Reblazing Turkey Trot Trail

Just passing through

Turkey Trot Trail has been long overdue for a blaze make-over, so I took advantage of a long streak of dry weather and got to it. Lots of wildlife along this trail while I was working. A small bear came in off of Shelton Ave and crossed the trail as I was coming around the bend. He behaved perfectly, moving off the trail promptly when he saw me, and vacating the premises. That's not a bear to be concerned about unless you have an off-leash dog that might chase it. Later I passed a deer near the trail, holding a freeze pose as if I couldn't see her. 

She thought I couldn't see her.

Turkey Trot Trail is usually pretty easy to follow since so many people use it, but there are times in late fall when the trail is full of fresh leaves, or in the winter after a snowfall, where the curving tread can become unexpectedly confusing. All the sudden those blazes become really helpful. Blazes are especially important for trail users who aren't familiar with the trail. I added some left turn and right turn blazes here and there to help out in spots where it might not be obvious that the trail was changing direction.  

Quality trail blazing takes a lot longer than you can imagine, but when done right it looks good and lasts for many year. Eventually, though, it's time to completely redo the blazes. The paint fades, of course, but as the trees grow larger, and the blazes grows wider with them. It's often half an inch or an inch, but on one tree, the blaze was 10" wide! Blazed trees are lost when they blow over in storms, or succumb to disease.  We've lost all our ash trees and now the beech trees are dying from Beech Leaf Disease. Some blazes are vandalized. Someone had carved an "X" through a lot of the Turkey Trot blazes (why??). And the trail even shifted in a few places, resulting in old blazes 20 or 30 feet off the trail. All this is to say that the Turkey Trot Trail blazes from twenty years ago were in really bad shape, if they were there at all.  

Ugly old white blaze and black concealer from years ago.
The tree will probably die, so the blaze was move to a different tree.

Blaze now concealed

For a complete reblaze, I reassess the location of each existing blaze. If it's on a dead or dying tree, it will be relocated if possible. Is it at a weird angle? It will be shifted. Is it too wide because the tree grew? It will be narrowed. Most old blazes are also scraped as needed to remove any bark or paint that is getting flakey, and then brushed to remove dirt and dust. A 2x6" template is used to outline the new blaze, and then the outline is filled in using a short, square, stiff craft brush.  The bark is rough, so there's not a lot brushing action. It's more like stabbing, forcing the thick paint into the nooks and crannies of the bark. 

Old blaze:
Too wide, and vandalized with an "X"

Reblazed!  Scraping and concealer paint
was used to narrow the blaze

After the new blazes are done, I come back with concealer paint that has been color-matched to a typical black birch or tulip tree, and cover up any parts of old blazes we don't want any longer. It's a flat exterior paint and usually does a great job of blending in and hiding the old parts of the blaze. Back in the day, we used to use a dark brown or black spray paint to resize the blazes when they got too wide, and that never looked good. So that old dark paint is now covered over. I don't use this paint on beech trees, though, because they are a much lighter color.

We sadly have a lot of dying beech trees along this trail with obsolete trail markings, so I came back with another concealer, gray, and then gave it a few spritzes of light green camo spray paint to blend in. Not perfect, but a lot better than it was. 

Virgin's Bower, a native vine under the powerlines

After the blazing was finished, I cleared a couple of the trail crossings under the powerlines. They grow back so fast. The one with the little bridge was especially overgrown. A lot of the plants are invasive (mugwort, wineberry, autumn olive), but there's was tons of a native vine called Virgin's Bower that gave the appearance of a blooming shrub, or maybe Japanese Knotweed in bloom. I was careful not to cut it. 

Seedpods of Virgin's Bower