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[RC] Marking trails at night - Alissa CowanI've been blessed with awesome trail bosses for my rides, and this is what I've learned from them about marking a night trail:We marked our AM and PM trail (the same trail, ridden a couple times over the course of the ride, when it was dark - seems to give the riders a nice sense of security. Plus you can't see anything anyway, so you have no idea that you're "seeing" the same stuff again and again...) with WHITE ribbons. Natural reflective capabilities there with any ambient light. And my super smart trail folks also taped reflective tape on the bottom of all the white ribbons (use the self-stick reflective tape) to add extra reflective capabilities. Definitely something you want to start many months in advance, and then re-use that white ribbons for your next ride. In areas where we had no trees, we planted posts (just cheap tomato stake kind of things) and stapled a white plastic plate on the stake. Hang a glow bar at the top, so it shines against the white plastic plate. Works great. Can put directional arrows on the plate and they can be read easily. Definitely use 6 inch glow bars. Green works well. And we used blue to mark any kind of hazard - be it a turn, a ditch to avoid, or a water crossing. Any time a rider saw blue they knew to look out for SOMETHING. We tried, one year, the little blinky lights that you can also get from glow bar places. Battery operated. I think they were well received by riders, as well. Those were for bigger hazards - bridge crossing, etc. We're not allowed to use lime where we host our ride, so we use the snot out of our glow bars and ribbons. For a 100 mile ride, with about 30 miles of it marked for night time riding, we ordered 800 glow bars. And I don't believe we had any left over! Clinic is a great idea. I hope it goes well! Have fun with it, and collect all the info we send you - we'll ask you for it later. Maybe we'll steal your idea and do something similar here in Maryland. Fun! Alissa =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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