[Tagging] Trailhead tagging

Kevin Kenny kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com
Sat Dec 22 02:23:26 UTC 2018


On Fri, Dec 21, 2018 at 1:13 PM Peter Elderson <pelderson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe I misinterpreted information I got from another source. I've checked and found info like this: https://www.nps.gov/search/?affiliate=nps&query=trailhead . I found several sites listing named trailheads for specific parks with # parking spaces and other details.

Trails managed by the National Park Service are a minority of trails in the US.

The NPS definition for 'trailhead' isn't too different from mine:
"anywhere that you can get to a trail from a road."  NPS has standard
signage that's placed at (many of) them. It's more organized than most
other outfits that maintain trails. Still, most of their trailheads
consist of a few parking spaces and a sign.

> The route starting points in Nederland are multimodal, named, have to fulfill some requirements,  and are recognizable in the field as such by some kind of landmark feature such as an oversize green grass halm, cone of stones, oversize key. They were occasionally mapped as tourism=artwork. We would not consider any waymarked path leading into a nature area to be a trailhead. A verifyable name would be required, at least.

OK, that's different from here.  Some trailheads have names, but
they're usually just identified by a nearby geographic feature: "the
Averyville Road trailhead," "the Roaring Brook trailhead," "the
trailhead across from the monastery at Meads Mountain."  Most of our
trail termini, even for major regional and national trails, are just
waymarked paths leading into a nature area, perhaps with a more
elaborate sign. Most of the National Park trailheads are little
different from the one I described as 'posh'. Except for a handful of
major trails, we don't have any sort of fancy monumenting of
trailheads, and even some of our most significant trails are simple
footpaths leading into nature areas. The eastern terminus of the
thousand-kilometre Finger Lakes Trail looks like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_Lakes_Trail#/media/File:FingerLakesTrail_East_End.jpg.

>From your description, I suspect that in the US, we don't have
anything that a Nederlander would recognize as a 'trailhead,'
including the ones in those NPS listings. A notice board, perhaps with
a map, a guidepost, and a footpath heading off somewhere are all that
you can expect at most of ours. (If a trailhead leaves a developed
area of a park, maybe a rubbish bin, or a toilet, but don't count on
those!) Many trailheads are just a spot where a rural road has a wide
enough verge to park a couple of cars, and one or more waymarked
trails leading off somewhere. Quite a few are 4WD-only, like the one
in the picture of a "more humble" trailhead.



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