[at-l] Trail Maintenance: Blazing

[lwbooher@halifax.com (Leslie Booher)]

Yes, one does.  I've been places where we went back for a good ways to find
the last blaze to make certain that we hadn't gotten off the trail at a
switchback or old trail or something.  I've been in the fog where we
couldn't find blazes at all and the open area along the mountaintop gave us
no indication where the trail might go off.  And I've done only up to
Damascus.  There's a nifty place before Roan Mt., NoBo, where you go into an
evergreen copse of maybe an acre.  There aren't any blazes in there, and the
needle litter on the ground obscures what trail may have been there to begin
with.  Spooky.  We tried to keep in a straight line, though, and managed to
hit the trail on the other side OK.  Blazes give me great security.
anklebear

----- Original Message -----
From: <Slyatpct@aol.com>
To: <ellen@clinic.net>; <at-l@backcountry.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2002 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: [at-l] Trail Maintenance: Blazing


> There was a section in Maine, shortly before the Crockers if I recall
> correctly, that had to be the worst with abundant blazes.  Not only could
you
> see four, five or more in a row they were painted on each side of a tree,
> instead of alternating north and south, and on each side of the large
> boulders in the middle of the trail.  The trail was obvious and there were
no
> side trails to throw one off.
>
> Forget being able to see one blaze in front of the other, I thought the
> proper spacing was a quarter mile, intermixed with a opposite direction
blaze
> in between?  If you're on a path one does one need to see a blaze upon
blaze?
>
> Sly
>
>
> > A lot of maintainers use too many poorly painted blazes, damaging the
> > primitive
> > character of the trail. One blaze every five minutes is plenty when it's
> > obvious where the footpath is going. When a hiker reaches a blaze he
should
> > see
> > another blaze in the distance. But only one blaze ahead -- not a half
dozen
> > as
> >
>
>
>
>
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