I tend to fairly carefully but rapidly pick my way along a trail. My wife and kids do not. I'd imagine this varies the rate of exposure to things like foliage on the edges of the trail.
It's all about compromises. A hiking trail keeps foot traffic to one known area and helps minimize damage to the surrounding area. So yeah, the trail itself could be considered impacting wilderness, but if not for that trail, it would actually be impacted more.
Depends on the route, I did the Mountaineer's Route on Whitney and they were pretty helpful, although there are probably < 100 people that do that in a season. Maybe I should get a better GPS
Appalachian trail is pretty much wilderness unless you pop down to a town. Whereas the trail for the Camino de Santiago, at least the part that I was on, constantly sent you directly through towns.
It's not about standards, it's about off topic. The trails you are referring to are far enough from me I know nothing of them, they very well might be good trails. They aren't long distance trails, though.
I've never done a long trail like that but just locally there's an incredible difference between walking out in the wilderness vs in civilization. The former is to enjoy, the latter is sometimes necessary to enable the former.
Additionally, much of the actual "trail" in it is rail-to-trail conversions, flat stretches with private farm land on both sides. Not exactly an exciting hike.
Of course. Trail ratings in North America are relative to each resort. I've gone down blues in the west that are far more challenging than the double blacks at a few areas in New England.
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