Track grades

This brings up the thorny question... What is a track? I gather North Americans expect a track to be something that is developed to reasonably high standard and are suprised at some of the things we call tracks. However there was nothing that I saw in Switerland that had had much maintenance. They more looked like sheep tracks which had had many years of foot traffic that had caused them to be quite distinct. Then again many tracks are different in different places. The Mangamate Valley in the Whirinaki is a wide benched track at one point and a stream bash a bit further on. I quite like the system you have at the moment of a grading plus a field to provide a warning of specific dangers. I would grade it to what the track looks like...eg. Good track - Good benched track Tramping Track - Track padded on ground, frequent markers. Marked Route - Light pad or overgrown, occasional markers. Route only - No track, route primarily follows geographic feature (ridge or stream)

I often find it confusing trying to categorise specific tracks from one end to another. I can think of a few obvious popular ones locally (Holdsworth-Jumbo loop, Southern Crossing, any Great Walk, etc), but that's about it. Most times I've been tramping have been max-and-match occasions where we made up routes based on knowledge of maintained bits of tracks and routes in an area, combined with whatever road-ends and points in the middle were most convenient or desirable to reach at the time. I've walked on much of the Tararua Southern Crossing, but never all at once from start to finish. The "tracks" feature is more about suggested plans, isn't it? In which case they'll often overlap, sometimes by quite a lot. Is that how people see it?

To me, "tracks" are about both well-known named routes (Routeburn) plus ideas you think are worth sharing. If you have an interesting mix and match route, and you'd recommend it to others then that sounds suitable. Of course you might just want to say how long and why its good, then point elsewhere for the descriptions of the segments rather than repeating everything. On grading, I would generally grade a track based on the most challenging portion. If it's mostly easy but has a hard bit then it's hard. However, I think in future I'll put more effort into the Grade Details box.