USB cords.

I'm surprised there are still people who don't know that you need a high wattage charger to quickly charge your power bank and phone when you have limited time (at a public park, in a restaurant, etc.). 30 watts is a good target. 20 watts if will be in hotels all the time and can charge at your leisure. If you have a 5 watt charger (the small ones that used to come free with a smartphone purchase) it will take 20 hours to recharge a 20,000 mAh power bank. Again, I recommend Anker.

My tent pitching experience was hugely improved when I bought some longer and bigger tent stakes at a store in southern Utah. My skinny 6-inch stakes (MSR Groundhog Mini) were doing poorly in loose ground. The 7.5 inch stakes (MSR Groundhog) I bought were not just longer, but also wider. As I have a trekking pole tent, staking the 4 corners securely is not optional.

If I had to do this route again, I would create my own pre-filter system for water before it goes through my filter. There is often material (dead insects, algae clumps, harmless bacterial clumps, dirt, plant material, etc.) floating in the water and I soon clogged my filter. A slow filter costs you so much time when you have to squeeze and bottle or bag to force water through your filter. Some quick online research on ultralight forums and elsewhere will give you some ideas.

A mosquito head net weighs next to nothing, and it will save you from applying DEET repellent to your face, next and head. I first needed it in southern Utah when the gnats hatched. They love landing in your eyes. When I finally hit real mosquitoes in the Yellowstone wetlands it was my most essential piece of gear keeping me sane. How about insect repellent? I first experienced deer/black flies at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and in Hack Canyon (4 bites in total on my legs). Then a few more times in various places in southern Utah - usually near cattle or a cattle watering spot. And the freshly hatched gnats were also biting my legs. Then I hit an extreme deer fly zone: lower Hall Creek right before Capitol Reef National Park. I had to put on my pants because of their regular attacks on my legs. The bites hurt and then itch for a long time. So I suggest a small bottle of DEET or picardin being in your bag starting from the Grand Canyon. Afterwards once I went up into the mountains of central and northern Utah I would occasionally get to an area with mosquitoes. But the green, wet mountain areas rarely had a bad mosquito spot until northern Wyoming. I hate DEET, but I gave up and bought DEET in Yellowstone. It's the only thing that works with bad swarms. Your experience may vary depending on weather and timing. After Old Faithful in Yellowstone I never had any more insect bites. I have permethrin treated pants and sun hoody. They worked great until Yellowstone when I hit the bad swarms. They were great against deer flies and smaller swarms of mosquitoes. And I think that they probably work really well on ticks. If you are American or from anywhere but Canada you can mail in your favorite clothing to get a professional permethrin treatment.

Waterproof bag liner or dry bags: it's not just for long drenching rains, but for slipping and falling in creeks, one slot canyon route with chest deep water in southern Utah, and for two optional swim crossings.

Gear replacement on the trail

If you are American, gear replacement is easy. A piece of gear is ordered and delivered to a family member or friend. They repackage it and send it via US Postal Service general delivery and you pick it up at any small town post office on the route. American post offices hold general delivery packages for 30 days, giving you lots of flexibility when timing your delivery and pick-up.

Big online retailers will only send you a package by courier (UPS, FedEx, etc.). You need a seller who will send to a general delivery address via US Postal Service so you can get gear replaced on the trail at a post office. There are a few ways around this. Get an REI account. If you call REI to make an order over the phone and talk to a person, they understand why you need them to send a package through the US Postal Service.

If you are getting gear from a small "cottage" company you can also talk to them over the phone or specify on your online order that you need the package to be sent by the US Postal Service. They are used to sending gear to people on the CDT and PCT, and they understand thru-hikers circumstances.

Amazon Lockers: Amazon stock gets worse and worse every year. Finding specialized high quality gear on Amazon is getting harder and harder. As for their "locker" service, it's not very good. As of 2024 they were demanding an $80 delivery charge if you didn't sign up for Amazon Prime. Also, you have a short time window to get your package from a locker. If you are late for pickup, the package will be returned to Amazon. In desperation I used this service once. I carefully timed my order to be ready when I walked through a town. However, the next day I was sent the "good news" that my package was sent earlier than expected. This resulted in me having to a couple of very long and fast days to get to the Amazon Locker in time.

Hotels, motels and RV parks with tent spots: Many of these places, especially in small towns, will accept packages from courier services. So I suggest calling them over the phone (or email) and asking if you can have a package sent to them in your name. Obviously, you will need to have a room reserved, or tell them that you are not sure exactly of your arrival date and that you will reserve later. This is the most reliable way to get a package from an online seller who can't or won't send by US Postal Service via general delivery. The smaller the town, the better, as the people living in these places are generally more helpful (as long as courier delivers there). And independent hotels and motels will be better than big chain hotels/motels.

