Track grades

i recall someone overseas elling me about a scale thats widely used, i cant recall what its called, something like a 1 to 5 roughly, one is a benched track like a great walk. 2 is some roots and mud getting rough underfoot. moderate slipes. no climbing required. you get to three, it gets steep in sections you have to ue your hands sometimes. 4 you're climbing with your hands a fair bit, reasonable risk of injury if you fall . 5 you're mountain cimbing, you fall you die.......

aussie track grading system http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/recreation-and-tourism/australian-walking-track-grading-system

"The aim of the Australian Walking Track Grading System is to encourage people who are not regular or confident bushwalkers to get out there and give it a go. It is specifically designed to reassure entry level walkers, particularly the disabled or people walking with children, that a particular track is suitable for their skill level. Under the new system, walking trails are graded on a difficulty scale from grades one to five. •Grade One is suitable for the disabled with assistance •Grade Two is suitable for families with young children •Grade Three is recommended for people with some bushwalking experience •Grade Four is recommended for experienced bushwalkers, and •Grade Five is recommended for very experienced bushwalkers" Not a bad place to start. That would make the Catchpool 5 mile track a 2 and something like the Bara track to Mitre Flats a 3 to 4. Do we need to go one step furthur and havve a summer and winter rating or is that too complicated. Make it to simple and it becomes foolproof and only fools will use it Make it too hard and no one will be able to work it out so no one will use it.

Hi waynowski, the 1 through 5 values you mention are basically in line with the 5-point easy-hard scale in use here. However, the Australian system is about one grade out of line (we don't have anything here corresponding to disabled access). I will have a play around with the Excel tool available at that URL and see what happens. Geeves, regarding summer/winter conditions: there is currently a grade notes field which can cover this. This approach makes it simple, and allows you to make important comments such as highlighting avalanche risk. However, a winter grade would be pretty easy to implement. Would people use it? It might help to reinforce that say a track like the Routeburn is way different in winter than in summer.

There's an Irish system, probably also with similar things in many other places, which splits grades between a couple of axes. For that place at least, the two relevant aspects are how nicely the track is graded (compared with scrambling over rocks, etc), and how steep/obvious the hilly parts are. In NZ there may be room for another axis or two in there somewhere.

keep it simple. It works for the irish

I like the idea of keeping it simple. But I've also thought it could be helpful to split apart the "fitness" factor from the "tramping experience" factor. For example some Great Walks require no experience (in route finding, negotiating difficult terrain underfoot etc) but some degree of fitness.

Fitness would be length of day, altitude gains, right? Technicality would be the roughness of track, hazards, navigation, etc, right? It might be worth marking up a few tracks like this and seeing how it looks.

Matthew, here is one possible 5-level grading system (loosly based on the Australian grading system) http://tramper.co.nz/?8245 (I wanted to upload it as a pdf but couldn't see where to do it - you can delete it when you have a copy)