Trail Difficulty Rating
 

Hi MTBers,

Whitewater kayakers have a well-defined system for rating the difficulty of running rapids. Each rapid on a river is given a rating from I to VI based on its technical difficulty and potential consequences (injury, drowning) of messing up the rapid.

Do MTBers have a well-defined system for rating trail sections? What is it?

Yes and No.

It all depends on the trail builders (and maintainers). There is no "set" system.

Most of the trails I've seen use a color coded system similar to skiing. With Black being the most difficult, blue is advanced, and green is beginner.

Many times Red is used in lieu of Black for the trails.

They do in bc.

But really to take that world wide would require pics and stuff. Difficulty is subjective.

Green - Easy as pie. Usually smooth with no steep climbs or descents. Usually a double track

Blue - single track. Not very technical, no stunts, pretty groomed with roots and rocks. This is typically like most xc courses with lung busting climbs. Can have some basic stunts.

Black - single track. Steep technical descents. Usually nothing that can't be walked. But still very difficult for average riders This is usually a typical dh level type run. A true big mountain experience. Can also have some stunts and skinnies that are highish and narrow.

Double Black - Creme de la creme. High skinny stunts, big drops or REALLY steep lines. This requires, nuts, skills and a good bike.

Thats more or less how bc breaks it down.

I'm not totally up to speed on the lingo, what are 'skinnies'?

Skinnies are north shore stunts. This pic is of a wide one. I would put this at a blue or low black stunt for example.


http://www.gutsploder.net/rides/from...pipeline_b.jpg

gotcha,
ta.

There is a very refined system in place.

We look at the trail in front of us and say one of the following:

• "Looks easy enough to me..."
• "Hmmm, there are a couple of ruts/rocks I need to watch out for, this might be interesting..."
• "Damn! That's steep! There's a good chance I might break my a**/have to hike...oh well, here goes!!"
• *looks at friend* "Dude, there's no way I'm doing THAT! You're insane!"

It's very scientific and involves a lot of cataloging of data but, in the end, we have a highly technical classification system ready to roll!!
:lol:

Hahahaha...thats how I setup my suspension. We sit in a circle and talk about how flexy the bike would be with the shock in this position. Completely scientific. Beer is required though :D

:roflmao:

Hi Maelstrom, Very helpful, Thanks.

Mael, isnt that a ladder bridge?

This is a skinny.

http://forums.mtbr.com/attachment.ph...id=43978&stc=1

Sure. Doesn't matter to me much. I just couldn't find a good example and in reality they are both based on the same idea.

This is exactly why it would be hard to make a rating system that applied to everything. Everyone has different opinions.

Not really. The pic I showed isn't as difficult as the pic Troie picked. Not difficult to seperate at all.

But yes, one issue I find is people coming out here, experienced in technical trails, then find they are in over their head. Their black diamond is closer to what I consider a blue for example. Especially if they hit the shore, lots of people get smoked by the 'easy' trails on fromme.

The real difficulty would be in creating a national standard. Some people would likely be heavily offended if one was ever implemented.

I saw a guide book from Arizona that rated trails "puck" factor.The gnarlier the trail the more your butt pucked up. Another very scientific method. Guess that puck helps you lock on to the seat.

Maelstrom,

Whitewater kayakers are about as independent and self-reliant as athletes get. They're not offended by national and international whitewater standards. These standards help avoid injuries and save lives.

Many whitewater kayakers are mtb'ers also, as the sports are quite similar. E.g., done in wilderness, need to pick lines, know your limits.

I realize that not everyone is going to be offended. I think a national ranking system would work well.

I think you could do one for xc based trails too. Long extended technical climbs are ranked pretty high here. This has potential (all intrawest sites use ranking systems like this)

Personally, I think its a good idea. Its not hard to define difficulties etc.

Maelstrom,

Let's start a project to do it. If you agree, how do you recommend we go about getting it started?

