Jen Burnsed considers herself to be an experienced hiker. She regularly drives from her home near Sacramento to the Bay Area to embark on strenuous, daylong coastal hikes. She carries enough gear to be worthy of a small backpacking trip: two headlamps, four portable battery packs, two air horns, five liters of water, plenty of food, a knife, first-aid equipment and multiple layers of clothing. She researches local weather conditions beforehand. She downloads trail maps to her phone, uses two different GPS tracking systems and never strays off-trail.
So when what was supposed to be a 13-mile day hike resulted in Burnsed trekking through the Marin County backcountry until late into the night, she became a little perturbed. Then, there was the Facebook group.
“How in the bleep is it that all trails says this hike is 13 miles? I am still out here at 12.50 miles and I probably have 4 to 4 1/2 miles left,” Burnsed posted to a group called Bay Area Hikers several hours into her hike. She included a screenshot of the AllTrails route she was following, a 13-mile loop that starts and ends in Stinson Beach and travels through Mount Tamalpais State Park to the Muir Woods National Monument…