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>2) Is there a standard marking
system?
Well, you have struck a pet peeve
of mine, Charles.
This is also one of my pet peeves, but from the opposite side
of the issue. When an area has multiple trail users, standardized markers
get VERY confusing. In areas where I've put on rides, I've had to share
the trails with bike groups, hiking groups, other horse groups, timber sales,
hunters, and likely some others that I've failed to mention, and if we all used
the same trail marking schemes, we'd be forever confused. One of the ride
manager's tasks out here in the West on public land is to come up with a marking
scheme that is different from the other marking schemes used in the same area at
the same time so that our riders as well as the other users are not
confused. USFS also required us to tell them with what we were marking, so
that they could tell which trails were which, that each user's trail actually
corresponded with their proposed maps, and who did or did not accomplish their
trail cleanup. As for standardized markings--having marked trails that
vary from heavy timber to miles and miles of stubby grassland, there simply is
no one "right" way that shows up on everything. So you have to consider
what terrain you're traversing before coming up with the "right" way to mark
trail.
I have to agree with Barbara McCrary that the most visible
markers we ever came up with in timber were double ribbons, and we found
that either pink or orange together with a white ribbon worked best.
Second thing is to make them LONG and plentiful. However, in marking
sagebrush, the white ribbons are far less necessary, so we often did our
"grassland" rides with either just hot pink or just blaze orange. (The
blaze orange contrasted better with the sage for our colorblind riders, and the
LONG ribbons helped them out as well, as they were better able to catch
some motion or a visual line if the contrast was not
sufficient.) Third thing is turns--and although it pays to have a somewhat
standardized system for indicating that turns are coming up (three ribbon pairs
together, or whatever), you CANNOT standardize your turn system, because you
WILL find "special need" intersections. We pretty much always blocked off
"wrong ways" with a line of dolomite--I'm surprised that this is considered
unacceptable by some land management systems, as it is the same stuff used to
"chalk" lines on football fields and is also used to enhance soils for
gardening. We WERE required to go back and rub the lines and arrows out
after the rides, which was fine. (BTW, dolomite works far better than
gypsum, and is easier to obliterate after a rain--we used gypsum for years, and
I wouldn't go back to it for anything.) Paper plates are fine for
some things, but a real pain to mark 50 miles or more, compared to ribbon--but
they make great "signs" such as arrows or mileage markers or verbal instructions
("Vet Check 1/2 mile or that sort of thing). They are much more suitable
to timber than to sagebrush or grassland. And sometimes in stubby
grassland country, one has to resort to some kind of stake with a flag--wooden,
fiberglass, or in some cases, one can use those little wire stakes with
the little colored plastic squares on them. Marking trail is an art,
and there are folks who just have a knack for it, and those who just can't seem
to figure it out. As a rider, I find that it doesn't matter as much
HOW the trail is marked as it does who marks it--the folks who have a knack know
just where to put a marker to catch your eyes. And the briefing should
include whether there are variations in how the trail is marked--for instance,
if you've used one method in heavy timber but have had to traverse alkali flats
or grasslands or some such with another marking method.
Heidi
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