Good luck wearing GT trails down to bedrock, you’re going to need to skid your way through several feet of dirt in most places and then what you’ve got isn’t a trail, it’s a ditch full of water. The average glentress trail gets dug down 1-2 feet down to a base of mineral soil then built back up, but it’s incredibly rare we find bedrock, we have to do the next best thing and build our own substrate. Please don’t skid on them, it genuinely does **** them up and every day we spend fixing a shagged out trail, is a day we can’t spend doing something new and cool. (while I’m at it, please don’t shortcut or ride “faster lines” off the trail, it’s all damage)
Also, there is the trail lifecycle… Generally, we don’t like brand new trails, they’re smooth and boring, right? But the problem is, you can’t get a worn-in trailcentre trail without first having a brand new boring trail then riding it in. (*) People see a new wackerplated trail and think that’s a finished article but it’s not, it’s just the last part of the build- the finished trail comes much later.
So yes wheel pressure is needed to get the trails through to that nice evolved state, but skidding doesn’t do that- it rips it up, it doesn’t wear it in. And once you reach the “mature” trail, you want that to last as long as is possible, because once it gets to the shagged out stage, it needs dug up and rebuilt and then everyone complains about “BMX trails” again.
So it’s counterintuitive but wearing out trails fast doesn’t give you nicely worn trails, it actually gives you more smooth BMX trails more of the time.
(*OK, there is an alternative which is to build looser in the first place, but this is a short-term option, and Glentress is I think still the most ridden trailcentre in the UK so trails have to last through rain and shine for several years or they’re just not viable)