[Tagging] How to tag a "trail blaze"

Gilles Bassière gbassiere at gmail.com
Sat Mar 10 21:12:24 GMT 2012


Le vendredi 09 mars 2012 à 20:15 -0500, Greg Troxel a écrit :
> Pieren <pieren3 at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > tourism=information
> > information=trail_blaze
> > hiking=yes
> > operator=
> > support=tree|pole|rock
> > description=
> 
> That seems reasonable.  But, there are various kinds of markers for
> trails I have encountered, and some of them would not necessarily be
> called blazes.  I've seen:
> 
>   painted rectangles on trees
>   plastic triangles nailed to trees
>   1.5"x3"x0.75" painted blocks nailed to trees
>   (all of these qualify as blaze)
> 
> and
> 
>   piles of rocks, where there are no trees ("cairns")
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if cairns count as blazes in hiking parlance.

As a hiker, I see a difference between cairns and blazes but they are
similar. In particular, the purpose is the same: help hikers to find
their way.

Wikipedia mentions cairns in this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_blazing

>   But it seems
> fair enough to call them that, and it makes sense to have
> 
> trail_blaze=paint
> trail_blaze=plastic
> trail_blaze=wood
> trail_blaze=cairn

Note that cairns could also be tagged as landmark=cairn (although this
key seems rarely used).

> trail_blaze_shape=triangle
> trail_blaze_colour=yellow

Alternatively, the colour/symbol and osmc:symbol keys could be used for
that.

> This feels like overkill, but I have been putting 'name=yellow' on
> trails that have yellow blazes and no name, because it's useful (even if
> a bit off) and because people call that "the yellow trail".
> So I would expect you to have two nodes (next to each other) when there
> are two blazes.
> 
> I would expect the purpose can be
> 
>   blaze inventory by the trail maintenance group
> 
>   producing a map with the trail's colors labeled and also showing
>   little marks for the blazes.

Regards
-- 
Gilles Bassière - Web/GIS software engineer
http://gbassiere.free.fr/





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