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Is there a rating system for blaze colors?


continental drifter

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Just curious.Is there a rating system for the blazes that are used on trails? It seems at least here in Jersey that a white blazed trail is fairly easy terrain.Yellow is moderate and when I hike a blue blazed trail its a bit more challenging. Perhaps I'm wrong and I'm only remembering the particularly hard hikes on blue trails. Is it just me?

Edited by continental drifter
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Just curious.Is there a rating system for the blazes that are used on trails? It seems at least here in Jersey that a white blazed trail is fairly easy terrain.Yellow is moderate and when I hike a blue blazed trail its a bit more challenging. Perhaps I'm wrong and I'm only remembering the particularly hard hikes on blue trails. Is it just me?

 

No, the colors do not rate the terrain difficulty.

 

For example, The Appalachian Trail is white blazed.

 

One of the tougher ones I have hiked was "rhododendron pink" but that was because they added it to the trail network fairly late and all the other colors (white, red, yellow, blue, orange) were used.

 

Sometimes people get cute and have orange connect red and yellow trails. But, in truth all the patterns you see are happenstance.

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Blaze colors (in NJ) are usually arbitrarily assigned and not related to any rating system. I just blazed a brand new trail (Indian Rock) in Ramapo Mountain SF last weekend and we chose white blazes with a red triangle in the middle. Why? Because someone had a few hundred of them in his garage leftover from another trail that used that design.

 

We just try to make sure there are no similarly colored blazes in the area to avoid confusion.

 

Colors do have meaning in other areas. In the Catskills for example, blue blazes are generally north/south trails, red are generally east/west trails and yellow blazes are generally side or connector trails.

 

The only blazes that I'm aware of that once had a special significance in northern NJ are diagonal, bi-colored blazes. They were for connector trails. For example in Ramapo County Reservation a yellow/silver blazed trail connects a yellow blazed trail with a sliver blazed trail and the red/silver blazed trail once connected a silver blazed trail with a red blazed one (but no longer since the orange blazed Schuber replaced much of the original silver trail).

Edited by briansnat
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Just curious.Is there a rating system for the blazes that are used on trails? It seems at least here in Jersey that a white blazed trail is fairly easy terrain.Yellow is moderate and when I hike a blue blazed trail its a bit more challenging. Perhaps I'm wrong and I'm only remembering the particularly hard hikes on blue trails. Is it just me?

 

Your system mimics the rating system for the difficulty of Orienteering courses.. White, Yellow, Orange, Brown Green, Red, Blue... but I've never seen it applied with any uniformity to normal hiking trails.

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Perhaps I'm wrong and I'm only remembering the particularly hard hikes on blue trails. Is it just me?

 

Thus the expression What in Blue Blazes were they thinking?

 

http://www.word-detective.com/121800.html

 

Most Hiking Clubs rank their hikes A,B,or C. Look in the listing of hikes in the Trailwalker and you might find those rankings and you can match them to the area where you will be going to see.

 

There are several cavaets--For instance "The Hike of the Week" published in The Record almost always underestimates the ranking. If they rank moderate think more difficult. Experienced hikers tend to underestimate the difficulty--why --I think physical conditioning and their experience. Age, physical conditioning , equipment, experience all play a role.

 

Here is a commonly used rating system for local clubs.

 

Level A - Very easy. Mostly flat terrain. 3-5 miles.

Level B - Easy hike. Some hills, 4-7 miles.

Level C - Moderate for most of people. Some steep hills, 5-8 miles

Level D - Challenging, steeper terrain, 8-10 miles

Level E - Strenuous, 9-15 miles

Level F - Difficult, 15 miles +

Edited by Packanack
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I remember from boy scouts and hiking class I took at Rutgers. (How's that for 1 credit! :anitongue: )

New Jersey trail blazes had some meaning.

 

White and pink are usually a through trail.

 

Red, orange, yellow are usually connectors.

 

Blue is an alternative.

 

Light Blue and Green and "there and back" trails.

 

I really haven't paid attention to changes, but I still have it in the back of my mind when I see a blaze color. Some day, I'm sure this is going to get me in trouble. <_<

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I remember from boy scouts and hiking class I took at Rutgers. (How's that for 1 credit! :anitongue: )

New Jersey trail blazes had some meaning.

 

White and pink are usually a through trail.

 

Red, orange, yellow are usually connectors.

 

Blue is an alternative.

 

Light Blue and Green and "there and back" trails.

 

I really haven't paid attention to changes, but I still have it in the back of my mind when I see a blaze color. Some day, I'm sure this is going to get me in trouble. <_<

 

Maybe it was this way a looong time ago. I really can't say. It hasn't been the case since I've been hiking ( 30+ years) and involved with trail work (15 years). I can think of numerous exceptions to those rules.

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I remember from boy scouts and hiking class I took at Rutgers. (How's that for 1 credit! <_< )

New Jersey trail blazes had some meaning.

White and pink are usually a through trail.

Red, orange, yellow are usually connectors.

Blue is an alternative.

Light Blue and Green and "there and back" trails.

I really haven't paid attention to changes, but I still have it in the back of my mind when I see a blaze color. Some day, I'm sure this is going to get me in trouble. <_<

 

Maybe it was this way a looong time ago. I really can't say. It hasn't been the case since I've been hiking ( 30+ years) and involved with trail work (15 years). I can think of numerous exceptions to those rules.

 

Yeah, I even remember learning this when I was in troop 130 and then going out and noticing that all of the trails blazes seemed to be colored willie-nillie. <_<

Of course, I could've only been paying 1/2 attention at the time and these rule where in referance to a specific park.

