EDIT: I feel like an idiot. It’s boilerplate text pulled from a USFS standard.

Or did the Forest Service give this job to a sarcastic intern and nobody proofread it?

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    36·
    2 days ago

    Original page.

    Clearly not AI. Here’s where you can find the trail types, OP, including “standard terra trail”. As @[email protected] notes, it’s used to distinguish from things like snow trails.

    And here’s where you can find, centralized, that verbatim definition. It’s pulling from a prebaked list of definitions as @[email protected] suggests.

    a. Standard Terra Trail: A trail that has a surface consisting predominantly of the ground and that is designed and managed to accommodate use on that surface.

    b. Snow Trail: A trail that has a surface consisting predominantly of snow or ice and that is designed and managed to accommodate use on that surface.

    c. Water Trail: A trail that has a surface consisting predominantly of water (but may include land-based portages) and that is designed and managed to accommodate use on that surface.

    That’s a reasonable way to express it when other options are “predominantly not the ground”.