Stores on the trail: You will go through few towns with good outdoor sporting goods stores, such as Flagstaff, Arizona, and Jackson, Wyoming. But for shoe replacement you may not have good luck finding your exact brand, model and size. Search online for stores on towns along the route and see what brands they carry. Some of them may be able to order your size and have it available for pick-up when you arrive. Maybe. Some list their stock online, and some require you to call or email them and ask. But in general you will very rarely go through a town big enough to have a store with the item you need.

Food Resupplying and Town Guide

The full information about when and where to resupply on food and your various options for accommodation are listed in the trail guide.

For Arizona you can refer to many excellent online guides that give you instructions on how to mail resupply packages to yourself via general delivery, and what your various options are for resupplying along the way from local stores. I didn't do any mail resupply, as I'm not too picky about food. Other people were regularly picking up packages at post offices and other locations as they greatly preferred their own special trail food that is not available at local stores - or they had specific dietary requirements (vegans, etc.). I consider Arizona quite easy for resupplying. I won't detail my strategy, as it is clearly very unpopular. I did very long and heavy food carries to avoid having to hitchhike into towns. I preferred to, for example, carry 7 days’ worth of food versus doing a combined 3 and 4 day food carry separated by leaving the trail and hitchhiking in and out of a town for a resupply.

From the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona until the start of the Wind River Range in Wyoming the only information on resupplying will be in this guide. You won't find anything else online as of 2024. The only exception will be Hayduke Trail resupply instructions online that discuss options available for towns that coincide with the Vasquez-Hudson route (example: what exactly is available in a small mini-market or convenience store). I list your resupply options in the trail guide, including time estimates for each section.

After Butte in Montana you can refer to the many online resupply guides for the Continental Divide Trail.

As the numerous resupply guides online detail, you can mail packages to yourself while on the trail. I didn't do a single food resupply by mail on the entire route, but if I had to do the route again there are a few places where I would do this to, for example, break up the 12 and 10 day food carries I suffered through.

Camping Guide

Above you can read about backcountry camping permits for national parks and some restrictive areas. But in general you will be camping for free and with no need for a permit in national forests and on BLM land (Bureau of Land Management). These are public lands managed by two different federal government agencies, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior. National forests are, obviously, forested land. BLM land is usually treeless land not appropriate for crop agriculture. In both national forest and on BLM land you are free to camp almost anywhere without a permit. The legal/bureaucratic term for it in on public land in the United States is "dispersed camping" (you may call it wild camping or backcountry camping). Dispersed camping does not include the official national forest campgrounds, which are often not free and have some infrastructure.

BLM land areas which require camping permits are very few. They are listed above. Elsewhere the rules are simple and it's free. You can't stay in a single location for more than two weeks, don't leave trash or harm sensitive environments. And there are obvious things not to do, such as camping on BLM land but being close to a home on private property. In general, BLM land is the least restrictive land in America. People are out here setting up huge bonfires, shooting guns, driving around in ATVs, getting drunk and stoned, playing loud music, etcetera... But you won't see this in the more isolated areas. The farther from a road you are, the quieter it will be. Note that BLM gives out grazing leases to ranchers. You will occasionally meet cows.

National Forests and their more restrictive sub-units (wilderness areas) are also free to camp in, but have more restrictions. An obvious one is campfire restrictions. By the time I got to Montana it was dry enough for there to be campfire bans. In other places there are signs at the trailhead with camping restrictions listed. Usually these are only in the most popular areas and are rules regarding minimum distance between your camp spots and a lake or river. In Arizona there were also distance restrictions next to small water reservoirs that are used by wildlife.

State Trust Land is public land owned by the state government. Sometimes you are free to camp there, sometimes you are not. In some areas this land may come with restrictions. In Arizona along the Arizona Trail there is an agreement granting permission to camp on State Trust Land for free. Elsewhere you will rarely encounter this land, or it is leased to a farmer and you obviously can't camp on a field full of crops. In other places near towns it may be leased to a rancher and you don't want to be camping in a small field full of bulls. The places where you may want to camp on State Trust Land are rare and easily avoided. I list them in on the GPS track and waypoints.

Do you have a map app displaying public lands? Be warned that at least one of these is inaccurate (CalTopo) and often fails to display private property if surround by BLM land or national forests. If you want to extensively explore off the route, refer to this far more accurate map of public lands.

Private property? Obviously don’t camp there. This is America, not Sweden. My waypoints warn you when you are next to private property. In some places I ignore private property because it is a small section in an extremely isolated area and has no home or infrastructure nearby, and other people are clearly walking and driving through. Usually this is a spring area that a rancher bought long ago for the water source. In these places I saw no signs or fences - just some cows having a drink and a road that may actually be a public easement.

