some good reading on the dumbing down of trails

[dru_b]

http://mountain.bike198.com/dumbing-...nt=Yahoo!+Mail

[Rage]

Good read, indeed. Thanks for posting!

Rg.

[Honestcox]

So what's the general consensus on the smaller tree limbs (like 2" in diameter or less) that fall on the trail after a storm? I tend to see them as nuisances that can do nothing more but get caught up in your spokes. Do you remove them or leave them and let the bikes eventually grind them into dust over time? I'm not talking about the big log that falls perpendicular to the trail and makes a nice natural obstacle, but all these little sticks that fall on the trail. Throw them aside or leave 'em?

[mcwrath]

Get rid of it. That is called "debris" and adds no technical challenge, but increases the chances of getting caught up in your derailer and spokes. After losing my derailer last year, I tend to clear that off the trails when I encounter it.

[Rage]

Get rid of it. That is called "debris" and adds no technical challenge, but increases the chances of getting caught up in your derailer and spokes. After losing my derailer last year, I tend to clear that off the trails when I encounter it.

Fo Sho. Practice the "shoe-wedge" and knock the smaller ones off the trail while you're riding. Saddle Trail Maintenance!

Rg.

[Vibrato]

This topic has been debated on these forums long and hard as FORC has grown and built systems.

A couple of thoughts- This was a low hanging branch on a fast section of trail that was causing numerous broken collor bones and injury flights out?? Are they kidding? This shouldn't be controversial, it's causing injuries! Talk about poor trail design!! Get that thing out of there!

Our understanding with the parks that allow us to build and ride on their property is that (where possible) we will use IMBA trail ratings as our sort of "rule of thumb", so on Green circle (easy) rated trails, logs over 2" usually come out and we try to keep the steepness of the trails to less than 5%. While some of our green rated trails are not 100% in line, the majority of these trails were buuilt prior to adopting the IMBA guides and were allowed to be left as is.

More difficult rated trails are "Blue Square", Most difficult is rated Black diamond or Double black diamond

Black Diamond trails are NOT FOR beginners. (Sometimes a club will designate a trail as black diamond when there are no obstacles or there is an easy way around every obstacle just so they can say they have a black diamond trail. In mtb slang, these trails are called "pink stars".)

This huge controversy starts with the un-authorized removal of obstacles just because 1 or 2 people don't like them. As an example- Some pretty decently skilled riders REALLLY don't like off camber logs, especially if they can catch the chainring if you don't know how to ride them- so the ones used as trail qualifiers on Blue Mound have mysteriously disappeared, taken out by people who somehow justify the removal of obstacles other riders find quite fun. (I am one of those who had a blast carrying the front wheel for a ways over those 3 off camber logs- it is a great, simple technique for riding these. I think it is a shame that anyone who rides around here will never master this technique because a couple of people remove all of the off camber logs that can catch a chain ring if you don';t learn the technique. Kinda makes midwest riders look like wimps when we go to other parks and make the locals wait for us cause we can't ride a simple off camber obstacle. rant over...)

We have riders that don't like drops, or climbs or logs or anything that might be considered a "jump". If we took all of these out of our entire trail systems, the people MOST active in trail building and maintenance would become bored and the trails would go to crap and we'd ALL have to find new hobbies.

FORC and other clubs have members who have spent incredible amounts of time, sweat and money to build miles and miles of fun, easy to moderate skill level trails. Please support these members when they decide it's time to build a few miles of fun, difficult level trails for us to challenge our skills.

For more info on the IMBA trails rating system- go here:

http://www.imba.com/resources/freeri...-rating-system