[Closed] the dumbing down of Glentress

If trail maintenance/repair work is done on a trail section of course it is going to be smoother than it was before the work was done. It will probably be easier to ride than it was when it was in need of repair. I don't accept that as dumbing down, though, as the trail is being returned to something like its originally intended state, not altered to something easier than its original form.

Trails wear in, then wear out, then get repaired or replaced. If people say "Glentress has been dumbed down because sections X, Y and Z got smoothed out", unless all trails are maintained at exactly the same time (and they're not), aren't they ignoring the trails A, B and C are continuing to get more eroded and so are getting harder?

I have spoken to several of the MTB rangers at Glentress and they are adamant that there's no deliberate dumbing down or sanitising of the trails at Glentress. They're often quite hurt by the accusations levelled at them and the other trailbuilders. They're all keen cyclists and MTBers (have a look at MTB Ranger Andy Wardman's CX video if you need persuaded that he's handy on a bike!) and are endeavouring to create and maintain trails as appropriate for their gradings.

there was nothing difficult about the pie run but the need was felt for filling in the only root section that required a little thought to get through cleanly in the wet.

When the Pie Run was built the roots on "That Bit" (its semi-offical name 🙂 ) were not as exposed as they ended up being. As the surface around the roots wore away more and more riders started having problems with That Bit. It may not have been a hard section by your standards but it ended up harder than it was intended to be and it was causing problems for a lot of people who otherwise appeared to consider themselves red graded riders. Plus its position halfway along the initial, fast, bit of the Pie Run meant that it killed a lot of flow (even for good riders if they came across someone recovering from a slip-up there) which spoiled the rest of the section.

When That Bit got reworked the original line that chucked you at its roots at a bad angle was left in place and a better line was added. The roots were filled over, yes, but they're exposed again, as the trailbuilders always knew they would be. In time they'll probably become very exposed again and a decision will be made whether the surfacing there should be redone again.

The entrance to the worm hole was **** around with to create a crappy one line wonder with less flow

Interesting. Up to now the accusation of dumbing down has generally been used to mean "been made easier", but in this case the Wormhole's entrance was made more difficult (or at least I see fewer people ride it than the old entrance) but as it is less interesting to you it's been dumbed down...

Pretty much all the roots on that trail with the log pile were filled in not just the ones near the logpile.

Piffle. Sections that were turning into swamp or had standing water were resurfaced. Again, as the trails wear in roots will be exposed but there's still plenty of roots on Magic Mushroom.

whatever the trail after spooky wood's called is absolutely shite now that it is just a motorway.

Actually I sort-of agree with you there. 🙂 I prefer Super G as it used to be. However I'm not convinced that it's a victim of dumbing down. The old sections were getting really badly eroded with breaking bumps and so on all over the place. The decision to rebuild them like they are now is probably due to the fact that it comes right after Spooky Wood and that is obviously a massively popular piece of trail. So when the section following Spooky Wood needed some serious rennovation, adding big berms and some tabletops probably seemed like an obvious idea.

Not only that but IIRC, when I first rode at Glentress the table tops and jumps on Super G were some of the biggest on the red route. There was even a warning sign before its tabletop! But as Spooky Wood upped the red graded trail jump ante, the jumps and berms on Super G were upgraded when it got reworked.

I believe that the idea of making such trails wide is so that riders are able to help define the lines that get ridden, rather than the line being defined entirely by the trailbuilder. As trails get established the undergrowth will reclaim the unridden lines.

I could go on and on.. but I don't know the names of all the sections, I did however used to know almost all the roots and nice natural kickers all over GT, sadly a lot don't even exist now.

Were those roots and kickers there when the trails were originally built or from another point of view could they be seen as signs of erosion or trail damage?

thanks for your honesty, but Super G (now I've been reminded of it's name) used to have nice ruts and holes

They were probably not part of the original design! 😉

tinribz - it was never technical, very little at GT is.

There's quite a lot of forum evidence, GW, that your definition of "technical" is quite different to that of many average trail riders...

I love GT and the work people put in to keep it one of the best centres in the UK.

When will the black part be open again and are ALL the trails that were in there still there?

I don't know when the logging work will be done, but all of the trails in the affected area will still be there when it is.

If you haven't been to GT in some time then you should be warned that the Ewok Village and the elevated wooden section of Double X had to be taken down last year. This isn't due to dumbing down either, it's because of rotten wood. They will be replaced, but it may take a while, I gather.

I have heard that there are some plans to rebuild The Matrix and Lombard Street (the closed bits of the red) but I don't know what timescale is attached to that, either.

Chris, out of interest, what's your take on the definition of "dumbing down" as being used in this thread? - I'm not going to bother answering every point you've made as you've clearly got issues with those two particular words being stuck together and used anywhere near your hard work.

I'll give you an example of my definition using "Magic mushroom" as ana example now you've reminded me of it's name..
ok.. here goes - couple of pedal strokes in to the trail entrance, jump the natural whoopy double (destroyed in one weekend by SXC mincers and never rebuilt), pump the landing, couple more pedal strokes and hit the loose flat right hander, scrub the little table while transferring over to the fastest outside line, pedal towards the l'il bridge thing, brake and drift off the wee drop and slide into the left hand line of a rather nice root section, pumping through to keep enough momentum to turn in and hop onto the small wooden bridge, on the pedals again for a slight rise full of roots, once on the flat, sprint towards a nicely placed beraking bump/root that you can use to jump a whole corner full of roots landing in a compression, follow the s-shape of the trail using the ruts and holes to pump speed (no pedalling required, hold the line round to the humpy bridge, manual on and set-up for the tight turn, back on the pedals again to the next rooty turns, holding it tight to the inside tree to straightline through two turns without pedalling until over them, nice twisty but flat and lung bursting sprint down through the trees with a few relitively easily negotiated roots to keep you on your toes into the first of two jumps (that now have no lips) table off the second into the well worn berm and shoot off towards the best root section at GT (felt shite if you got it wrong, but sooo good if you pinned it over that turn sliding and made it feet up, if yougot that right it always made more sense to avoid the rubbish log pile, from here it hasn't changed much til you get to the new boardwalk (which is rubbish compared to what was there before).
now I'm not going to describe riding the section as it now is but you have to admit it's nothing like I just described now, is it? there just aren't half as many options. if that's not "dumbed down" then what is?

Chris, out of interest, what's your take on the definition of "dumbing down" as being used in this thread? - I'm not going to bother answering every point you've made as you've clearly got issues with those two particular words being stuck together and used anywhere near your hard work.

I am not particularly sensitive to the term "dumbing down". "Trail sanitisation" winds me up just as much. 😉

Let's imagine the life cycle of a typical purpose-built trail:

[list=1]
[*]Trail is built.[/*]
[*]Trail is ridden. The more the trail is ridden, the more worn it becomes. It may narrow as one riding line is preferred over others. It may develop braking bumps and pot holes. This wear and tear may modify or create features that some riders find interesting or valuable. E.g. a few roots get exposed or the lip to a hole can be used to make a jump.[/*]
[*]Eventually the trail has worn substantially and the trailbuilders do some maintenance on it or rebuild it. Hopefully the things hated by many riders (e.g. braking bumps) will go but it's almost unavoidable that features loved by some will be lost too.[/*]
[*]And repeat...[/*]
[/list]

I'd say it's dumbing down if the trail maintenance/rebuilding work produces a trail of a lower grade to the trail as it was originally built. As I said before a repaired trail section will probably vary in difficulty over its life cycle but as long as it stays within the acceptable difficulty spectrum for its grade during its lifetime then it hasn't been dumbed down.

now I'm not going to describe riding the section as it now is but you have to admit it's nothing like I just described now, is it? there just aren't half as many options. if that's not "dumbed down" then what is?

Wow that was quite difficult to read! Still I think I recognised a fair chunk of it, though I don't have the photographic memory for trails that you appear to have, so I don't know all the details. All the roots around the first couple of bridges are still there and there are definitely jumpable lips on the straight after them.

The cartwheel corner has undeniably been filled in. The roots there are however returning, as the trailbuilders intended. It will become tricky again in time and I doubt it'll get filled in again until it has become very tricky. Before it was filled, the carthweel was getting increasingly hard with increasing rapidity. I don't remember it being as bad when I started at Glentress as it was before it was filled.

Claiming that the cartwheel corner has been dumbed down at least partly ignores that it had been getting harder and that something had to be done if it was going to remain part of a red graded trail. It'd be lovely if trails could be maintained at a very exact level of challenge but that's just not possible. It's got to be done with the aim of keeping a trail within the spectrum of what's acceptable for its grade.

The maintenance on Magic Mushroom was started in spring last year, I think, because the trail had been hammered by the previous winter. It was disintegrating, some bits had standing water and other parts were getting very mushy. It couldn't be left like that. I would be very surprised though if any of the maintenance was carried out with the intention of making it easier than it was when it was originally constructed.

"and for the purpose of this thread is that not exactly the meaning of "dumbing down"?"

Making sustainable. Do you think for a second that the old trail would survive the traffic glentress gets? Of course it couldn't. It's not about "dumbing down", it's just repairs and preventative medicine. Even the heavily armoured trails get torn up fast enough, especially with knobbers skidding everywhere. It seems like you just have an issue with the reality of busy trail centres, they're never going to give you the fix you want- especially on a red route.

A wee example. Most of the way down Falla Brae, we spent a morning resurfacing and rerouting a wee corner, just below the car park. There was nothing hugely difficult about it but it had really bad braking bumps in the approach, because it had a fast run in and then people banged on the brakes. Now, the corner was opened up a little and made more approachable, and given a slight camber, not to make it easy but because otherwise we'd be back in there in 6 months digging it up again and fixing it again. So instead of spending the rest of time rebuilding braking bumps the trailbuilders changed the line slightly to allow more speed and better sightlines, and to remove the unneccesary hard braking. Now, you'd probably call that "sanitisation". I'd call it common sense, and good design.

Dumbing down is changing a trail just because it's too hard for the little kiddies. Trail maintenance is changing a trail because it's knackered and not as designed, or not working properly. Now I'll guiltily admit I did prefer the old knackered bit in Magic Mushroom, and the worn-out bit in Pie Run, but neither was supposed to be like that.

Just to go back a bit to talk about "motorway", fair play, it seems like our definition is just different. Guess we have to agree to disagree there. For me, a motorway trail would be... well, The Motorway at Fort William, which is just a complete absence of anything, basically a fire road with jumps on. If you're applying a definition common among DH racers for DH trails are you surprised I'm taking issue when you apply it to an XC red route?

Most of gt i realise is tame, but the beauty of the place is the variaty. Easy, hard, fast, slow can all be mixed in depending on what you feel like.
Oh and as much as super-g is a motorway now it has an awesome left hand berm in it about half way down...

Yeah, I agree 100% with the above.

Northwind - Yeah, I am surprised you took issue with it.
and if you'd ever cleared every one of those jumps on the Motorway at Ft William after 4mins+ of brutality you'd realise it is quite a test of both fitness and skill in laughable proportions in comparison to super G.

Chris - WOW!! are you about to publish a Phd on the subject or what? - appologies for my terrible grammar and composition earlier, this is how it should have read:

I'm not going to describe the entire section as it rides now, but you have to admit it's nothing like I just described? there just aren't half as many options. If that's not "dumbed down" then what is?

I'm well aware of all the points you and Northwind have made regarding trail building/grading etc. I'll freely admit I've never been a fan of any sort of trail grading or any of the politics/BS that goes along with running these type of trails, if I ride at a trail centre I'll happily ride a mix of every grade of trail and find fun lines I enjoy riding even on a green route. bear in mind tho I'm old enough to remember GT/inners before any official trail building back when people could make decisions based on common sense/ability rather than having to look at coloured signs.

"if I ride at a trail centre I'll happily ride a mix of every grade of trail and find fun lines I enjoy riding even on a green route"

That seems like a proper glentress attitude tbh... One of the best things about it.

Admittedly when I rode the motorway it wasn't after a race pace descent, that'd be hard to produce on an XC bike 😉 I think my average speed was approximately nothing. But I think you probably see where I'm coming from? The fact that it comes after a huge and brutal descent doesn't change that it's a fire road with jumps on.

If you are going to moan about it then you are not goin fast enough on the descents or do us a favour and dont go back,go ride somewhere else there are plenty of riders who still enjoy it.Better still get your spade out your arse and go help the trail fairys!