Trail grades

rockmonkeysc

cooldad wrote:

Surely you can see what's ahead before you kill yourself?

Some bigger features require commitment before you can see them. I know a few which look fine until it's too late to back out. I have met a couple people at Bikepark Wales who decided to have a bash at Enter The Dragon and ended up with spinal injuries because they thought they could roll the gap jump or land it to flat.
The difference between grades is enough that two or three green trails at one location will be close enough in difficulty that they aren't going to hurt anyone. Maybe a brief description in the trail guide to say which is easiest.

The Rookie

I agree with RM, they need to be consistent, but you'll always have the issue that some trails are 'just' a black and may make riders think they can take on any Black, but that's life, the step up slab at Cannock was made a black based on the number of injuries it was causing those caught out by it, was that right or wrong?

paul.skibum

Consistency of grading has never existed in the ski industry so its hard to imagine it getting into biking either.

I taught so many Americans who skied in Colorado that could not believe how hard the blue ski runs at Whistler were. Similarly black runs in Italy are Red in France and Reds are Blue.

An organisation like IMBA might be able to put across some standardisation of grading but to enforce it goes beyond their available resources.

rockmonkeysc

The Rookie wrote:

the step up slab at Cannock was made a black based on the number of injuries it was causing those caught out by it, was that right or wrong?

Grading based on incompetence of riders? Doesn't sound right to me.

The Rookie

maybe not, but the point of grading is ultimately to make sure people enjoy their riding in reasonable safety, the fact it was causing a significant number of injuries which could then be eased by labeling it Black and highlighting the chicken route makes sense.

Surely the number of injuries is a reasonable measure of how many are crashing therefore how hard it is?

njee20

Grading based on incompetence of riders? Doesn't sound right to me

Well what else is it based on? You're saying some features "require commitment before you can see them" - which is basically the same if you don't know the route. By calling it a black some of the people less likely to have the necessary skill/foresight to deal with the obstacle will be put off. That's the whole point of grading...

If you're Steve Peat then everything's going to be easy, so should everything be a green? If someone skilled has a bad crash on a blue should it be 'upgraded'? That comes back to my point about certain features. Some find rocks harder than roots, some find jumps and drops easier than slow technical features. You'll never ever manage to pigeon hole all trails. I think what we have is most appropriate.

If you're the sort of person who tours the country, and has ridden at lots of trail centres you'll likely have more of an idea about the potential for one black to be different to another, compared to the beginners who only visit their local centre and want to know the comparative difficulty of trails there. Swinley is a fairly good example of this - the green trail is doubletrack for 0.5 miles - fine for 3 year olds on balance bikes. The blue is still a green in a national context, but at 5.4 miles, with lots of singletrack, it's not really for the same audience.

rockmonkeysc

Grading a trail black because a few people grazed their knees will make a very disappointing ride for more experienced riders who are hoping for a good, technically challenging ride.

njee20

Why would gnar gods like yourself be at Cannock then? A trail grading doesn't change the trails. If someone expects Cannock Black to be the same as Laggan, they're an idiot.

Those same people would be disappointed with Brechfa, W2, Thetford, White's Level Black etc etc.

rockmonkeysc

If you know that a trail centre has a black trail then surely you would reasonably expect it to be a reasonably challenging trail?
Why would some black trails be easy when others are really quite challenging? And the same for blue and red trails.
If you hadn't been to Cannock before how would you know that the trail grades are dumbed down?

Long_Time_Lurker

I think it is because some centres don't want to admit that their black trails aren't as challenging elsewhere.
By being honest and down-grading their black runs to reds, there is probably a fear that it will put off experienced riders who will go elsewhere.

You need an independent group to ride all of the centres and grade them accordingly - based on terrain, not length. I imagine that a few centres will get downgraded. Could do with a double-black as they do in the US ski-resorts for the Gnar Gods too.

Angus Young

Long Time Lurker wrote:

You need an independent group to ride all of the centres and grade them accordingly - based on terrain, not length. I imagine that a few centres will get downgraded. Could do with a double-black as they do in the US ski-resorts for the Gnar Gods too.

