The Whaka Forest Grading System
Grade 1: Easy, suitable for beginners
Grade 2: Easy and fun with gentle slopes and some easy trail features
Grade 3: Intermediate skills required, some steep slopes and exposed roots and small rollable drops
Grade 4: Advanced, some challenging sections including steep sections and some exposure to steep edges, high skill required.
Grade 5: Expert skill needed, extremely technically challenging sections which are unavoidable, drops, and combinations of challenging camber, roots and drops to be negotiated
Grade 6: Extreme downhill / freerdie trails, expert skills required to ride these trails
The Trailforks Interactive Trail Map Grading System
Just to slightly complicate things, we have decided to include the very good Trailforks interactive trail map. It is the most up-to-date and detailed resource we can find, and re-inventing the wheel in this case would be a dumb waste of riderotorua staff time and energy. However, the Trailforks uses a slightly different grading system, defining trail difficulty with colours/symbols instead of numbers. Broadly it translates like this:
Whaka Grade 1 = Trailforks White
Whaka Grade 2 = Trailforks Green
Whaka Grade 3 = Trailforks Blue
Whaka Grade 4 = Trailforks Black
Whaka Grade 5 = Trailforks Double Black Diamond
Whaka Grade 6 = Trailforks Proline