Philip Varen

In 2020, Europe had 14 diverse trail rating systems, each with unique difficulty criteria. To address this inconsistency, IMBA Europe and Swiss Bike Park introduced the International Trail Rating System (ITRS) to standardize ratings and bridge the gap between expectations and reality. While South Africa may have fewer formally named rating systems in use, it likely shares a similar issue of subjective grading criteria. Without a central authority for advice or certification, trail managers often rely on personal judgment, leading to potential discrepancies in trail difficulty assessments.

Thanks for the comment. I've covered subjectivity (variability based on who decides) as well as mixed difficulty trails and the suggestion that feature signage should be in place for these, for e.g. "Black diamond feature ahead", if the trail builders/management want to rate the trail "blue" or if a blue feature has become a black feature because of a recent event - like a storm. I suppose there are those features, like the Boomslang drop on Tokai's Snakes trails - well you can roll that drop if you go super slow or you can clear the landing if you launch it - so do we make it a black feature, or is it a black feature - should the trail management not cater for the worse case scenario? Heavy questions I know

Although my original question relates to which rating system we're actually using, your comment does raise a mind boggler to me... Cobra's black feature is a red feature, but if they're using IMBA, there's no red available. But why on earth is Armageddon 8 still black, when they're using reds there? I mean surely 8 is really blue?

But as far as I know, there is no "orange" trail. Plumber is black and there are no double blacks? There is another european system based on the IMBA - the ITRS which, like the UK system, has 5 trail grades of the same green, blue red, black and orange (with 2 orange diamonds). I said in the OP that I'd never seen an orange rated trail in SA - nor have I heard of one mentioned, but there are reds - relatively few but there are reds. I know of double black. So are we not, when using red, using a hybrid of the two systems i.e. throwing a red in between blue and black - because this is useful when a trail isn't deserving of black.

According to the IMBA system, and I assume the UK system, a black trail includes "unavoidable obstacles" and since there a few such ones on DH0, and with the gradient of the initial part, it falls into black.

I'm putting together a blog article on this topic (see title) - on what to expect from each trail rating and the level of skill each rating demands. There are 2 systems that I think are in use in SA- based on the strong suspicion that our trails are rated green, blue, red, black and double black. The IMBA system uses (white), green, blue, black, double black. The Forestry and Land Scotland system (UK system) uses green, blue, red, black, orange. So it seems likely that we would typically use the IMBA system, with the red from the Forestry and Land Scotland system, sometimes, if not rarely, thrown in. I've been riding for almost 30 years; I've seen red trails but I've never seen an orange trail. Any thoughts on this? Philip