While on a hike in the high mountains, I came across a “path” that is part of a hiking route relation and is marked as such on the ground, but that is completely overgrown by mountain pine so it is an impenetrable jungle (you would need a chain saw to get through).
In one way it exists because it is marked (there are painted markings at the beginning and end of it telling you to “turn left/right here”) but on the other hand it doesn’t exist because the path itself is not visible and can’t be walked. I added trail_visibility=no, but that probably won’t stop routing apps from sending hikers on this path… An access tag is not applicable because there is no legal restriction to use the path.
How would you tag such a path so that for hikers using an OSM-based map, it is clear that although marked, it doesn’t really exist and can’t be followed?
Maybe use the lifecycle tagging on it. Instead of highway=path use abandoned:highway=path. Abandoned isn’t quite right as is says the feature visible but it does say it is for things that have fallen into serious disrepair that will take considerable effort to put back into service.
It might be interesting to check with the operator of the route. Maybe the route goes through totally different paths nowadays. Maybe they are (very) late in their maintenance schedule.
Very very likely! I made contact with them some time ago about the Bulgarian E3 long distance hiking route for which they are responsible, but all they had on the location of the route were 1:200,000 paper maps from 1990…
Surely there must be some point at which a path is so overgrown that it can no longer be said to exist? The below description seems have reached that point in my mind.
I think “abandoned” describes the path well: it must have taken a decade or two to be overgrown like it is now, with interlocking 10 cm diameter trunks of adjacent mountain pine bushes. Looks like this (image from Wikimedia Commons)