That's the answer.

rockmonkeysc

There are a few double black trails in the UK. Egypt at Gawton is the work of a mad man and upgraded from black to double black a couple years ago.
There is a double black at Antur Stiniog but I haven't ridden that yet. Looks fun though.
Bike Park Wales has called their short extra hard trail a pro line and not given it a grade. Its just huge gaps though so mostly about the size of your plums rather than skills but coming up short hurts as I found out from just catching the rear wheel on the last landing.

njee20

Angus Young wrote:

Long Time Lurker wrote:

You need an independent group to ride all of the centres and grade them accordingly - based on terrain, not length. I imagine that a few centres will get downgraded. Could do with a double-black as they do in the US ski-resorts for the Gnar Gods too.

That's the answer.

No it isn't, that just changes the problem. See my Swinley example. All three trails would be green in a nationwide context, but the red is 13 miles long, whilst the green is less than a mile. The grades stand up discretely. People who go to Swinley, don't really give a shit that the blue is easier than anything in Scotland, they just want to be advised on which are the more suitable trails for them, there, then. That's what the grading does.

Calling them all green is just as stupid.

Lots of US ski resorts don't have red pistes, just green-blue-black-double black. Does that make a US black easier than a French one? I've skiied double blacks that are easier than some French/Swiss blacks. After all black is just a catch all for everything that's deemed for experienced users. There's no 'upper' limit.

It's absolutely impossible to standardise it, particularly with so few categories. It really is. You can present alternate scenarios that would suit you better, but that doesn't change it.

rockmonkeysc

Why can't Swinley have 3 green trails? Just mark them with a length as well. Any idiot will understand that a 13 mile green is going to be a little more of an effort than a one mile green. Someone visiting Swinley expecting to ride a red trail will be very disappointed just like a Swinley regular making a trip somewhere else to ride a red trail may find it too hard for them.

The Rookie

RockmonkeySC wrote:

If you hadn't been to Cannock before how would you know that the trail grades are dumbed down?

Cannock doesn't have a black trail though does it, it has short black sections in the main red loop, so they sensibly tell you they are harder than the rest of the loop but not that you have a full black loop.

It was more breaks than grazes at the slab....

Swinley must have a red, otherwise CD won't be able to say he's ridden one surely?

njee20

RockmonkeySC wrote:

Why can't Swinley have 3 green trails? Just mark them with a length as well. Any idiot will understand that a 13 mile green is going to be a little more of an effort than a one mile green. Someone visiting Swinley expecting to ride a red trail will be very disappointed just like a Swinley regular making a trip somewhere else to ride a red trail may find it too hard for them.

Because people travelling will almost certainly know/research what they're getting themselves in for. Rather than thinking "ah yes, it's got a red, it must be a massively technical challenging route that'll take me all day, I'll drive 6 hours to get there".

Most people aren't in that camp, particularly with Swinley, they won't visit lots of other trail centres, to be faced with 3 trails, that are of varying difficulty (just all easy in a wider context), it's nice to know which is which.

cooldad

The Rookie wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

If you hadn't been to Cannock before how would you know that the trail grades are dumbed down?

Cannock doesn't have a black trail though does it, it has short black sections in the main red loop, so they sensibly tell you they are harder than the rest of the loop but not that you have a full black loop.

It was more breaks than grazes at the slab....

Swinley must have a red, otherwise CD won't be able to say he's ridden one surely?

Swinley even has a black - old Satan's Grotto. Now heavily sanitised and more like Santa's Grotto.

I laugh in the face of gnar.

supersonic

The grading system just doesn't work, or at best is a vague guide. Too much variation. We need good descriptions to go with individual trails.

rockmonkeysc

Good descriptions not written by the trail builder or owner.

njee20

Which are freely available online. It's not that realistic to engrave a 50 word description into every single way marker is it?!

See also my point that you can't pigeon hole trails accurately if you only use 4 or 5 different gradings.

