Why are the maps on the Hunter Mt road wrong?

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Posted by G.U. on April 29, 2003 at 19:35:32:

Went from Saline up Lippincott and into Hidden Valley, spending the night at Lost Burro. Next day the plan was to exit via Hunter Mountain. I had a 1:100,000 USGS topo (1985) of Saline Valley that covered this area. I also had my topo software and my laptop computer and my GPS; I was as wired as you could get.

Both the map and the software show a road in Ulida Flat that is opposite the road to the Keeler Mine loop that goes up the ridgeline to Hunter Mt. But as soon as I got on it, I had a bad feeling; didn't look like this trail had seen any use in recent history. It dead-ended after a couple of miles. Pulled out the map again and saw the second route; this one started further down the road, very near Goldbelt Spring. Both the map and the topo software showed the road starting very near the convergence of the main road and the trail coming down from Quackenbush mine. As I was driving to get there, I passed what was an obviously well-graded road that headed in the right direction, but wasn't where the map said it should be. I got down to the Quackenbush junction and only found another seldom-used trail that headed west. Fired up the GPS and I was definitely where the maps said I should be, but it was clear that this wasn't the road.

I headed back up the road about a half mile to the well-graded road, and it was obvious within the first mile that I was on the right road (it's in great shape, by the way).

So the question to the board is, why are the maps wrong about both trails? Did NPS cut a new route at some point and the other routes got abandoned?

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