change course from beginner to intermediate. Help needed.

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    • #243966

      hey guys. Is there any type of support for this? I’ve been riding my home trail since 2001 and it’s anything but a beginner trail. It’s up to 7 miles now with many hard climbs and bridge crossings, fire roads and fast downhills. I feel that we lose traffic because of the beginner status and when beginners show up they quit after a half mile and you never see them again. Much help needed. Thanks. 

    • #243967

      There usually specific criteria that determines trail difficulty such as corridor width, trail grade (percentage), size of features.  If you want to increase the difficulty of your trails the first thing to do would be to add some technical features such as wooden features/skinnies, log piles, rock gardens, switchbacks/berms (if applicable). You can really get creative with what’s already around you in the woods. These can spice up your trails and can be done regardless of elevation, mileage, or other factors out of your control.

      My local trails are intermediate and we build these features to up the difficulty all the time. If you’re gonna build more challenging features, consider keeping a bypass or beginner line so advanced people can challenge themselves, but beginners can still use the trail. This is important because you only have 7 miles, you can serve a diverse amount of user groups.

    • #243968

      What trail is it?  Where?

    • #243972

      Not entirely clear what the question is, but I think you’re asking about the Singletracks trail difficulty rankings.

      These are created based on an aggregate of user reviews. Whenever anyone reviews a trail on Singletracks, we ask them to rate the difficulty of the trail. (We’re a little sneaky in that we don’t ask people if a trail is beginner, intermediate, etc. since this introduces bias. Instead, we provide the chart shown below which focuses objectively on technical features.)

      We then average the difficulty ratings based on all the trail reviews. If a trail is listed as “beginner” it’s because a lot of people have rated it that way.

      Now, trail length is not captured in the difficulty rating, and that’s on purpose to separate out physical difficulty from technical difficulty. For physical difficulty, our hope is readers will consider both length and the amount of climbing involved.

      • #243973

        Awesome thanks for the replies! Great site.

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