Id say absolutely don’t change it.
Given the state I went down it, was still able to comfortably walk away. Bloke at the top is over six foot, in wave terms its at least double over head to the berm when youre stood at the bottom.
There is space to scrub off enough speed (however ungracefully … my mistake was landing with full death grip on the brakes) and theres a chicken’ish run to the left if you absolutely must put survival first.
To quote “its not tiddly winks chaps”
I would say given the amount of rocks on the runs that some form of padding is a must (currently sporting an impressive Olecranon Burstisis after not wearing the 661 subgear last weekend !)
Re walking the trail, unfortunately its far to narrow to safely do that, and the attainable speeds means theres little time / space to bale out of the way of oncoming riders, impossible if your hiking a bike up.
Thats the benefits to me at least of the trail centres, the pre walk is already done, and the gradings given so you can just get on with it and pack in as much riding as you can in the precious rare time we have.
We actually walked up the old trail that runs semi parallel so had some glimpses of what was to come