Parks contain trails of varying difficulty, making it easy to find yourself on a trail that does not suit your capability. To make riding more enjoyable, there are between one and four routes recommended for each park in this guide which contain trails of roughly the same difficulty. Routes are consistently named as follows:
- 1000 Footer – Generally the easier route in the park with about 1000 feet of total climb.
- The Medium Ride – A good route for the average rider.
- The Big Ride – Generally a much longer, technically challenging route with significant climb.
Some parks have one or two of the above routes, some have all three. A few of the parks also have these types of routes:
- Flat Ride
- Easy Ride – Low technical difficulty and much less than 1000 feet of climb.
- Challenge Ride – An extremely difficult ride that should be attempted only by the most physically fit and experienced riders, usually spanning multiple parks.
Difficulty ratings are based on a modified International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA) trail rating system that is similar to the rating system used for skiing:
The modifications make the rating system more specific and add a 1 through 10 numeric rating for both technical difficulty and steepness of the trail. Every route is also rated on each of the four characteristics of:
- Technical difficulty,
- Steepness (grade),
- Total round trip length,
- Total feet of climb
The overall difficulty rating is based on the highest level of difficulty found in any of the four characteristics, hence it is possible for a route to be black diamond because of any one of the characteristics. For example, a trail could be black diamond because it is very steep, even though it is short, not technically difficult, and the total climb is under 1000 feet. The four factors are also weighted together to derive an overall numeric difficulty score. For details of the IMBA rating system and of the characteristics of each rating level, click the button below: