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Trail blazing or way marking is the practice of marking paths in outdoor areas with signs or markings that follow each other at certain, though not necessarily exactly defined, distances and mark the direction of the trail.
A blaze in the beginning meant "a mark made on a tree by slashing the bark" ( The Canadian Oxford Dictionary). Originally a waymark was "any conspicuous object which serves as a guide to travellers; a landmark" ( Oxford English Dictionary). Today, paint (most prevalent), carvings, affixed markers, posts, flagging, cairns, and crosses, are commonly used.
Blaze frequency and recognizability varies significantly. In some , such as those governed by the US Wilderness Act requiring that the land seem "untrammeled by man," blazes are kept to a minimum. Alternatively, highly utilized public areas, such as busy municipal, county, or , will use frequent and highly visible blazes to maximize trail recognition.
European countries usually use systems of painted bars or shapes in more than one colour. The Czech Hiking Markers System uses three bars – usually one color in between two white bars, with different meanings attached to different colours – in a 10 cm x 10 cm square. Red is often used to mark difficult or summit trails. Arrows of similar design signal a change of direction.
This system was first used in today's Czech Republic in May 1889, to mark a trail from the town of Štěchovice to a nearby spring. Today there are of marked trails in the Czech Republic. This system is used also in Slovakia, Ukraine, Croatia, Romania, Albania, Brazil, Philippines and Mongolia. Poland, Bulgaria and Georgia used very similar system. French, Italian, Austrian and Swiss trails use a similar system of white and coloured stripes. Slovenia, Croatia and other former members of Yugoslavia use Alojz Knafelc.
In the United States and Canada, a single colour is used, usually white, red, blue or yellow. Trails in South Africa are often marked by yellow footprints painted on trees and rocks.
In Israel, trails are marked by three stripes. A painted stripe surrounded by two white stripes can indicate length with black, green, blue, or red representing short (<10 km) trails, and purple or orange representing longer trails (60 to 100 km). In addition, some trails are represented by specific colour combinations such as the Golan Trail (white, blue, green), the Jerusalem Trail (blue, gold, blue), and the Israel National Trail (white, blue, orange).
Blazes may also be painted on obvious rock surfaces or on posts set into the ground (or on utility poles, fences, or other handy surfaces) where the trail follows a road or goes through fields and meadows.
Today, environmentalism and aesthetic concerns dictate blazing method on public lands, with other navigational aids, such as , and machine-carved posts, used where blazes are unsuitable.
Trail flagging is the predominant method to mark a mountain hiking trail in Japan. Red ribbons usually indicate an ascent route while yellow ribbon indicate a descent route. On some mountains, a non-standard ribbon colour (white or blue) is used to identify a specific trail.
Below the tree line, cairns are used less frequently, often like flagging to indicate informal or unofficial paths or just their junctions with official trails. They may become obscured by snow in areas with heavy winters and may be easily knocked over. In some areas the recreational building of numerous cairns has obscured the proper use of cairns to mark junctions and crossings. In some areas of the United States, park rangers and land managers must disassemble excess cairns when they become eyesores or when they mislead navigation.
Where rocks are scarce, poles can be used. Poles are also frequently used to mark ski and snow shoe trails.
Blaze type might also be mixed when different user groups (i.e., , equestrianism, ) are allowed on trails. For users of faster vehicles, blazes are often larger in order to be seen better at high speeds, and sometimes affixed markers best communicate who may and may not use a trail besides those on foot.
Another possible distinction is by season. In Norway, it is common to use blue for summer routes and red for winter routes. Red routes may traverse lakes and swamps, which are flat and well suited for cross-country skiing in winter, but impassable on foot in summer.
Colours are often assigned simply with an eye toward making sure that no two trails that intersect use the same one, but it can go further than that. On all state land in New York's Catskill Park, for instance, primary trails, especially longer "trunk trails" that go great distances, use red markers if they go in a generally east–west direction and blue if they go north–south. Shorter spur, loop or connector trails generally use yellow blazes.
On occasions when two trails run concurrently, usually at a slightly staggered junction, only one trail may be signed, often with the longer or more heavily trafficked trail's blaze predominating. In other cases, such as southern Vermont where the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail follow the same path, both trails may use the same white blaze.
A quite different blazing system, called mute blazes was created in the Czech part of the Giant Mountains. The blazes, cut out of sheet metal and painted red, are suspended on high poles, thus being visible to both hikers and skiers. Unlike in classic systems, they do not refer to paths or trails, but show the way to the nearest and adjacent towns and villages with the possibility of overnighting and catering. National Trails in England and Wales generally use an acorn symbol. The National Cycle Network in the United Kingdom is signposted using a white bicycle symbol on a blue background, with a white route number in an inset box, but with no destination names or distances. National Route numbers have a red background, Regional Route numbers have a blue background. The system of symbols is based on that used by the Danish National Cycle Route network.
The colour used may also indicate the status of the route, for example on rights of way in England and Wales yellow marks are used for footpaths, blue for bridleways, and red for byways open to all traffic.
Offset blazes is a system whereby a vertically stacked pair of blazes with the upper one offset in the direction that the trail turns. This system was first used in 1970 on the Beech Trail in Harriman State Park. This system was further refined to where a triangular pattern of blazes would indicate a terminus, its point up or down depending on whether that was the beginning or the end. These began to be used elsewhere and are now fairly common throughout North America, though variations of this system exist. Some trails instead use two blazes painted together at an angle to form an "L" shape to indicate a turn, with the angle between the two blazes indicating the angle and direction of the turn. Also, a few trails indicate turns with two stacked blazes, without an offset, but this can cause confusion as the direction is not implied. In addition, other trails may use two non-offset stacked blazes to indicate the trail goes straight at a location where there may be a tempting mis-turn.
A triangular pattern with its point to the side was also devised for eventualities like spurs or junctions, but these have not caught on.
In some areas, a triangular pattern with its point up indicates that a hiker is at the point of a sharp switchback.
In the Netherlands, signage usually consist of two bars above each other: white-red, yellow-red and red-blue are commonly seen blazes. An upcoming turn is indicated by duplicating the blazes: white-red-white-red, yellow-red-yellow-red, etc. Nowadays, stickers are often used, and instead of duplicating the blaze, the rectangle is cut into an arrow, to indicate direction. A saltire is used to indicate a direction should not be taken: the cross will have the same colours as the blazes (each bar will use a different colour).
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