2022-01-18, 11:38 PM
Good topic for discussion, though I've also heard a wide variety of opinions on this, and I would definitely appreciate hearing folks' thoughts!
How I've aimed to handle the items you've mentioned is partly based on my experiences in mathematics research as a graduate student. In math, if you learned about something from a particular source, it's proper and polite to cite your references, so kind of out of habit I've carried this over to writing trip reports. (I have admittedly not been consistent about this in my earliest trip reports, though.) Many of the DV hikes I've done I learned about from Digonnet's book or Steve Hall's webpage. And sometimes after just picking a canyon and hiking up it, I've looked online and later seen that canyoneering folks had descended it. In reading reports, different folks focus on different aspects of the hike. Some focus on the scenery; I try to focus a bit also on the potential challenges encountered when doing the hike. So I think it's great if there are many reports available online for the same hike.
If there's already a trip report about an area online, or a hike is written up in a book, I've figured it's okay to write about it. However, that may not be the best practice, because there are places I've come across and shared info on with folks from the NPS and they've said because of the sensitive nature of the area (e.g. a natural bridge, or fossils) that they'd like keep the exact location off the internet; and I'm seeing some of these appearing in reports online. So anything that has a sensitive geological feature, or fossils, or petroglyphs/rock alignments etc. should probably either stay off the web or at least don't give any clues of how to find it. But that's just my two cents, others will probably disagree.
And most names are unofficial, plus some canyons have many different names, particularly in the "Ten Canyons" region (Steve Hall's name for that area) in the Cottonwoods, also known as the "Princess Bride Canyons" on canyoneering sites. I figure the names are unofficial and just a way to refer to a particular canyon, rather than saying e.g. "five drainages south of Cottonwood" or something like that.
How I've aimed to handle the items you've mentioned is partly based on my experiences in mathematics research as a graduate student. In math, if you learned about something from a particular source, it's proper and polite to cite your references, so kind of out of habit I've carried this over to writing trip reports. (I have admittedly not been consistent about this in my earliest trip reports, though.) Many of the DV hikes I've done I learned about from Digonnet's book or Steve Hall's webpage. And sometimes after just picking a canyon and hiking up it, I've looked online and later seen that canyoneering folks had descended it. In reading reports, different folks focus on different aspects of the hike. Some focus on the scenery; I try to focus a bit also on the potential challenges encountered when doing the hike. So I think it's great if there are many reports available online for the same hike.
If there's already a trip report about an area online, or a hike is written up in a book, I've figured it's okay to write about it. However, that may not be the best practice, because there are places I've come across and shared info on with folks from the NPS and they've said because of the sensitive nature of the area (e.g. a natural bridge, or fossils) that they'd like keep the exact location off the internet; and I'm seeing some of these appearing in reports online. So anything that has a sensitive geological feature, or fossils, or petroglyphs/rock alignments etc. should probably either stay off the web or at least don't give any clues of how to find it. But that's just my two cents, others will probably disagree.
And most names are unofficial, plus some canyons have many different names, particularly in the "Ten Canyons" region (Steve Hall's name for that area) in the Cottonwoods, also known as the "Princess Bride Canyons" on canyoneering sites. I figure the names are unofficial and just a way to refer to a particular canyon, rather than saying e.g. "five drainages south of Cottonwood" or something like that.
Link to my DV trip reports, and map of named places in DV (official and unofficial): http://kaurijacobphotography.yolasite.com