Trail blazing

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).

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.

In North America, Australia and New Zealand,[3][4][5] there are trails blazed by cuts made in bark by axe or knife, usually the former.

The placement of these markers requires more skill and labor than paint, as well as an area with an abundant supply of trees to which to attach them.

[8] Poles are standard trail markers in Austria, Canada, USA, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Slovakia.

[6] An ancient example is the inuksuk (plural inuksuit), used by the Inuit, Inupiat, Kalaallit, Yupik, and other peoples of the Arctic region of North America.

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.

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.

[9] Duck is a term used in some parts of the US, generally for a much smaller rock pile than a cairn,[10] typically stacked just high enough to convince the observer it is not natural.

By contrast, in a typical municipal, county, or state park, or any land open to a wide variety of users, or in a well-developed metropolitan area, blazes will be more frequent.

Blaze type might also be mixed when different user groups (i.e., snowmobilers, horse riders, mountain bikers) 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.

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.

[13] 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 mountain huts and adjacent towns and villages with the possibility of overnighting and catering.

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.

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.