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Trail marks in Israel are fairly common when you're hiking and trekking in nature. They're easy to use and a lot of trails are marked all over Israel, opening up a huge variety of trails. What makes hiking trails in Israel unique is that they can vary in difficulty and they don't always follow simple easy roads. They venture into dense forests, small tight crevices in the desert, tall mountain peaks and narrow canyons.
The trail marks in Israel are painted by a young team that consists of four or five people that travel the country and paint the marks. The organization that funds this is “The society for Protection of Nature”. They try to go over every marked trail once every three years, but sometimes trails do fade a bit. Mostly it is very easy and convenient to follow them.
Trail marks in Israel look like three stripes, usually a color that has white strips on either side, like this:
The colors vary from blue, green, red, orange. They have no significance, meaning they don’t hint as to whether the trail is difficult or moderate. The color that you see on the map will be the same color that you meet on the trail, which makes following the trail marks easy. The marks are bidirectional. Trail marks are marked inside Nature reserves but also outside of nature reserves. Inside the reserves it is prohibited to stray outside of the trail marks. Outisde of nature reserves the marks are a convenient way to hike and they offer you a trail, but you may stray off the trail and walk where you'd like.
The trail marks give you the direction in which you need to go - they can appear as a left turn like this:
The online map that I recommend using is the Israel Hiking Map. The reason I recommend this map is because it shows all the names (of villages, rivers, peaks) in english (as opposed to other maps of Israel). It shows all of Israel and has almost every marked trail on it. Also you can easily download it as an app and use it while trekking. When you click on the links to maps on my trekking guides it will show you the trail that I marked, so you can conveniently follow the marked trek.
On the map a hiking trail will be marked as a single dotted line, like this:
The faded blue dotted lines show you where there are (usually dry) river beds.
A four by four vehicle trail will be marked by two parallel dotted lines, like this:
When two different trails meet (a trail mark junction), the markings look like this (each trail mark points in the direction you need to head to):
There are some unique trails in Israel that have their own marking like the Israel Nation Trail. The INT is a trail that was mostly marked over existing trail marks. The INT trail marks will look like this:
While you're trekking and hiking you might come upon a transparent trail mark. These transparent trails will lead you to a back and forth trip to an interesting spot. These interesting spots can be pools, springs, waterfall bases, archeological finds and more.
The transparent trail marks look like this:
Hope this post was helpful for your trekking experience in Israel! I'd love to hear your comments and thoughts, you can contact me here. Or comment below.
*Disclaimer*
It is the responsibility of the users of this website to be prepared for all possible conditions while trekking in Israel. Beware that conditions of trails may change day to day and season to season. All users of this website and its information assume full responsibility for their actions and judgments while trekking. The owner and authors of this site disclaims all liability including that of accident, loss, injury, or any other damage that may be sustained by anyone using the information contained on this website.