Trail Blazing, Trail Stewardship – I have been hearing more and more complaints about trail blazing along the White Mountains trail system. Either the trail is excessively blazed or not blazed enough. Personally, I don’t mind the trails that have little trail blazing. But I am not a fan of the excessive trail blazing. Over the years I have photographed different types of blazing styles and today I going to share a few of them with you.

Proper trail blazing protocol seems to vary among the trail maintenance organizations, but the ending result is the same. And most of these organizations agree that a standard trail blaze is a two inch by six inch rectangle placed about head height on trees. No painting of arrows, only a single vertical blaze, should be painted on a tree. For more information on blazing see the Randolph Mountain Club’s trail blazing protocol page.

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