There were also Aluminum Diamond Blazes in Alabama and Plastic Diamond Blazes in Georgia.

A committee of people who evidently don't work much on the Pinhoti, don't hike much, and don't understand the Appalachian Trail Blazing System, decided that the entire Pinhoti Trail should be reblazed with blue dollar bill sized paint blazes. This destroyed the unique and easily painted Turkey Foot Blazing, and replaced it with rectangular blazes that don't tell you which trail you are on.

It's more difficult than you might think to paint tidy rectangles on tree bark. Grooves in the bark require that you scrub the brush in to paint within the groove, and this scrubbing in ofen spreads paint beyond the proper rectangle. Using a 2 inch bruch to paint a two inch line on an irregular surface is actually quite a difficult feat. Amateurs often paint sloppy blobs much larger than the intended rectangle. Big irregular blobs are ugly and not what hikers escape to the woods to see.

Rectangular Blazes require much more maintenance than Turkey Foot Blazes. As trees grow, the bark expands circumferentially. Originally tall skinny blazes become wider and wider. The sides must be skinned off with some type of blade to retain the dollar bill blaze size and shape. On a pine tree, the bark skinned off is dead, but on many other species of trees, the maintainer must skin into living tissue to remove the excess paint.

The Pinhoti National Recreation Trail is also incorrectly marked per the Appalachian Trail Blazing System, which specifies that trails which connect directly with the AT be rectangle blazed in blue paint, and trails which further connect to the side trail be blazed in white. Per the Appalachian Trail Blazing System, The Benton MacKaye Trail is properly blazed in blue as a side trail, whereas the Pinhoti would be properly blazed in white as a side-side trail.

But the Appalachian Trail Blazing System was never intended to replace all other blazing systems. So long as a trail connecting to the AT is marked so a reasonably careful hiker won't confuse it with the AT, there is no requirement that it be reblazed per the AT standard. Paint circles and triangles, and plastic and metal blazes, are all common blazes on trails which connect directly to the Appalachian Trail.

Thanks, Lounge Chair Committee, for ruining a great blazing system on the Pinhoti Trail.