GPT00 - An introduction

• Main Article: Greater Patagonian Trail

The GPT is not a public trail and no agency or foundation cares for this project so no official body provides any information and updates to the GPT. And since the first publication in 2014 the GPT route network has grown from 1’500 km to more than 18’000 km in 2019. Therefore, a single author cannot collect and update all relevant information to this immense network. For this reason, it becomes now the task of the hikers’ community to collaborate in the publication of the GPT.

Issuing and updating the section documentation is the most relevant and suitable task in which all hikers should participate. Hikers that just walked a section visited the nearby resupply locations, arranged their transport to the trail and experienced the current route condition and gained the expertise that fellow hikers need. Sharing this knowledge with other hikers is feasible and appropriate. Therefore, signing up on Wikiexplora and providing feedback on Wikiexplora is now a condition for getting access and using the track files.

To enable a collaboration on the section documentation one Wikiexplora article was created for each section in 2019. Starting with season 2019/20 the feedbacks and contributions from all hikers are collected primarily in these wikies. These wiki permit each hiker to add information to the section documentation and to edit previously published content if changes occurred.

As a minimum all hikers and packrafters should:

1. Provide important updates and alerts on Wikiexplora under “Recent Alerts and Suggestions” as soon as feasible. If you encounter an obstacle that turns you around or that complicates your hike significant, then publish it on Wikiexplora in the corresponding section article. Such an obstacle might be an impassable trail section, a river that is unsafe to ford, a bridge that was flushed away or an unpleasant right-of-way dispute. Do this as soon as you get internet to alert other hikers and provide a suggestion if you have one. Share also positive surprises under “Recent Alerts and Suggestions”. A settler family received you very well, you found an undocumented hot spring or you discovered an useful route variation: share it on Wikiexplora under “Recent Alerts and Suggestions”! Basically, whenever you say to yourself: “I should have known this before!” then speak to your peers by writing to them on Wikiexplora.

2. Add yourself and your hiking partner to the section log under “Season Section Log” after you completed a section or section combination. This section log entry should contain:

- your section start date (the actual date when you started walking on this section), - your names (or alias or your Wikiexplora username if you prefer more privacy), - your hiking duration (how many days it took you from the section start to the finish), - your hiking direction (southbound or northbound), - describe your chosen route (i.e. hiking or packrafting route), the used options (if not following the entire regular route) and combinations with other sections (if your combined several sections without resupplying off the trail) - and your personal perception of the section attractiveness, difficulty and comments that you consider beneficial.

Collecting such brief summaries from many hikers is important to update the Section Travel Timing Recommendation and the Section Attractiveness and Difficulty Rating that incorporates multiple personal perceptions. The actual hiking duration in days helps other hikers to better plan provisions and timing. The intention is NOT a performance comparison.

3. If you have new useful information or you find an error in a section description, then update any other item of the Wikiexplora Section Article yourself during your hike. I.e. you researched the bus schedule to the trail head: then click on the edit button in the Wikiexplora article and add what you learned. When updating the Wikiexplora Section Article don’t worry too much about formatting and spelling; this can be corrected later. Just add information that will serve others.