New Feature: Trailforks Integration at the park level

V-Dub

Well-Known Member
I do and don't agree. We were trying to figure out where to ride Saturday and Jungle came up, but D said it was apparently muddy (IG posts) so I text DVW and ask about Wawayanda. He says it's good and he'll be there after 12 and we end up riding with him a bit. I would have assumed both parks would have been fine but I was wrong. At the same time, I know enough people to ask. Probably not a lot of people can say the same.

That said, I think this is an issue for 4-8 weeks a year then once mid-April gets going we all forget about it.

So I guess basically 4-8 weeks a year we should just have a thread called Spring Trail Conditions: Ask Dave
The thing is it's not 4 - 8 weeks a year the weather and frozen, muddy, icy, snow slush, crappy damn conditions start around Thanksgiving.
So people could be(should be) checking conditions for much longer.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
Shrink the column width for the lastest post on the right. Maybe that gives you the space?



The Heathcote-Mapleton status just throws me off...

i don't have control of everything because embedded scripts - can turn on horizontal scrolling(?)
and/or increase the sidebar width, will play a bit.
 

Kaleidopete

Well-Known Member
So I signed up for Trailforks, just to be able to comment on things. My first attempt at anything was to add a trail to Wawayanda.
I did it and I saw a message saying "conformation" or something like that.It seemed to go along with no hitch, but I don't see the trail listed either.
Has anyone here done this before ? What now, just wait? I can't even find it anymore. Duh...
To reply to my own question, yes, I was able to add a new trail to Wawayanda.
The confirmation part took two days, for trailforks to confirm and add my new trail.
I received an email stating it was added. Now we all know.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
Trailforks is all about crowdsourcing. Each and everyone of you can add trails, trail status and reports. New trails go through a review process. Someone, anyone needs to confirm or reject them before they're live. You can add trail conditions, dry. wet, muddy etc to each trail. Same with status, green open, yellow caution, orange caution red closed. The easiest way to do this is to link your Strava account, then after each ride, you can get an email asking for a trail report on conditions.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
Linking your Strava account doesn’t fly for auto updates. You have to pick a default bike which needs to be a bike you don’t want to auto upload (road bike). Otherwise every road ride gets uploaded which I prefer not to do. So I have to manually import from TF sporadically and that never prompts for conditions updates.

Have not come up with a workaround on this yet other than turning off auto update and manually uploading.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
Linking your Strava account doesn’t fly for auto updates. You have to pick a default bike which needs to be a bike you don’t want to auto upload (road bike). Otherwise every road ride gets uploaded which I prefer not to do. So I have to manually import from TF sporadically and that never prompts for conditions updates.

Have not come up with a workaround on this yet other than turning off auto update and manually uploading.

Not sure if this helps-Exclude Strava Activities from my Road Bike

Also you made have to change settings-notification in the Trailforks app for email notification, and depending on your phone allowing the application itself to show notifications
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's

I know about that feature, but the problem is when it auto-uploads you have to set a default bike. Mine is currently the road bike. That gives me 2 choices:

1. I default to road bike, nothing loads automatically, I have to manually upload
2. I default to mountain bike, everything loads, I have to go delete rides from TF

Being that humans are lazy by nature, and I am a human, neither option is great for me.

Ideally I could set the bike on the Garmin and that would solve the issue. Not sure if that's possible. I think if I go to Strava immediately after the ride and change the bike, it works. But me being human, I'm lazy and rarely do that.

I generally go back to TF after the fact and import new rides, and that does not trigger anything. I do not know how to create a trail report from scratch or from a ride I bulk imported. That would also be a possible solution.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
you could also do it from the app at anytime by clicking the yellow button-write report. I usually only do this when I come across something a maintainer will have to fix, like a tree down blocking the trail.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
To reply to my own question, yes, I was able to add a new trail to Wawayanda.
The confirmation part took two days, for trailforks to confirm and add my new trail.
I received an email stating it was added. Now we all know.
I get the requests to confirm (or reject) new trails. Sometimes it takes me awhile. But anybody can confirm it, it just might take two other people I think.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
i don't have control of everything because embedded scripts - can turn on horizontal scrolling(?)
and/or increase the sidebar width, will play a bit.
When you look in the code there's a width and height setting in pixels. You can change that to how you like. I usually change the width to 100%, so it adjusts from pc's to phones automatically.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
You are on point that "we" need to take control of the TF data if we are going to use it.
I'm on board with @JimN, identifying people that will take responsibility by park, and post up conditions regularly,
based on their local experience. TF can designate "official" reporters, and the widget can filter on their feedback.

OTOH - I like @Norms 4 point scale at the park level, with the following changes to the legend.

? Green - go - usual wet spot rules apply
? Yellow - there are muddy zones or Freeze/thaw (split conditions, know the park)
? Red - it is a shit show
?‍☠️ Black - Closed

With a little more effort, we might even generate a map of the more resilient areas/trails. both a good and bad idea.
That's what status is in TF
1583605026825.png
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
Trailforks essentially has the same four options:

Clear/Green
Minor Issue/Yellow
Significant Issue/Amber
Closed/Red

But as it's been said, that's per trail, not per park, and updating the status of every trail is a huge pain. This is why I suggested picking a single trail and using that as a barometer for the entire park. No matter which system you pick, it comes down to someone being responsible for keeping the conditions updated.



Leaving comments on specific trails saying that they are generally more resilient to rain is a good idea. Some of the trails out in Sedona and Hurricane/St George have this, generally because when it rains out there, pretty much everything turns to shit.
Trails can be marked wet weather friendly and in TF, you just toggle that button and only wet weather friendly trails show
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
Check out the know before you go video at jorba.org. Using the trailforks app you can check status, conditions and find wet weather friendly trails in less that 30 seconds.
 

Bleeder

JORBA:President
This is why I suggested having 1-3 locals for each park that are responsible for updating conditions. I'm sure the Six Mile locals could update the status of the trails most of the time without going there to look.

If anyone wants to be a trail forks admin for their local park, have them contact me and I'll set them up.
 

Patrick

Overthinking the draft from the basement already
Staff member
If anyone wants to be a trail forks admin for their local park, have them contact me and I'll set them up.

I can set the reports to 'official only" which would reduce the clutter.

Let's get some people going and I'll add their Park.
 

Robin

Well-Known Member
When I save my ride from my Garmin 820 I can choose “mountain” and when it syncs with Garmin Connect and Strava, it also connects with Trailforks. My road rides go to TF but I only get an email asking to add conditions for mtb.
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
When I save my ride from my Garmin 820 I can choose “mountain” and when it syncs with Garmin Connect and Strava, it also connects with Trailforks. My road rides go to TF but I only get an email asking to add conditions for mtb.

So how do the rides show up on your ride log that are non-MTB?
 

Norm

Mayor McCheese
Team MTBNJ Halter's
They show up in my ride log but I don't get a notification to update trail conditions/ignore it.

But they're not...mountain bike rides. The fabric of existence is torn.

Please have Lance make a video to address this.
 
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