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Pro tip: the Appalachian Trail has 165,000 white blazes, and I walked past about 164,900 of them without looking
I was flipping through an old copy of the Appalachian Trail Thru-Hikers Companion at a hostel in Hot Springs, North Carolina last month when I hit the line about there being roughly 165,000 white painted blazes across the whole 2,190 mile trail. I had hiked 400 miles of it that summer and honestly could not remember looking at more than a handful, I just followed the worn path and the person in front of me most days. Does anyone here actually count or track blazes on a long route, or do most of you just trust the dirt and the crowds like I did?
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reesemoore1d ago
Laughed at this because I did the exact same thing on my section hike a few years back. I remember reading that same number and realizing I could not recall a single blaze from the entire week before. You just get into a rhythm following the trail and the footprints and suddenly you have walked ten miles without really seeing anything. There is something nice about that though, trusting the path instead of checking every tree. The blazes are there for when you need them, and mostly you do not.
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