Grade Red

jimpy

yeehaa (no relation to persons living or dead) would surely be the hardest trail grade. To ride a yeehaa you would need to negotiate a lot of posts., some of them quite awkwardly placed but at the end of the day a decent trail

Muttly1981

yeehaamcgee wrote:

There's not a lot of jumps at Glentress Red though, apart from spooky woods.
There is a lot of rooty rutted singletrack though.

But, thinking again about the common sesne idea, it may be the right way to go.
Around here (and probably elsewhere, but I'm not familiar with them), we have loads of access to the cycling netwrok, and route No.5 passes through most villages.
The entire route is hundreds of miles long, but there's not a single sign anywhere saying that it's not suitable for people who are new to cycling, since their own common sense dictates that they're not going to ride the whole damned thing from North to South.

I ride the back routes/sections at most places i ride but i took one look at the black xc route at Glentress and knew instantly i didn't have the fitness levels required to ride that trail so stuck with the route and had an absolute blast all weekend. One of our riding mates (didn't come to scotland) thinks that now he's done the black at Llandegla he can ride any black at any trail center.
As you say common sense should prevail but it doesn't always work like that

stubs

Or you could all do some riding that doesnt involve following a set of coloured posts. I rode Whinlatter north, south and the new blue on weds and had a very enjoyable time but on thursday riding/pushing up Helvellyn then screaming (literally sometimes) down again was 10 times better.

I probably wouldnt go back to Whinlatter again now I have ticked it off unless I was in Keswick but I would walk across broken glass to have Helvellyn as my local ride. For me personally trail centres are something I do when the weathers carp or I am on my own and there is the risk some dog walker will find my blue corpse at the bottom of a crag.

Why not have a Scottish a Welsh and an English colour code.
Scottish black will try and kill you
Welsh black might kill you if your not careful
English black you might die of boredom
Scottish red will be looooong might kill you if your not careful
Welsh red a good laugh but still needs care
English red pedal as fast as you can
Scottish blue looooong but completely rideable with care by a numpty on a supermarket special
Welsh blue take the kids
English blue take a book to read

Richie63

Whinlatter North 15

Thewaylander

To be honest I'm yet to see what i would agree was a black section on a Welsh trail center yet.
And it's looking less and less likely that i ever will due to terrible trail nuetering going on especially here in south Wales.

And to get a consistant grading we would need almost a governing body for UK mountain biking to set this, And i personally find alot of cyclist in the UK kinda solo guys so an assossciation probably isnt the way.

And suprised early on peope wwere saying Cannock was a spot on red... was not impressed with it at all personally, though didn't mind some of the black bits on the Monkey

Northwind

I had a brilliant week in wales but I think that's partly because I was ignoring the grades... I'm quite often surprised to look at routes we did and find they were supposed to be black. But they were damn nice reds with occasional short black-ish sections. If I'd gone in expecting Golspie-esque "We don't care if you can ride this or not" bastardry I'd probably have been disappointed though

Not that this is a welsh thing in particular.

kinmofo

cooldad wrote:

Should grade according to severities of injuries.

Bumps and bruises - blue
Broken limbs, minor bleeding - green
Severe injuries, brain damage, copious bleeding - red.
Death - black.

Simple.

+1 8)

1mancity2

Richie63 wrote:

26 Stainburn black route

Now this is based at riding these at speed and for seeing for a first time and I'm not saying these are any way correct just my opinion but alot of opinions and it should all settle out

Like the idea?

Only 26?

Its a bloody killer!!

Richie63

open ended scale and I did n't know how it fits around the scottish blacks but know to get around it's above you average trail center trail black and the whole point of this system is the feel of difficulty to get round. It was fairly arbitary as to the grade 26 I just wanted some clearence from the others I'd graded.

As in all sports one must remember that the jump between grades does seam to get exponential as you get to the higher end of the scale like in sprinting there's only one U Bolt running and he only breaks the world record occasionally.

Briggo

Standardising doesnt help the individual understand what's on the trail, whatever format you present it in whether it be colours or numbers.

Its personal opinion whether something is rideable or not, I've come across so many TTFs across the trail centres Ive ridden that some that are graded 'black' are a joke, or at least I find them a joke but someone else wouldn't and vice versa.

Tom Barton

Sorry if someones already said this but at 6 pages of posts i've skimmed through!

I like how the afan trails are graded - there is a albeit general description rather than individualised one per trail.

i.e.

red - a challenging trail, good bike handling skills required, a good level of fitness and a reasonably good bike. (in a nutshell)

black - a very challenging trail with trail sections that are unavoidable and require full commitment and a high level of bike handling skills. A good level of fitness, a high quality bike etc etc etc...

I think like others that more detailed grading is needed perhaps including the technical difficulty of the trails for sure, the effort required from the climbing, the distance, the remoteness of the trail and any particular obsticles that may be noteworthy such as jumps, drops offs, northshore sections or very high gradient descents.

Good thread.