I don’t say this much but @JTW that was very well said I haven’t had much time to respond till now so I’ll expound upon your very good points and add a few.
It was good and anytime something grows this quickly there are going to be growing pains. Richard can’t be expected to bear the burden of this thing all by himself. It’s also something he is and should be very proud of. Getting as large as it’s getting there could/should be some delegation of responsibilities and expectation that you are going to get your duties done. Final decision needs to be Richard’s, its his baby but it’s a lot to bear solo.
Getting the ladies involved for the social aspects is a great idea, let’s face it they are better at that than we are. Give us a creek, cold beverage, and a fire and we can talk about tie rods and tires for hours, but the niceties are appreciated especially by our better halves.
We ran into several groups that were under/over prepped, when the old hats talk we leave out all the basic needs because we’ve been before. I saw questions about the cabins because RRB didn’t have what was included with each cabin clearly listed. Help with trail prep is good I have my way of prepping food for a trip that crosses lunch/dinner with snacks in between, but @Cuoutdoors has the best trail lunch’s/dinners I’ve smelled. I’m copying his setup for next year. Standing there eating my cold sandwich was less appealing after smelling the meal he cooked out of a similar sized amount of space.
The group we ran into going down WidowMaker were extremely hesitant to go down but with assurances of what to expect were more than happy to follow and did very well. (we old hats might have forgotten to mention skids because it was just a given for us but I did try to go very slowly and lead them down a good line to make it easier on them and their machines) If more knew what to expect on the trails it would be easier to prepare.
Some trails are easy for the most part but may have a few more difficult spots along it that upgrade the whole trail, some are just a long difficult trail.
The trails also change with weather in the weeks leading up to it. @jackals trail updates were invaluable. Landslides can turn a green trail to a blue, red, or some even to a double black.
I have 500GB of video I can put together some LONG trail videos to better show average trails by difficulty. Most of them are more mild with a few tough spots. I remember my first takeover a few spots that now don’t even make me blink had me very hesitant. We joke about you rolling all the time @JTW and harass each other about breaking stuff but most of the more extreme riders damage on past trips, were not from the main trail or bypasses but were from trying the more/most difficult lines, but there are very few spots that can really get you into any kind of trouble on the blue trails (weather damage not withstanding) and even on most of the red trails a novice with a somewhat prepared machine would be fine. Knowing what to ACTUALLY expect will give a lot of people more confidence. There is a plethora of riders with experience off-road; these guys WILL NOT leave you stuck, stranded, or broken and will help you get through, over, or past an obstacle. Even if you are a complete stranger in a new Jeep or 70’s era Grand Marquis.
Communication was BETTER this year but HAM radios with dedicated group of channels with a squelch tone would be great, you can set 5-10 channels that no one else up there can be heard on your radio except your group with those channels programmed and you can set a channel for each riding group. That way everyone else in the trail system isn’t breaking in and making you respond. You know if you hear the radio it’s your group. The Baofengs can be had for $25-$50 for a setup handheld a simple spreadsheet or CSV file can be copied and pasted into the programming software for the radios.
I think through the year some trail tutorials could be made to help people with proper winch use, trail etiquette, radio use, line choice etc...
Practice makes perfect and text only goes so far, it’s easy to demonstrate for those who are visual learners. Pain to make a video or take enough photos and detail what is going on, but it might be very helpful for some of the newer guys though.
