If you’ve spent any time lingering around the parking lots and trailheads of the North Shore, you’ll know trail ratings are a viciously contested topic. The adage goes that a black on the shore is a double anywhere else, because the riding is bigger, steeper, and harder than anywhere else. But when I finally ride a double black on Fromme, I’m told that it’s surely only a single, because the riding on Cypress is bigger, steeper, and harder than anywhere else. Yada yada yada. There seems to be a great deal of fuss made over the reported difficulty of North Shore trails. I understand it too, considering the vast history of this place and the caveat that our plush enduro bikes might somewhat soften the ride, compared to the rigid bikes of yesterday. What I don’t understand are the trail ratings, so after a year of watching the locals haggle, and one ill-fated trip down Ladies Only, I’ve decided to make an inquiry of it.
The NSMBA provides a nifty “Mountain bike trail difficulty rating matrix,” which recommends trail ratings from “White circle” to “Pro Line.” The matrix justifies trail rating based on presumably objective data points, using phrases like “Sustained descending grade” and “Roller double – complex.” It isn’t just NSMBA either. IMBA directs us to a “Trail difficulty rating system” that resembles the matrix, with details like “Unavoidable obstacles 15 inches tall or less” on black diamond, very difficult trails. Both systems sort trails using specific criteria and render them in blunt, plain language.
The nifty wall of text in question. Photo: Recreation Sites and Trails BC.
In my opinion, this is a whole lot of bureaucratic foofaraw. I’m not pointing any fingers at trail organizations, because somebody has to claw through the red tape, and I’m endlessly grateful for their work. For administrators, trail ratings might serve to identify gaps in their development plan. Recently, adaptive mountain bike trail standards have helped produce more inclusive trail networks. I have few problems with the administrative premise behind trail ratings. My disillusionment comes more from the idea that a trail’s character can be contained within a neat, tidy, legally defensible language box.
There’s a bit in the Dead Poet’s Society where Robin Williams’ character John Keating describes how to rate a poem by graphing it along two axes, yielding a total area that represents the poem’s greatness. “Excrement!” Keating exclaims, then: “We’re not laying pipe, we’re talking about poetry.” Bear with me here. When we apply the language of building regulations to bike trails, we risk forgetting why we built these trails in the first place. When a jump exceeds a max height of 1.5 metres, the NSMBA considers it a black diamond feature, sure, but how does it feel to get your wheels that high off the ground? Can the trail rating matrix tell us that? I want to talk about the poetry of the trail and how ill-equipped we are to describe it. The matrix wants to talk about maximum average grades for laying pipe.
Still, I concede, trail ratings are often handy and useful things. For new riders easing their way into the sport, ratings serve as a sort of progression map. This makes sense, of course, just like skiing. You start on the greens and work your way up. They are also a helpful gauge of ability. I work at a ski shop, where I spend most days fitting rental boots onto kids’ feet. “How good are you?” I ask. “Blues? Greens? Some black diamonds?” What a strange alchemy, this language. A whole ski run, a mountain, years of practice, comes down to a couple words: “Mostly blues, but the occasional black.” Forgive me for briefly dipping into the world of ski slope ratings. Snow is my trade and first love, and I find the ski hill system to be generally less opaque than mountain biking. A more apt comparison would be the wild west of terrain park features—I’ve hit some astonishingly scary “medium” jumps.
I’m not entirely sure how to fit this into the matrix.
When I first arrived on the Shore, I rode Expresso (classic single black) only to be told by Jake at the shop that it’s really definitely a blue. Bollocks. I went to Cypress to ride Morgies and Mystery DH (serious single black) and holy hell I could barely hold on. Jake at the shop later told me he doesn’t ride Cypress because the ratings are comically sandbagged. Months after, I rode Bookwus (janky double black). It was weird and hellacious, but I made it down and managed to have a bit of fun. A couple more under my belt and I thought maybe I’d figured out this whole Shore double black thing, so I planned to ride Ladies Only (proper double black). A guy in the parking lot told me it’s really probably a single like Pipeline, but my friend Alix rode Pipeline, which she felt should be a double because it was way harder than Expresso. But Jake at the shop said, and a guy on the trail said, and so on and so forth. Can you see where I start to get confused?
The top of Ladies Only is good, fun, technical riding. As one of the first major trails on Fromme, the building calls back to some earlier, perhaps more permissive techniques. I am unsure whether IMBA has guidelines for the use of poured concrete in trail building. Nonetheless, I had a blast on the top and only heel-toed my way through one section. The trail forks near the bottom, offering an easier black alternative to the historically ridiculous exit. I had been forewarned about this by a guy at the top of 7th secret, who advised I take the right fork, the easier one, considering how misty and greasy the hillside was that day.
Feeling supremely overconfident, I went left. The half I rode was foolish. The walk down the rest was spooky enough. The trail is indeed ridiculous, maybe historically so: a gamble of roots and rocks and holes, broken up by sudden kinks and turns-that-aren’t-turns. I should have listened to my elders, especially the one who floated past me halfway down 7th on a mysteriously quiet steel hardtail. If that guy won’t go left on a wet day, I sure as hell shouldn’t. But I did, and when the trail continued into Lower Ladies Only, I dove in with gusto. How much worse can it get?
The answer, folks, is plenty. It can get plenty worse. I was in well over my head. I was alone. I didn’t feel great on the bike. Everything was wet. I ended up on the wrong side of Fromme and had a hike-a-bike adventure upstream on the Baden Powell. Lower Ladies Only is an unrelenting beast of a trail, and it will kick you well after you’re down.
“Very frequent embedded trail obstacles.” Photo: Deniz Merdano.
What left me stymied at the end of the day was that this whole experience might be whittled down into one concise double black trail rating. If I agree that the top half is a double, does that make the bottom a pro line? Or if the top half isn’t really a double, does that make Pipeline a blue, and Expresso a green? Once again, it all falls apart. But what if Jake at the shop and steel-hardtail-guy and my friend Alix and some dog on the internet all say otherwise? What then?
After all this throat clearing and waffling on the benefits or pitfalls of a criteria-based trail rating system, you may ask what I really think about trail ratings. I’ll tell you, clear as mud, that I think it’s all a bunch of useful bogus.
Who cares that a black on the Shore is far harder than, say, a double black in Tennessee. Of course it is! Maybe your favourite black trail has been uprated to a double, and you vehemently disagree. Stuff it! The trail’s still there, isn’t it? And if you find yourself on something big and steep and scary, certain you made a wrong turn somewhere, it is no shame to walk. The humility is good for the soul.
Ratings are a useful administrative structure for builders and riders alike, and they provide a modicum of consistent guidance. Beyond that, I think we’d all be better off if we spent more time riding bikes with our friends and less time haggling over little laminated placards nailed to signposts in the woods. They’re just laminated placards, after all, and in the trails below there’s an entire world waiting for your wheels. Remember, we’re not laying pipe, we’re talking about poetry.
