Anyone can draw a trail. Making one that survives is the trick.
Draw a line across a hillside and Trailbaker tells you what the first big rain would do to it — where water would gather, where the tread would wash into a gully, and how hard the thing would be to ride.
What the Lab actually checks
Not opinions. These are the measurements a trail crew takes with a clinometer and a length of string, done for you every two metres.
Will it drain?
A trail that holds water dies. The Lab finds every stretch running too close to straight down the hill, and every long descent with no low point where water can leave.
Will it stay put?
The half rule: a trail must never be steeper than half the hillside it crosses. Break it and water coming down the slope turns onto the tread instead of over it.
How hard is it?
Grade, corner radius and the features you build all feed a green, blue or black rating — worked out the way a real trail gets graded, by the hardest thing you cannot ride around.
How to use it
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Read the contours
Lines close together mean steep ground. Lines far apart mean gentle. Everything else follows from that.
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Drop some points
Click across the hill. Traverse the slope rather than charging down it, and watch the grade in the scorecard.
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Fix what turns red
Red and orange stretches are problems. Drag the points until they disappear.
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Then make it fun
Add berms, rollers and jumps. Each one tells you whether the spot you picked actually suits it.
One thing before you dig
Building on land without permission gets trails bulldozed and gets riders banned from places we would rather keep. If you want to build something real, join a local club and go through them — they already have the land access, the tools and people who know the dirt. More on that here.