On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 1:03 PM Peter Elderson <pelder...@gmail.com> wrote: > My view is that a route should have an indication on the ground. A sign, a > trailhead, something. No verifiable indication whatsoever, then it's not a > route. > > The length or the number of ways in the route does not make a difference to > me.
That's indeed the meaning of 'waymarked' in Waymarked Trails. If a trail has a distinguishable waymark (signage, blaze, ducks, guideposts, whatever is used in a given locale) it gets a relation. No waymark, it doesn't. Length has nothing to do with it. I'll bend the rules slightly for named routes that are listed in multiple guidebooks, because otherwise some major trails would be lost. The Benton MacKaye Trail is not waymarked in certain wilderness areas, but is described in numerous guides, named, and maintained to the extent of occasionally cutting brush, clearing blowdown, and repairing water bars on the treadway. In general, wilderness trails, even if nominally waymarked, require good navigational skills, since trail visibility may be very poor indeed. The more remote trails also don't have a lot of vegetation control or get a lot of traffic. I've occasionally gone an entire day without meeting another party - although that was often 20-30 km from anywhere you can park a car, which filters out a lot of hikers. In the US, walking and MTB trails are likely to have only a splash of paint on trees at intervals. The blue-green paint blazes seen in https://www.flickr.com/photos/ke9tv/14018094576 are pretty typical. The trails that they mark range in length from a few hundred metres (short access trails leading to parking lots, campsites, views, whatever) to a few thousand km (the National Scenic Trails). In remote areas, trails might go a few hundred metres between even paint blazes; they don't have a lot of reassurance markings. More popular trails, or ones nearer the 'front country' are likely to have marks frequent enough that you're always in sight of one. -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging