[Closed] Glentress yesterday, so disappointed.

It's a shame indeed 🙁

Human nature though. Look at any large retail/housing development and see the various shortcuts folk make through bushes etc cause they can't be arsed walking the length of themselves 🙄

I just looked at a youtube clip from 3 years ago, and one from 5 months ago. I was expected devastation but it looks like its held up well, the shortcuts are pretty brief...and inevitable?

[i]Thanks a bunch all you selfish, talentless, lazy idiots. [/i]

Perhaps a bit harsh? Nothing a bit of regular maintenance wouldn't avoid...once a line appears, people are going to ride it and perhaps not even realise they have deviated from the trail if they are following another rider.

I've not been up there for ages either but I remember that section, enjoyed it so thankyou Steven the Fairy 🙂

It isn't just the pie run, there are short cuts all over the place and not just at glentress, but it does seem the worst. It has become much, much worse in the last two years.

stevenmenmuir - Member
barrowing all the hardcore in was such a big job we had to employ child labour.

Ah!!!!! the Adventure Edinburgh trail building sessions, they so were so excited about building a gap jump over the stream on mushroom pie.

It's gutting that some riders can't stick to the obvious trail

Desire lines. Can't fight it.

Is that the relatively short but twisty and rooty one? Starts just after another trail finishes with a choice of steep drops?

People are twunts (some of them ride bikes).

Desire lines

Don't get it. Why would anyone 'desire' a less interesting trail? People straight lining corners for Strava times aren't going to be challenging KOM times and what's the achievement in beating yourself if you've taken short cuts?

They aren't desire lines, they are "oops, I over cooked it and it's easier to straight line than make a corner/awkward root combo".

It's a long time since I was there but I recall the Pie Run being through pretty thick forest. I'm surprised there's room for cutting the corners.

its all about 'kom' innit

Nah. Trails have had corners cut since well before Strava.

You should see the Strava lines at Cathkin its embarrassing

Other than not looking as pretty, how do the shortcuts spoil your enjoyment of following the original route?

I think some thinning of trees has taken place which has maybe allowed it and also highlighted it. The last session I was at we worked on Falla Brae blocking shortcuts. The thing is the Fairies would rather be working on new stuff than just blocking shortcuts and fixing braking bumps.

poly it results in damage to the original trail and it annoys me because it took a lot of effort to build it the way it was intended. If people stuck to the original trail it wouldn't need as much maintenance.

stevenmenmuir - Member
I think some thinning of trees has taken place which has maybe allowed it and also highlighted it.

rather be working on new stuff than just blocking shortcuts and fixing braking bumps.

We can't all be riding gods with perfect breaking 😉

I never understand shortcuts, if your riding a trail then the longer the better.

They aren't desire lines, they are "oops, I over cooked it and it's easier to straight line than make a corner/awkward root combo".

This.

Is there any way to enforce the original line by putting logs and brash down?

Is there any way to enforce the original line by putting logs and brash down?

That should be the answer. I find myself taking straigntlines at times - once they've been ridden they're often easier to see than the 'real' line but by the time you realise you're not set up for the corner.

Desire lines. Can't fight it.

Landmines.

chakaping - Member

Is there any way to enforce the original line by putting logs and brash down?

I did exactly that on pie run a while back, they were removed in about 2 weeks. (a pretty depressing amount of trailfairies sessions are now spent on stuff like this, it's the same reason fences keep popping up- when I first started we hardly did it at all). We stacked foot-thick tree sections into a cut line on falla brae last year, those all got removed too, someone spent a fair amount of time taking those off.

Cutting corners has definitely become seen as a "thing to do" these days "did you see that inside line I took, it was well fast". And the idea of actually changing the trail- removing built obstructions- is something I can never remember seeing til recently. People genuinely stop to pull significant amounts of wood and brash off "their line", it is mad. It's not specifically strava I don't think, just a change in attitude. Enduro racing hasn't helped, that's a fact. And I remember a video one of the local guys filmed on Zoom Or Bust where he was gapping some of the corners, 2 weeks later all those corners had straightlines over them as people "copied" him without leaving the ground. Those lines were all slower than following the trail of course but that's not the point of the Clever Line, it's about doing something different.

simons_nicolai-uk - Member

That should be the answer. I find myself taking straigntlines at times - once they've been ridden they're often easier to see than the 'real' line but by the time you realise you're not set up for the corner.

Yup, tbh this is the meat of the problem. It only takes a few riders to establish a visible line and then afterwards people will unknowingly use it too.

The other part of course is that most people just think it's harmless- it's not obvious to the inexperienced eye that pie run had so much work in it, people imagine the trails are just ridden in or raked out or whatever rather than being huge amounts of work. Every cut line damages the built surface and the drainage and tbh I think a lot less people would do it, if they knew that.

I still want to build a metre wide straight trail all the way from spooky to the cafe. We'll build some jumps and rock features and singletrack loops all down the [i]side[/i] of it because it wouldn't be a proper strava line if you weren't actively avoiding the only good bits.

thegreatape - Member

Is that the relatively short but twisty and rooty one? Starts just after another trail finishes with a choice of steep drops?

