Long distance hiking trail markings in North America or parts thereof
In many European countries, dedicated long-distance hiking trails are marked with a white-red marking, like in the photograph below:
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
I've seen this in at least The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Poland. Switzerland has its own, different system.
Is there any such system in North America or parts thereof? Wikipedia doesn't really help here.
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There is no standard for the color and shape of blazes used to mark trails in the US. Generally, trails are managed locally, so at best a set of blazes follows a pattern in a particular area.
A few longer trails have well known consistant blazes the whole length. The AT, for example, uses a vertical white rectangle that has a speficified width and height. Generally, any one trail will be consistant, but there is no higher level standard or plan.
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Those are blazes. They used to be done with an axe, now they're done with paint. There's no national standard, but there are usually standards for a particular trail.
The Appalachian Trail, for example, uses white blazes.
The Ozark trail uses a small plastic OT logo lightly tacked to trees.
Double-blazes are often used to signal a sharp turn.
See Wikipedia's article on blazing.
Here's an Ozark Trail blaze.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/3508. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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