Ski trail maps are one of the only cartographic genres where deliberately distorting scale is standard practice — steep terrain gets drawn steeper than it actually is, because slope readability matters more than geographic accuracy for run-planning.
We can’t take that same liberty on a park trail map, where hikers rely on the map to estimate real distance and effort. It’s a good reminder that “accurate” and “useful” aren’t always the same design goal, and the right answer depends entirely on what the reader is actually going to do with the map.