 

Speaking of half paying attention, I could sware we had this discussion before in the NE forum. Where's that search feature? <_<

 

And then, there are those parks that blaze their trails with squares, circles and triangles. What's up with that?!?!

 

Good grief ... simple answer, the blaze colors mean nothing! :anitongue:

 

Anyway, if it's on Wikipedia then it's gotta be true!

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It used to be a lot of fun (or so I'm told) when all the trails in the NWCDC were blazed in whiite! (Thank you, NYNJTC!!)

There are a few specific blazes: The AT has oversized white blazes. The Highlands Trail is blazed with a Teal diamond. Generally, no one blazes any trail near the AT in white.

If you want a fun trail to follow, there is one in Stokes State Forest blazed in black!

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And then, there are those parks that blaze their trails with squares, circles and triangles. What's up with that?!?!

 

The NYNJTC standard is a 2" x 3" rectangle. There are a few exceptions though. The Cannonball is round as is the Mine trail in Norvin Green (yellow dot on white - my wife calls it the fried egg trail). The Highlands is a diamond and the AT is a 2"x6" rectangle. The Catskill trails use a round blaze supplied by the NY DEC and I'm sure there are more that I can't think of now.

 

Area trail systems that are not maintained by the NYNJTC can and do have just about anything for blazes.

Edited by briansnat
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It used to be a lot of fun (or so I'm told) when all the trails in the NWCDC were blazed in whiite! (Thank you, NYNJTC!!)

There are a few specific blazes: The AT has oversized white blazes. The Highlands Trail is blazed with a Teal diamond. Generally, no one blazes any trail near the AT in white.

If you want a fun trail to follow, there is one in Stokes State Forest blazed in black!

 

The Portland Trail Blazers logo was also in black. But they wised up and changed the black to the much preferred silver.

 

History of the trail blazer logo

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Where does the word "blaze" come from?

 

Thanks for asking:

 

"light-colored mark or spot," 1639, northern Eng. dialect, probably from Old Norse blesi "white spot on a horse's face" (from the same root as blaze (1)). Applied 1662 in Amer.Eng. to marks cut on tree trunks to indicate a track. The verb "to mark a trail" is first recorded 1750, Amer.Eng.

 

I am just a fountain of etymology today, aren't I?

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My favorite is the bottle cap trail B) I think that's in Harriman on the Elk Pen loop

 

One of the trails I just hiked in the Adirondacks was marked with red painted soup can lids (at least the markers near the summit - I think they were more "civilized" near the bottom)

Edited by trowel32
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My favorite is the bottle cap trail B) I think that's in Harriman on the Elk Pen loop

 

One of the trails I just hiked in the Adirondacks was marked with red painted soup can lids (at least the markers near the summit - I think they were more "civilized" near the bottom)

 

The DEC Adirondack trails are, or at least were the last time I was up, all marked in either Blue, Red or Yellow metal disks. They total about 240 miles. There are also some ATIS trails covering about a hundred miles that are marked with their logo and in several colors. I remember white, orange, and blue, but there may be others. The ADK also has about 75 miles of trails and they are marked with the ADK logo in red and white. The colors have nothing to do with difficulty or anything else. Almost all of my hiking was in the high peaks region. Other markings may exist in other parts of the park.

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My favorite is the bottle cap trail :D I think that's in Harriman on the Elk Pen loop

 

One of the trails I just hiked in the Adirondacks was marked with red painted soup can lids (at least the markers near the summit - I think they were more "civilized" near the bottom)

 

There was a bottle cap trail in the Ramapos. It was a Boy Scout trail that ran between the old camps (Tamarack, Glen Gray, Todd, Yaw Paw). The Schuber took over some of its route (you can still see the caps in places) and the rest was abandoned.

 

When I took over maintaining a section of the Hoeferlin Trail some of the blazes were still old soup can lids. I left them up and they have mostly since rusted away.

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And then, there are those parks that blaze their trails with squares, circles and triangles. What's up with that?!?!

 

The NYNJTC standard is a 2" x 3" rectangle. There are a few exceptions though. The Cannonball is round as is the Mine trail in Norvin Green (yellow dot on white - my wife calls it the fried egg trail). The Highlands is a diamond and the AT is a 2"x6" rectangle. The Catskill trails use a round blaze supplied by the NY DEC and I'm sure there are more that I can't think of now.

 

Area trail systems that are not maintained by the NYNJTC can and do have just about anything for blazes.

 

In Black Rock Forest (Orange County), we have an abundance of Yellow Trails: Yellow Diamond, Yellow Circle, Yellow Rectangle, and the Yellow Triangle -- and the worst part is that they are all interlinked. You start with the Yellow Diamond (Mine Hill Trail) which brings you to the Yellow Circle (Sackett Trail) which connects with the Yellow Rectangle (Stillman Trail) which also connects with the Yellow Triangle (Shortcut Trail -- which really isn't a short cut at all).

 

How do you think this works for those people who wish to follow the yellow to the blue to the white?

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Bottle Cap Trail in Harriman is between Ramapo-Dundenberg and AT, it is hard to find. It is not much used these days as other trails are better blazed. How do I know, once upon a time a group of Scouts set off to hike to the Lemon Squeezer from the group camp site (Cedar Ponds --beautiful shore setting) the boy leading the hike was to cut over on Bottle Cap--he completely missed it and kept on going. 40 hikers spread over 1/2 mile back also missed it. Being the last person in line, I knew we missed it as we went past-- so Bottle Cap which was to be our shortcut was lost to us, and we wound up hiking to exhaustion.

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