Maps

If you stay on the main route of the Vasquez-Hudson route, you can use any map app that allows you to display GPS tracks and waypoints. If you leave the main route and explore, there are some problems you will encounter depending on the map you are using.

US Forest Service maps: these are very out of date. They display trails that have grown over and disappeared decades ago. The trails are hand drawn and are not accurate. New trails are not displayed. But they are pretty to look at and do a great job of showing the terrain in your area (in national forests and parks).

US Geological Survey maps: extremely out of date. Roads and trails may or may not exist on these maps. But these are useful in BLM areas to show the geography (that does not change). But be warned that they list wells that are not pumping water anymore.

Maps by Google, Apple, Bing, etcetera are good only for towns when researching hotels and supermarkets. They are terrible and inaccurate in isolated areas. But the satellite view may be useful when planning an exploration.

Open Street Map data. Every backcountry map download for offline use that is not a satellite view map, a Forest Service, or US Geological Survey map is based on Open Street Map data. All of them. When anybody online says one of these apps is better than another and has better maps, they are wrong (sort of). They are all based on Open Street Map data. The only correct thing to say is that a certain app may display the map data in a better way visually, and its navigation features may be better. Open Street Map data is based on volunteer editors. Some areas are fantastic thanks to an editor who is interested in the area. But other areas are blank areas with no data aside from elevation contours. I have done a great deal of editing on Open Street Map, concentrating on areas next to the route. I focused on adding trails, improving trail accuracy, adding water features (springs, tanks, wells, lake, ponds, stream rivers, etc.), adding cliff bands, trailheads, campgrounds, roads, etcetera... How often and when your map app updates the map data will determine if you can see all the updated edits I made in September-October 2024.

Trail GPS apps. Alltrails and similar sites that have GPX tracks for download are terrible. It's clear that they are often just tracing the very inaccurate US Forest Service maps and uploading the files as if they are based on a hiker's upload based on their hike. For example, in the Tetons I hiked down an easy canyon-side trail that is very accurate in any app that uses Open Street Map data, but on Alltrails an extremely out-of-date USFS route was uploaded, sending angry hikers on a brutal bushwhack with numerous difficult and totally unnecessary river crossings. So if you see a route on Alltrails or a similar site, know that it is maybe not accurate.

Even if you didn't plan to explore, and you intend to stay on the main route and refer to the Vasquez-Hudson Route GPS track and waypoints, you may be forced to do a different route by a forest fire, a flood, construction work, an environmental closure or some other disruption. I had to change my route in southern Utah due to an approaching heat wave. You may be needing to take a shortcut to a road for an emergency. You might be a woman who is trying to avoid a man on the main trail (it happens - there was a creepy guy on the AZT, and a very dangerous man on the CDT in 2024). So having access to a variety of map choices on your phone is a good idea.

Leaving and Returning to the Trail

You can take a train to and from these locations: Flagstaff (Arizona), the Grand Canyon, and East Glacier Park Village in Montana (you can use this train station at the end of your journey by hitchhiking back from Canada)

Larger towns have regular bus services that will get you to a city with an airport or train station. Greyhound Bus has a map of its bus stations and routes. Note that FlixBus and Greyhound are in a partnership in the US. Either website or app has the exact same routes. Make sure to check the prices. Some places have extortion-level prices (example: to and from Zion National Park).

Other places have local bus lines or shuttle connections. For example, when you get closer to Salt Lake City some of the towns have regular daily express busses to the city. Search online for your options. For rural public transportation, Utah is by far the best. They have government-funded vans and small shuttle busses that connect many small towns to bigger towns and cities. In the tiny towns of Arizona, Wyoming and Montana you may have no choice but to resort to hitchhiking. On the AZT and CDT if you are desperate to leave the trail quickly (emergency or otherwise) a "trail angel" may be able to help you. Being on FarOut and the Facebook pages for those trails can help you get in touch with them. In an emergency there is a good chance they can pick you up and drive you to a train station, bus stop or airport. Note that these people are often low-income, so you need to offer to pay for gas for the car trip.

Hitchhiking still works in rural areas in the America southwest and in mountain states. But national parks and areas near ski resorts don’t work so well (wealthier people from the suburbs and cities are the least likely to pick you up). You aren’t allowed to hitchhike on the big interstate highways in the United States, and the faster state highways are not places you can hitchhike as drivers can’t see you in time nor can they safely pull over to pick you up. But if vagabonds can get all around the country, so can you. You just need patience.

If you are injured or need to get home for an emergency, let people know your circumstances. People in small towns in this region are extremely kind, generous and helpful.

Guide for non-Americans

Check back in the future as I’m writing a short guide for foreign tourists.