Necro-Mining Whiteblaze

[Dan Roper]

Planning my annual section hike in a couple of weeks (James River to Rockfish Gap this year), so I'm necro-mining Whiteblaze. I don't have a smartphone or other portable device, so no Guthooks or FarOut, and still use AT paper maps. Each year, I go through Whiteblaze looking for info, especially about good campsites, and mark the maps accordingly. This year I went 12 or 13 pages back on the "Camping" subforum, to 2004, and picked up a lot of good info. There was a lot of user traffic on Whiteblaze in 2004. It seemed very active until around 2016 or 2018, then began tapering noticeably, presumably as people moved on to other social media sites. One day they'll stop printing paper maps becasue there will be no demand. That will be a sad day, though old maps (with eroding reliability as the trail changes) will still be available for years thereafter.

[Slugg]

I feel like by 2016 - 2018 most of the “Facebook migration” had occurred and that time period seems like a “Reddit migration”, where hiking/backpacking communities on Reddit exploded in popularity. I’ve always been a Redditor and this is just my anecdotal memory. I suspect the widespread emergence of Guthook at the time and a rush of lots of new trails being added around that time contributed as well. Folks get their nitty-gritty data from that app now, not from asking questions.

[Dan Roper]

Thanks, Slugg, for adding insight into the trends that had taken place. I've never heard of Reddit.

[LittleRock]

I agree social media and Guthooks have taken a lot of traffic away from this site. That doesn't mean Whiteblaze is no longer useful - this site has 2 decades of knowledge imparted and is much more easily searchable than any social media site I've ever seen. Guthooks eliminated a lot of the need for location-specific discussions like "Is water available at source A?" or "Where can I camp between point B and point C?", but more general discussions on backpacking, gear, etc. are still very much relevant.

FWIW, I was a "guide book and map only" guy for a long time. Then in 2020, I was trying to plan a 2-week section hike to avoid shelters because of COVID. After striking out here and other places online at finding good campsites away from shelters, I purchased the AT package on Guthooks. It was invaluable - I was able to find legal stealth campsites away from shelters for all but one of 12 nights spent on trail. Several of those campsites weren't listed in the guidebook. Since then Guthooks has been an integral part of my set of section hike planning tools.

[Slugg]

Yep, FB and Reddit’s search functionality is terrible, which is a big part of why this is still my favorite community. In fact I believe on both of those platforms old posts are eventually remove, I know that’s the case on Reddit..

Also, looking back on my activity I feel like ‘15 - ‘17 more accurately be described as a ‘FB migration’ and ‘18 - present as a ‘Reddit migration’.

[HankIV]

Whiteblaze is better for knowledge, social media for self promotion.

FarOut comments are generally up to date, albeit sometimes inane. The official info and descriptions can get stale. The list some things that have been closed for years. Check comments first. Could’ve saved myself a half mile there and back walk to Trent’s Grocery if I had just read a few commenters saying the place WASN’T open on Sunday even though Guthook said it was.

[JPritch]

Whiteblaze is better for knowledge, social media for self promotion.

That sums it up perfectly. I miss the knowledge sharing you could get from forums like these. Once everyone moved to Facebook it basically became a picture sharing contest. And don't get me started on how the AT Facebook groups are moderated! Reddit is a little better for info, but the anonymity of it kind of stinks.

[rhjanes]

I have some AT hiking groups on FB......I just skim about 50 percent of it. I skip the stuff that on a platform such as this forum, could be quickly researched and the top-10 answers found in minutes. "What's the best tent/shoes/hiking poles". Get your popcorn!!!!
But it's true about everything. I'm on some specialty car forums and have similar stuff on FB. It's the same there. 20 repeating questions in the last 60 days "Why don't my dash lights work after I took it apart and put in LED's????" Well gee....about 20 things can go wrong on that project.....over on the forum is a sticky post with all 20 things and how to diagnose.

[peakbagger]

I comes down to signal to noise ratio, social media by design is built to encourage obsessive page views and posting because the user is the product. Forums while still somewhat dependent on advertising just does not have the same level of noise.