I'll go ahead and claim the most advanced and successful long distance hikers know there is no right, wrong, or better answer to this one. It is a personal thing that is best served highly customized. So what's your custom? How do you approach that?

I'm almost kind of ashamed to admit I'm a purist. I'm looking at bypassing cool stuff because the mark in the tree had the wrong color? -that's a rough one for me to reconcile. However, hiking the AT to katahdin is the plan, and I tend to be real loyal to plans I adopt... no technicalities, if I'm gonna claim I hiked the entire thing, I will have. So that's how I end up a purist... I will follow the white blazes. Having said that, I have a get out of that free card in some places... I've hiked a third of the AT already. In those places, over ground I've already covered, taking blueblaze parallel routes to cool places is fair game. I will pretty much do so every time the grass is greener.

How about you?