Yup.

😆 think the next trail i put in will be down the line of a fire road, that and putting in a bunch of trails that all run parallel to each other within a few feet of the next one.
a mate put a line in a while back that had a pinch point - two trees opposite each other 'just' wide enough for a set of wide-ish bars. we mused over how long it would be before some prick cut one out. about 3 months as it turned out. 🙄
still, it's not our land, so although it's disappointing but there's not much you can do.
i have various wars of attrition on various sections of trail where people keep moving stuff out the way to create a straighter line. problem is that sometimes you need to feed riders in to a section more slowly to prevent that bit getting damaged - where you don't want them braking and turning for instance, because the ground won't take it.

How's about carls lane, large sections of it cut out so you can ride a straight line through bog instead. Now mostly fenced off. If you want to ride a straight line, there is a fire road three metres to your left..

thegman67 - Member
You should see the Strava lines at Cathkin its embarrassing

Funnily enough was there this afternoon with the kids, having not been for around 6 months and thought exactly the same. Ruining the trail 😯

Some hawthorne branches on the shortcuts should fix it.

The trail fairies do a great job but the place overall is pretty tired. Needs a fair bit of work and a few new trails.

They did run a stage of the international race down pie run last year and I'm sure a few new lines appeared then.

Thing is, trails get wide when they are well used by lots of traffic, like, you know, at trail centers!

I've got no probs in people straight lining stuff (for what ever reason) if it requires skill to do so. i.e. bunny hop a rock, root, ditch or tree stump etc, but what you find is that corners open slowly over time, just due to the number of riders riding them, it's inevitable unless the trail is extremely well armored (ie, massive, immovable-except-with-digger style features)

There's a set of turns on one of the black runs down off Arc1800 (les arcs) where you can use large boulder as a launch ramp, and cut out an entire section of trail (probably 50m / 3 hairpins) but as you are boosting up and over rocks about 2 or 3 foot dia, come up short and boy oh boy, is it gonna hurt!

There was a lot of trees removed from that run that opened it up quite a bit. The trail is faster and has more flow now you're not worrying about handlebars clipping trees.

Hadn't noticed straight lines, so if I'm taking them it's not deliberate but better trail after forestry work.

Strava is the bain of my life, ****ing selfish, egotistical tossers.

I'm not talking about trails getting wider through use but corners getting completely bypassed. And taking trees out and straightening trails in this case doesn't make it better. If we wanted to build a straight trail we'd have done that, it certainly would have been easier to build but if you can corner properly it would have been a lot less fun. And if you could corner properly you wouldn't clip the trees with your bars.

To summarise this thread: Mountain bikers complain about erosion caused by mountain bikers at a place designed for mountain bikers, built by mountain bikers and not used by anyone else but mountain bikers.

And the idea of actually changing the trail- removing built obstructions- is something I can never remember seeing til recently

Strava is the bain of my life, **** selfish, egotistical tossers.

What did you moan about before Strava?

Must be a bloody dull and uninteresting existence if strava is the bane of it.......

Been going on for years, be it strava, racing your mates or over cooking it. Enduro and seeking out lines doesn't help - there is a dirt school vid somewhere encouraging some more interesting lines too back before strava existed. Throw in more people and it's going to happen

DickBarton - Member

Define recently as it has been happening since before Glentress was a trail centre...way before...

What, people broke down fences and removed blockages placed by the trailbuilders to keep people on the manmade trails before the trail centre? I'm not talking about corner cutting, I'm talking about destroying the work that's done to prevent corner cutting and keep the trails in good order.

To summarise this thread: Mountain bikers complain about erosion caused by mountain bikers at a place designed for mountain bikers, built by mountain bikers and not used by anyone else but mountain bikers.

Same thing has been happening for 50 years on mountains all over Britain. Huge amounts of money and effort have been expended in repairing the damage caused by walkers short-cutting or spreading out to avoid boggy patches.

Human nature though. Look at any large retail/housing development and see the various shortcuts folk make through bushes etc cause they can't be arsed walking the length of themselves

That's something different, the paths are poorly designed. You don't walk around those places for the fun of it, you do it to get to the place you need to most quickly.

Could some of them be overtaking lines?

What, people broke down fences and removed blockages placed by the trailbuilders to keep people on the manmade trails before the trail centre? I'm not talking about corner cutting, I'm talking about destroying the work that's done to prevent corner cutting and keep the trails in good order

Yes, just not on man-made trail centres as they didn't exist then.

It doesn't matter who or what made the trail, there will always be people who think they know better and try to 'fix' whatever is there as it makes it easier/quicker/better.

It also seriously winds me up, but there isn't much you can do unless deploying very large and very heavy boulders to block the changes can be done (nearly never possible).

Not dull as the tossers blatting round the countryside with their heads down knocking over kids and being bloody rude to anyone who may slow them down a bit.

Did the red route for the first time in a while and didn't notice any short cuts on the way down but there were a few going up that has been worn in