Bright colors! Speed! No damn walking!
A "blaze" is a mark, originally a light-colored splotch of fur on the face of a horse or a cow, and such-like critters.
From way back when, the mostest-oldest version of this word meant "to shine, to flash, to burn", which kind of fits. Doesn't it?
Anyway, from from the 1660s on, American English adapted "blaze" to also mean (aside from fur spots, and references to fire) marks cut on tree trunks to show the way. A "blaze" in this sense is mostly used today to apply to the route of the Appalachian Trail in the eastern U.S., where the route is often marked by swatches of bright paint.
So anyway, blazes show the way.
Unless you get tired of walking, when you might choose to catch a ride and then pretend that the yellow lines whizzing by on the highway are also blazes, which they are, sort of, though generally you can sleep through that movie. "Yellow blaze" is a hiker in-joke about trail markers painted on the highway, because you can tell yourself that the yellow-blazed road is a route that you are still conscientiously traveling down.
"Yellow-blazing" then is what a long-distance hiker does by taking to the road instead of sticking to the trail. Catching a car ride around some portion of the trail and picking up the hike at a different point on the trail after watching all the yellow stripes go by. Hitch-hiking or driving somewhere to cut off part of a longer hike. Can be considered cheating, probably mostly by people who keep saying "Hike Your Own Hike". As long as you do it their way.
Whether yellow-blazing is legitimate or not is up to the person doing it, so mind your own business already.
Example: "Seeing the yellow-blazer at the wedding reception seemed odd. She should have been out hiking. Maybe she got dropped off here by accident, or just showed up for the free food."
(Note: Today's term has nothing to do with The Flaming Urine Phenomenon. In fact, we've never even heard of that one, so forget about it right now.)
Have anything worth adding? Then try sosayseff@gmail.com
Me? Still have never even heard of flaming urine.
Etc...
so says eff: sporadic spurts of grade eff distraction
definitions: outdoor terms
fiyh: dave's little guide to ultralight backpacking stoves
boyb: dave's little guide to backpacks
snorpy bits: nibbling away at your sanity
last seen receding: missives from a certain mobile homer
noseyjoe: purposefully poking my proboscis into technicals