When I add a trail to OSM I see it a day later but I have to apply a higher zoom level than the surrounding trails require. How do I tag ot so it appears when the surrounding trails appear? I am using the default editor.
Try to refresh your browser cache on all zoom level - i.e. with shortcut: Ctrl+F5
Additionally keep this in mind:
Zoom levels 1–12 are only rerendered once a week, so clearing your browser cache will not help for those.