Wilderness Backpacking Trailblazing

Obviously most people go out for their wilderness backpacking by having a predetermined rout in mind for their excursion. However, once you are out in nature you tend to get a little side tracked and generally want to blasé your own trail. Obviously any trip into the wilderness should be respected. It is important to carry a GPS or a compass at least in order to maintain proper safety. It is these devices hat provoke most people to take cuts through the trail in order to reach their destination faster, though, that and the riveting terrain and the need to explore.

Before we all decide to get off our trails and explore the wilderness, let's look at how these trails came to be in existence in the first place. Trails are worn by the animals that live their. The wildlife that lives in that neck of the woods will use certain paths to get around. Not because these paths are special, but simply because they are the best way to get from point a to point b. In other words unless you are prepared to hike through boulder field, swamp land, cliffs, and whatever else ANIMALS don't want to walk through you should stick to the trail.

A bigger danger of wilderness back packing trail blazing is splitting up the resources of the group. Each person in a camping trip might be designated to carry certain resources or equipment. However, sometimes a person will want to go trailblazing and pitch it to the other backpackers as them taking a short cut and meeting up with them at the next camp site. This is a fool hearty thing to do while out in the wilderness. For one thing, you run the risk of someone getting hurt which would leave the whole group deprived of the valuable supplies that, that person had carried with him. You also do not know where the person is, so if the trailblazer did get hurt they would be left to fend for themselves.

Trails are there for a reason and that reason is to guide people around the wilderness. These trails are not man made designs to limit the amount of fun a hiker can have. Animals wore these trails in for a long time before man cam walking on them. In a way trails are the flow of the wilderness, go with the flow.

Source:
http://wilderness-backpacking.suite101.com/article.cfm/trail_blazes,wilderness trail blazing