A 1-100% difficulty scale would work nationally, although it would need to be regraded every time something arrived at either extreme. But your Swinley trails could be 1%,10% and 15% (say), all still 'easy', but clear there's progression.

Angus Young

Grades should be consistent nationally and internationally. What's the point of grades as a guide if you have to second guess them.

cooldad

Because whatever RMSC says about hitting massive doubles blind, you should know what's in front of you and ride accordingly.
This may mean slowing down or even stopping at times.

Or die, it's up to the individual.

rockmonkeysc

More technical trails can be more dangerous when ridden slowly and stopping on steep sections may not be an option. Most accidents I have seen on technical trails have been caused by inappropriate braking or riding too slowly.
Riding a black trail blind for the first time is always exciting, it's an experience you can never repeat on that trail.

Cqc

RockmonkeySC wrote:

More technical trails can be more dangerous when ridden slowly and stopping on steep sections may not be an option. Most accidents I have seen on technical trails have been caused by inappropriate braking or riding too slowly.

I would disagree. How many injuries have you seen of idiots charging down genuinely difficult tracks for the first (and last) time like fort bill and killing themselves versus the amount going down slowly the first time and stopping to scope out the hard bits?

kajjal

The grading is enough to give people an idea of equipment, skill and fitness needed but as with most things there is variation within any grade so best to read up on or ask people about specific trails.

kajjal

Cqc wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

More technical trails can be more dangerous when ridden slowly and stopping on steep sections may not be an option. Most accidents I have seen on technical trails have been caused by inappropriate braking or riding too slowly.

I would disagree. How many injuries have you seen of idiots charging down genuinely difficult tracks for the first (and last) time like fort bill and killing themselves versus the amount going down slowly the first time and stopping to scope out the hard bits?

I was guilty of that when I was younger, luckily no injuries. Now I just enjoy the different challenge of trail centres and XC riding.

supersonic

Wharncliffe red has a very nice sign post and description of the trail. I don't see why other places cannot do it. Doesn't need to be on every post, but just enough to tell you that some obstacles, for example, have no chicken runs say.

cooldad

Trails in Wales have little 'Araf' signs before drops on switchbacks and things. But it did take me a while to work out what it meant.

BloggingFit

There will never be real cohesion with grading across the different trail centres, this much is clear.

It would be good to see far more online interaction from all the centres in terms of each trail or run having a feature breakdown so you can get an overview of the type of elevations you are going to encounter followed up by a more detailed description of particular features within. This could be in the form of a photo or even a short video clip which is giving user enough info in advance of what that particular trail is before they even set foot (wheels) on it. Out on the trails feature warning signs correlating to the online narrative would help. Some trails do have these already.

In an ideal world we would have a UK trail centre App for which we would download and register with and this would work in a similar fashion to Strava in that it would log our visits to different trail centres and keep record of the types of graded trail we ride and our relative performance on each. It could then make recommendations for other trails in other centre that may be suitable based upon your own rider history similar to iTunes genius. It could even be developed so far as to make a trail recommendation once you are physically at a trail centre in a similar way that some shopping centres we using Bluetooth to target shoppers with marketing on their mobiles. The tech is there but needs the funds and organisation to implement.

rockmonkeysc

Cqc wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

More technical trails can be more dangerous when ridden slowly and stopping on steep sections may not be an option. Most accidents I have seen on technical trails have been caused by inappropriate braking or riding too slowly.

I would disagree. How many injuries have you seen of idiots charging down genuinely difficult tracks for the first (and last) time like fort bill and killing themselves versus the amount going down slowly the first time and stopping to scope out the hard bits?

A lot more from going too slowly or braking at the wrong time. Usually resulting in a face full of blood and a trip to A&E.
Riders who go flat out in to a black trail usually have tge confidence to do so because they are experienced riders.
Fort Bill usually only kills riders with a lack of fittness rather than a lack of skill. It's the length of that particular track that makes it so tough. It is a bit of a bike breaker as well.