Should I tag a dead end on a hiking path?

Help and support
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I came across a hiking path that ends in the middle of nowhere. There is not a physical obstacle at the end of the trail but just no trail anymore and no connecting trail nearby.

Question: Is it a good practice to mark the end point as a dead end?

In my view this is helpful to indicate to other mappers that this is not an incomplete path.

This situation appears for some less popular hiking trails and some trails that are mainly used for forest maintenance.

image

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I usually do that, if nothing else, to remember that I went there, so there’s no need for further survey. You may also avoid armchair mappers who to connect all paths, who might interpret the imagery.

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3

Only if the end of a way is within 15 meters of another way the QA progs start flagging to check if there may not be a connection after all, e.g. 2 cul de sacs, but then on visiting there’s actually a footway connecting the 2… Map It! A middle of nowhere end point does not need one. Does not hurt though.

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4

An additional, or alternative, approach would be to upload a photograph to a Panoramax instance and reference it in the node.

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5

I would tend to agree that adding noexit=yes for a path that just abruptly ends can help people understand that it’s intentional that the path stops there, and I don’t see how it could hurt to include it.

Another option could be tourism=viewpoint, if it seems the reason that the path stops there is because there’s something worthwhile to look at there.

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there can be various other reasons. Paths are often not designed for hikers, actually.

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If there is a mappable reason why the path ends, it’s good to map it (a destination like a viewpoint, waterfall, etc. or an obstacle like surrounding impassable cliffs).

I’ve often wondered if the other option, a hiking path that does continue but is not mapped yet, would deserve its own tag. fixme=continue has that function, but it would be nice if it had its own preset and would be rendered (like - - - > for instance)

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That’s a better way of wording what I was trying to say; thanks.

I don’t think it needs a different tag; you’d just need to lobby editors to include fixme=continue as a preset (maybe with validation checks that it’s the last node in a path), and you could also lobby renderers to show it in some reasonable fashion like you propose. Sounds like a good idea to me.

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