Al

Ipersonally like the system intrawest uses (stated above)...it is consistent with all other big mountain sports. It makes sense to anyone who has skied or snowboarded. That covers a lot of people :D

I did our local trail map. I was SHOCKED when I looked for a trail rating system on IMBA and found none. I fell back on the ski system.

One thing to remember about the SKI system though is that it is proportionate to the local terrain. So a small resort in Michigan may have a double black diamond that an intermediate can ride (it's regional). But a double black in Colorado may be likely to demolish that same intermediate rider.

I thik you guys have a great idea.It takes the guess work out when someone ask "how hard is it".I ran into some guys in Pisgah the other day who had kinda gotten in over their heads.

Yeah and likely the biggest difficulty is dealing with resorts that have real dh tracks on them. They are above and beyond most double blacks in whistler for example.

Definately. When you look at garbonzo it is 30 to 40minutes for an average rider to descend. Steep, technical, drops, jumps, steep (I said that already). Its a double black because it is sooooo long. Its tough to come up with a standard system. In my world that track in michigan can't be double black, intermediates can't ride double blacks, they walk 40% of it.

I think, if this was to work, you would have to work from the lowest common denominator (rail to trail for example) and the hardest (north shore, platekill, cali dh racing) and then work inwards.

How do you deal with difficulty based on direction? 18" drop is a lot harder (for me at least) to ride UP than down. I just think back to Austin and Emma Long (likely a single black). I got to the point of riding down everything, but up was another matter completely.

Do you have a different trail rating for each direction? This stuff doesn't apply to other down[hill/stream] activities. Even rock-climbing rating is generally based on one direction.

I guess if it's technical one way, it's technical the other. I guess I'm answering my own question here. An 18" drop is 18" down or up, so be it. Aerobic difficulty should be on a different scale, and not consdered here.

I think the rapid system is standardized because the feds only allow outfitters to guide on a certain difficulty of river. A screwup on a class 5 rapid can easily get you drowned. The same level of peril doesn't really exist for ski or mountain biking.

Thus, one needs a consistent system of grading rapids to comply with the law.

Maybe we need V-chip style ratings for trails. Instead of PG, PG-13, R, X ... etc... We need

* Steep Descent
* Narrow Elevation
* Steep Climb
* Rock Gardens
* Jumps
* Creek Crossings
* etc...

And each warning label would have an international symbol. Dots next to the symbol would indicated the difficulty of each hazard. 1 to five dots.

Rating vs Ranking ...

I think they would have to be careful about making it into a sort of "ranking".

That is the job of the system is to explain the difficulties involved in the terrain. It says nothing about the ENJOYMENT of the trail. That should be left to third parties ... not IMBA.

Yeah, I ride one trail that's rated (by WTF knows) as "Easiest", and it's pretty damn hard to say the least. Maybe they just slap on what ever sticker they happened to have in their pocket at the time.

ummm...yeah I agree...haha I don't even think it is feasible. Too many variables (people type variables) involved. He was simply acting what was in place. This is a popular system here and at ski resorts and works well.

Never rank enjoyment. What I may like you might hate haha

I'm not a big fan of rating systems. As a former competitive mogul skier and new whitewater kayaker, I've seen such gross variations in ratings that it almost makes them worthless. The only time I've found ratings useful are when used to compare relative difficulty under current conditions.

A single ski slope, for example, can range from ridiculously easy to incredibly hard depending on the surface conditions and mechanical grooming. Running a snowcat over my favorite bump run can change it from a "Black Diamond" knee buster to a "Green Circle" yawner. Mother Nature can dramatically change a rating in and instant. The run you skied effortlessly yesterday, under clear skies and soft snow, can be deadly when fogged in and frozen solid.

Whitewater river ratings can vary even more depending on water level. Unfortunately, a mistake judging the difficulty of a ww river can be deadly. Last fall, I paddled the Cartecay River in North Georgia at low flow. It was a very easy Class II. I paddled it again a week later after heavy rains and it became a VERY hard Class IV. The difference was exponential and I should NOT have paddled that river.

