Herdpaths?

[BLE]

Herd paths?

Sorry if this seems like a dumb question, but I'm increasingly intrigued by what exactly people mean by the term. Of course I've come across the term many times reading trail descriptions and trip reports, etc. I never really gave it too much thought and just assumed it was a fairly wide path large enough for a 'herd' of something, presumably animals, to pass. I'm guessing that this is probably the case. What started me wondering about it though was reading a post recently where the individual was describing a bushwacking trip and made a comment like "I was expecting to find a herd path." As I thought about it, I wondered why would someone expect to find a 'fairly wide path free from scrub' while bushwacking. Not having bushwacked before, the only thing I would 'expect' to find off trail in the Whites is thick heavy scrub. My limited understanding of animal behavior suggests to me that animals large enough to create a herd path, like bear and moose, tend to be solitary. So what would be the origen of herd paths?

 

[bruno]

i think the best way to describe "herd paths" is just unofficial trails that have been created just from so many folks headin' to a place where no 'officially maintained' (that is, by the forest service or the amc or the rmc, et al.) trail exists. an example would be the path up owl's head to the summit.

 

[Papa Bear]

I never really gave it too much thought and just assumed it was a fairly wide path large enough for a 'herd' of something, presumably animals, to pass.

In practice herd paths are not wide nor are they brush free.

First off, there are "real" herd paths: animal trails created by moose or deer. These may or may not go where you want to go. They tend to start and stop somewhat randomly and are certainly not wide. I assume they are used by one animal at a time. It's typically easier to make out the path at the ground level (dirt and moss are worn away), higher up they may have plenty of brush.

Human created herd paths are similar. Look at the ground first to find or follow one. Most are pretty brushy and never are they wide. Sometimes they have flagging. Often there are a variety of paths to a popular destination. As you get closer (say to the canister on a HH peak) they tend to consolidate. A good example is the path from N. Brother to Coe. There is intermittant flagging, there is plenty of brush, and it's easy to lose the path. When I did it, I was with 4 others and every 5 minutes or so we would lose it and we would spread out in various directions towards the objective until someone said "I found it", then off we wo go again. Typically at a blow down, the path would dissapear as those passing the obstruction would take many varied routes around it. Hopefully the old path can be found on the far side of the onstruction.

A path can "graduate" from a herd path to an unmaintained trail, such as on Owls Head or Nancy. I wouldn't really call these herd paths anymore.

 

[dms]

From doing lots of 3k bushwacks in ME and NH, I have seen some very "helpful" animal herdpaths high up on the mountains around steep cliffs and the like. In several places they do resemble hiking paths, for example on Mt. Baker in ME there is a wide herd path that follows the ridge line right over the summit and passes right next to the summit register, and keeps going for quite a long ways. On bushwacks they can be very useful at times.

 

[bigmoose]

Papa Bear -
You mean the "path" from N. Bro to FORT, not Coe, no?
And I wouldn't call that a herd path. I would call it a "hurt path." My shins took a hurtin' on that one, battered by the 129 horizontal spindly blowdown trees and limbs littered along the way....

 

[Papa Bear]

From doing lots of 3k bushwacks in ME and NH, I have seen some very "helpful" animal herdpaths high up on the mountains around steep cliffs and the like. In several places they do resemble hiking paths, for example on Mt. Baker in ME there is a wide herd path that follows the ridge line right over the summit and passes right next to the summit register, and keeps going for quite a long ways. On bushwacks they can be very useful at times.

dms

I'm interested in Mt. Baker. Is that animal path on the Lily Bay (north or west) side of the peak or on the south side? (Are you sure it's not a snowmobile path ) I'm thinking of trying a route from the Baker/Lily Bay col.

 

[Papa Bear]

Papa Bear -
You mean the "path" from N. Bro to FORT, not Coe, no?
And I wouldn't call that a herd path. I would call it a "hurt path." My shins took a hurtin' on that one, battered by the 129 horizontal spindly blowdown trees and limbs littered along the way....

Yes, Fort. Sorry.

"Hurt Path" is a nice phrase for it. Nice of you to count the blowdowns!

 

[bigmoose]

Yes! Let's have a few hints on getting to the top of Baker!

 

[sweeper]

"herd path" Domestic animals, to include humans

"Game Trails" Natures paths.

Yes there is a mixing also

 

[RoySwkr]

First off, there are "real" herd paths: animal trails created by moose or deer. These may or may not go where you want to go. They tend to start and stop somewhat randomly and are certainly not wide. I assume they are used by one animal at a time.

