Price has two states available to it: trending and ranging. If you don't want to look at trendlines, then you're going to have a more difficult time finding ranges. You may be interested in the pdf I uploaded here. In a nutshell, once your trendline is broken, the probability of ranging increases. If an attempt at a reversal fails, the probability of ranging is that much greater.

Your thread title says "objective way to identify trend". As you have a trend-trading system, I assume that what you're looking for is an objective way to identify ranges. The above will help you do that.