Mountain bike trails, however, seem to have less variation than ski slopes or rivers. Maybe a rating system would work better there. The difficulty, though, is in judging exactly what makes a trail hard. For a roadie, hopping on an MTB for the first time, a trail that's "tough" because it has long, non-technical climbs might be very easy for him. That same trail, however, to an overweight freerider who doesn't climb much would be very tough. A technical trail would be very hard for the roadie but a piece of cake for the freerider.

hey cool thread!

a trail rating system is a current topic here in Germany/Austria. the VertRiders, a group of Freeriders in Innsbruck Austria, namely one guy Willi Hofer who wrote a guide book, developed a singletrail rating system for extremely technical trails a few years ago, with levels 0-10, where most people would consider levels above 3 "unrideable".

now this system has been adapted and in cooperation with one of the two big MTB magazines, BIKE they're trying to make it a standard in the Alps/Europe.

the link (in German) is: http://www.singletrail-skala.de/. although the photos are a help even if you can't read German.

basically the idea is such:
* as opposed to a ski trail rating (Green/Blue/Black in NorthAmerica and Blue/Red/Black in Europe) where the rating covers "everything", the rating is only a rating of the TECHNICAL difficulty similar to a rock climbing rating (various systems like UIAA 1-11 but all basically same where approach, exposure, length, safety and existing placements are separately dealt with and not in the rating) the Single-Trail-Raing DOES NOT rate the exposure, danger, etc. or the extra aspects like length, time, heat, water, etc., but merely rates the TECHNICAL difficulty, levels S-0 to S-5, where a street, fireroad or doubletrail does not get a rating as it's not a singletrail!

* S-0 - flowing singletrail with no major obstacles
* S-1 - singletrail with root and rocks, but maximum steepnes 40% and no hairpin curves, no extemely loose gravel, no drops, etc.
* S-2 - singletrail with big rocks, sharp curves, many roots, loose gravel, stairs or small ledges, max steepnes 70%, many sharp curves
* S-3 - steep with major obstacles, big rocks and boulders, many exposed roots, big drops and ledges, steepness often over 70%, loose and eroded ground, sharp curves, steep off-camber sections, etc.
* S-4 - very steep with multiple major obstacles: very steep and blocked trail with very technical root and ledge sections; trials maneuvers such as hops and/or side-setting of rear wheels are necessary to clear obstacles or sharp corners
* S-5 - "unrideable": large drops in series, big drops with sharp curves, eroded, loose and exposed ground, VERY steep (cliffs), multiple obstacles, boulders, cliffs, etc.

this can be roughly translated to the Green/Blue/Black scheme:
S-0, S-1 = Green
S-2, S-3 = Blue
S-4, S-5 = Black

Note that traditional XC ends with S-2 after which a trail is no longer flowing
but here a BLACK is REALLY hard!!

the scale is also "open-ended" meaning that as riders improve and previously "unrideable" trails become rideable, the scale can be extended to handle it (i.e. S-6 could be added and a distinction between S-5 and S-6 made while existing S-0 through S-4 trails do not need to be changed)

the system is designed with the idea of being used in conjunction with a text description of the trail describing length, exposure, danger, aerobic challenge (uphill riding) with the S-rating describing the TECHNICAL difficulty of the SINGLETRAIL sections - with a general rating plus a section ratings: e.g. trail is S-2 with 3 short S-4 passages.

the scale is also bascially designed for technical trails and does not really attempt to rate jumps or stunts although it can be extended for basic skinnies, ladders, drops and such.

My personal note is that such a system on an International scale would be awesome as i could go to Moab or Whistler and get a description of "extreme" trails and use the scale as a reference what the person meant by "extreme" and thus find something rideable (for me drops over 3ft and cliffs are not good (heavy S-4/S-5), but "unrideable" technical trails with huge boulders, rock gardens and hairpin curves - S-3/border S-4 - is what i love!)