On any given hiking day along the route, you can expect to encounter a variety of conditions and surfaces underfoot. As mentioned elsewhere, the G.E.T. consists of existing hiking trails, 2-track/4WD roads, improved roads, and cross-country travel. The route makes use of these surfaces according to their availability in the journey's grand scheme, with an emphasis on providing an unbroken wilderness experience with access to scenery, pleasant surroundings, pristine campsites, and water. Efficiency of travel between town stops is also a priority in the G.E.T.'s routing, although places of particular interest have sometimes merited a more circuitous routing.

Map of Surface Types - Click to view full size

Trails

Hiking trail accounts for approximately 400 of the G.E.T.'s 730 or so total miles. Some trails or portions of trails are well used and/or regularly maintained. These are generally easy to follow without referencing map or guidebook. Other trails receive less visitation or infrequent trail crews, and may have occasional or frequent brush growing on or over the path, eroded or unstable tread, and/or occasional downed trees and limbs. These conditions are most often encountered in official wilderness areas or other remote portions of the route. Also, in areas affected by fire. Depending on the obviousness of the trail's direction of travel, these obstacles may require only due care or a brief walk-around, or else they may require the use of map, compass, GPS, or the guidebook to determine how best to proceed. In a few brief cases, trail tread has not yet been constructed (or has reverted to nature), but the intended direction of travel is marked with rock cairns, flagging tape, and/or tree blazes (bark cuts).

Opposite extremes: Excellent trail in the Superstitions of Arizona (above); brief stretch of trail damaged by wildfire in New Mexico (right)

Grading Standards

Most trails encountered are reasonably well graded, often climbing and descending steeper slopes via gentler switchbacks. Standards obviously vary from region to region, just as with overall trail conditions. Since the route makes passage over more than a dozen mountain ranges, total elevation gain/loss is fairly significant (though not nearly so aggressive as the AT). However, because maximum elevations are fairly modest (below 11,000'), and since days of climbing are often followed by days of relatively gentle terrain, overall strenuousness of the route can perhaps best be described as moderate. (Elevation profiles of the route suggest 104,000' of accumulated elevation gain in 700 miles. See overview profile.)

2-Track / 4WD Roads

Quiet 2-track road in Arizona's Turtle Mtns

These are the most primitive of road surfaces encountered. Totaling about 135 miles of the entire route, 2-track / 4WD roads are also the most common type of road feature. The term "2-track" derives from a frequent characteristic of such roads - a pair of tracks, or ruts (grooves), with a raised and sometimes rocky or brushy area between them. Four-wheel drive vehicles are the usual "maintainers" here, although in many cases the road surfaces are too rough or steep for most vehicles, if they're open to the motoring public at all. For our purposes, 2-track and 4WD refer to any road surface too challenging for 2 wheel drive vehicles such as passenger cars. These roads are often quite enjoyable to walk on - narrow, rugged and interesting, with nature close at hand - yet they also are mostly straightforward and easy to follow, allowing for steady forward progress. In the vast majority of cases, you'll have these roads to yourself and will not encounter vehicles. (Weekends during fall hunting season can be an exception in certain places.)

Priest Canyon Rd, Manzano Mtns, NM

Improved Roads

Any road maintained to a standard that would permit passenger cars is here considered to be "improved." These surfaces may be dirt or gravel (~85 miles of the route) or asphalt (30 miles). Often encountered in areas away from public land, these roads sometimes serve as the legal rights of way that lead the route through towns or between parcels of Forest Service, BLM, or state land. As with 2-track roads, these improved roads occur sporadically over the course of the route, so that any given day of hiking might subject you to only a few such miles, if any. Forward progress is well facilitated by such roads, and most do not carry much vehicle traffic, so the walking is pleasant and easy. You can also use such roaded portions of the route to help stay on schedule, for example if a recent section of obscure trail tread caused you to travel more slowly. (The GET topo maps and guide explain in greater detail where each surface type begins and ends.)

Cross-country Travel

Cross-country travel accounts for approximately 80 miles of the suggested G.E.T. route, and is generally of two forms: drainage course walking and line-of-sight travel in open desert.

Cross-country in Johnny Creek Canyon, AZ

In the first type, which occurs more commonly, the route follows along the bottom of a dry creek bed or "wash" in order to link with road or trail at either end. Sometimes the wash may in fact be a flowing creek, such as in a steep-sided canyon environment, and in this case you would normally travel the path of least resistance along the creek bank, fording to the other side whenever necessary or convenient.

Examples of drainage course walking include Putnam Wash (Segment 5), which is wide, dry, sandy, and obvious; Aravaipa Canyon (Segment 7) - follow the creek bank until the canyon wall forces you to ford, then follow the other bank, etc.; and Montosa/Abo/Priest canyons (Segment 34), which are a network of steep-sided sandstone arroyos that the route follows rather like hallways, turning the "corner" as one ends at the intersection with the next. Drainage walking can be interesting and adventurous, often rugged and wet, but the route has been designed to make these sections efficient and straightforward as well. Basic routefinding ability, patience (expect a pace no faster than 1 mph on occasion), and a willingness to pioneer are the only real prerequisites for this type of travel. (Please note that cross-country travel along the G.E.T. is not bushwhacking - fighting through tree limbs and high brush in disorienting terrain - although the surfaces underfoot can sometimes be quite rocky, sandy, wet, or overgrown.)

Line-of-sight travel, aka "following a bearing," can sometimes be more challenging than drainage walking because of the need to avoid obstacles without veering away from your objective. However, the G.E.T. employs such travel only rarely, and only in open terrain where the walking is mostly easy and free of obstacles, and where a visual bearing is easy to obtain. One example occurs in open desert east of New Mexico's Black Range, (Segment 27) where the route leaves a dirt road (indicated by flagging and GPS waypoint) and proceeds downhill on a bearing to cross a wash, (GPS waypoint-marked location) then continues on to join another road by a windmill (GPS waypoint). Several different approaches to navigation are possible here. One is line of sight, where you would simply hike downhill to join the obvious wash at a random location in its canyon, then walk along the wash itself, keeping a sharp eye out for the windmill, and finally leave the wash on a bearing to the windmill. A more direct approach would be to follow a compass bearing the entire way, as determined by map, possibly adjusting your exact route here and there as dictated by the terrain. Still a third way of navigating here is by GPS, walking from one waypoint to the next, more or less emulating the non-linear but perhaps easier route that I actually walked. None of the G.E.T.'s few overland excursions requires advanced routefinding ability, however it is recommended that hikers have a good understanding of how to navigate by map (especially) and compass, as well as GPS (as an additional technique, not a substitute).

Cross-country near Dusty, NM

Trek Planner: Following the Route4

3Trek Planner: A Prerequisite