The video was created for a class in 2011, many things have changed since then.
The trail alignment was captured with a consumer grade GPS under heavy tree coverage. Now you would be able to capture this data at a higher precision with a external bluetooth GPS (Bad Elf) to show the alignment around features like switchbacks and trees.
Google Earth development was discontinued in late 2016, the speed and rendering of the buildings/background is significantly faster.
singletrackmap 