What is Trail Blazing and Why is it Important?
By Natural Areas Conservancy on March 12, 2025
Trail blazing is the process of installing trail markers on official trails to make a specific route easily visible to hikers. The citywide trails team blazes trails to ensure New Yorkers can safely navigate their way through our city’s beautiful natural areas. The trail markers have the NYC Parks leaf, the park location, and indicate the color of the trail.
Why is it important to mark trails?
- Indicates a route is part of the official trail network and is maintained by NYC Parks
- Improves wayfinding within Parks and natural areas
- Delineates between different trails within the same natural area
- Mitigates fragmentation of the forest that may be caused by use of unauthorized trails
- Ensures visitors don’t get lost!
Trail blazing guidelines we follow
- The marker is visible at or above eye level
- Markers are placed in a way that ensures there is always one within the hikers line of sight
- Additional blazes are placed along the trail once the previous blaze is no longer visible as well as before and after intersections with other trails to ensure smooth navigation
- Trail markers are typically installed with nails into trees along the trail, with care to minimize harm they may cause to the tree, including leaving space for the tree to grow
At the NAC, our trails team is hard at work trail blazing across the five boroughs. In March, our entire staff will be headed out to Highland Park in Queens to install over 3 miles of trail markers.
The NAC’s goal is to have all 275 miles of NYC’s trail network marked by the end of June.
Interested in getting involved? Help us reach our goal! Join us at an upcoming trail blazing event at Spring Creek Park in Brooklyn.