Where the animals are "herd" animals such as cows or elk, the paths can be more than one animal wide, particularly in open terrain. Where the going is thick and you want a wide path, they tend to be narrow

And while some animals eat vegetation, they tend not to eat the trail to a certain width, and they may step on and break minor deadfalls but do not saw them. However beavers do remove whole trees making some trails very wide

 

[dms]

Papa Bear, there are NO paths of any type on the Lily Bays, absolutely horrendous vegetation, some of the worse I've ever encountered. What's strange is that, for the most part, the Bakers are open woods, easy going once you get out of the col. Avoid the shoulder of Baker that's closest to the col, after that the going is easy. The herd path on Baker is no snowmobile trail, or at least it wasn't in 1990. This one path I described in my earlier reply was amazing in that it was so well defined, you would think you are on a hiking path. We started on S. Baker then went to M. Baker and then to Baker itself. We found a road that took us to a logging yard right at the base of S. Baker. After Baker we thought we had it "made" then we hit the Lily Bays. To make a long story short, we started bushwacking at 7:00 am, but did not get down until after 9:00 pm, a couple of times we actually considered stopping and waiting for daylight.

 

[mavs00]

You’ve already gotten a pretty good description of what “herd” paths are. Not much to add on that except that, for me, I’m in line with Sweeper. Herd paths are human (or possibly domesticated animals) and games trails are made by game animals. At times, they both serve the same purpose (i.e. path of least resistance through brush), but game trails are generally very random and non-dependable.

In context of your post and bushwhacking. When someone says, "I was expecting to find a herd path.", they are most likely talking about true human made paths from one point to another. In some cases, they may almost resemble a full-blown trail (minus the blazes), or in other cases, it’s a subtle, yet vaguely identifiable passageway that may fade in or out as you go (nature healing itself). I do some bushwhacking in the Adirondacks and will often use a phrase like the one above in a TR simply because, on many bushwhacks I’ve been on, I’ve come across any measure of pathways (or herd paths) that has been able to assist me or served to offer an alternative to just crashing through thick unrelenting “carnivorous” conifer stands.

Not sure how much you know about bushwhacking, but. I’ll give an example. Let’s say your on Mountain X, and you want to bushwhack a traverse over to Mountain Y. Its my experience (my opinion only) that when you bushwhack, it’s largely a matter of taking natures “natural” paths of least resistance along a given bearing to get from one place to the other. There is almost always certain natural channels that will funnel you from one spot to another with less difficulty than other routes. Cliff bands may have slots or work-arounds on the edges, or dense thickets may have swales or a channel of “less thick” stuff running through them. Most b-whackers I know follow these, along general compass bearing, towards their destination. Knowing this, coupled with the almost clear certainty that you and NOT the first to bushwhack from X to Y anywhere in the NE, many of those prior humans may have noticed the same things as you did and chosen a similar line or passage. If your following behind them soon enough so that nature has not yet been able to erase the evidence of their passing (day, weeks, or months later), you may notice it quicker and then exploit it even further. If enough boots pass by it, herd paths begin to develop.

Knowing that the traverse between X-Y is a reasonably popular bushwhack, you can expect to find evidence of all those prior boots in the form of a herd paths somewhere along the way. It may just be an “whisper” of past boots, or it may be a full out, anybody ole idiot can follow, trail. In the Adirondacks, many of the 46 of the high peaks are considered trailess. In reality the “herd” paths that have developed over time are SO well established, that you can hardly consider them trailess anymore.

These are my impressions anyway and I'm certainly not speaking for all whackers . If its a little winded my apologies.

 

[rondak46]

humor is intended...

If you look at a pasture, you can see that there are many tracks through them, particularly along hillsides. This is because cows and other herd animals just kind of mosey along through the pasture looking for eats and places to sleep. The idea is that they are basically unguided, and without much of a goal.

Humans, and hikers in particular, one would think, would be guided and have a goal. Therefore people creating and following a herd-path has an element of humor.

So, when you see varrying faint paths through the brush or woods, and you can fairly well guess that folks who made them are heading to the same destination, you get a kind of disconcerting, yet laughable sense that this is not how people should be acting. Thus the term "Herd path" is born and it carries a sense that things are not as they really should be.

Another charactistic of a herd path is that they often have dead ends and can waste a good chunk of your time.

Mike

 

[dms]

The herd path I mentioned on the Bakers is a moose path. The Baker peaks usually are only visited by folks doing the NE 3K list. Just to access them is a problem, they are 8 mi in from the nearest paved road, you have to drive over an obscure old woods road which requires a 4wd high clearance vehicle. Moose sign along the summit ridge is everywhere, browsed vegetation and piles of moose pellets all over the place. In fact, I have found similar paths on several of the most remote ME 3k peaks, but none as well defined as the one on the Bakers.