Changelog

5.0 February 2025 Release (full article here)

Major release this time, we’ve added many tweaks here and there and most notably added more guidelines for signage.

  • Improved goals and guiding principles page to better explain the goals of ITRS
  • New page to better explain the ITRS Terminology and building blocks to align with the ITRS Trail Rating app
  • Expanded ITRS approximate comparison with other trail rating systems
  • Added reading examples of ITRS based terrain signage
  • Added ITF (Intrinsic Trail Features) and TTF (Technical Trail Features) page to better explain ITRS Terminology and building blocks to align with the ITRS Trail Rating app
  • Added in depth explanation for the technical specification (now with drawings)
  • Added Wallrides rating guidelines in the Technical Difficulty chart
  • Minor tweaks to some values in the Technical Difficulty chart
  • Added guidelines for trail signage with examples of suggested usage with minimalistic and complete versions
  • Added guidelines to provide whole trail technical ratings (with shares of technical difficulty in percent of the trail length)
  • Updated the possible signage archetypes
  • Updated route signage guidelines with more examples
  • Updated graphics package
  • The Nutshell now also includes Spanish

4.4 May 2024 Release
  • Refined logic to determine the overall technical difficulty rating of a route: The percentage of a route that can be of higher technical difficulty than given in the ITRS route pie was increased to 5%, but none of the harder trail segments can be longer than 500 m.
  • Adaptations and refinements in trail specification of technical difficulty (surface types, maximum grade, average grade, corner radii, terminology for trail width, ). All in a way that previous ratings would not get harder, but in future could in some cases be rated easier.
  • Refined definition of water supply ratings within wilderness factor to be more objective
  • Updated description of rescue options ratings within wilderness factor to be more objective
  • Included dangerous plants under dangerous wildlife within wilderness factor
  • Norway and Australia added to the system comparison
  • Correction of typos
  • Updated endurance level calculator: It now shows how close the route is to the next higher level to support a manual judgment if one should rate the route higher in case, e.g., the climbs are not on a road but on technical trails.
  • ITRS-Nutshell: Correction of typos in French version

4.3 March 2024 Release
  • Correction of typos and small adaptations

4.2.1 January 2024 Release
  • Correction of typos in the full document, biker’s document not affected.

4.2 December 2023 Release (full article here)
  • Added a fifth level in the Endurance factor,
  • better clarified relationship between Endurance factor and E-Bikes,
  • tweaked some values in the ITRS technical difficulty Technical specification of the difficulty levels chart,
  • refined the short description of tech levels for bikers & added trail examples,
  • added a reading example of the ITRS “route pie”,
  • added trail structure terminology page,
  • revised endurance formula for the addition of 5th level,
  • added clarifications and important comments on exposure ratings,
  • added important considerations for rating the wilderness factor,
  • introduced a wording to differentiate with in one tech level,
  • added page to better explain possible signage archetypes,
  • added example of ITRS Implementation in the Lake Garda area in Trentino (Italy) designed by Max2 GmbH,
  • updated ITRS Team contacts,
  • updated the acknowledgements page,
  • correction of typos.

4.1.2 March 2023 Release
  • Added color blind feature in pie chart visualisation,
  • tweaked some values in the ITRS technical difficulty Technical specification of the difficulty levels chart,
  • added translations in French, German & Italian of key ITRS aspects,
  • updated the “Goals & guiding principles of the ITRS”,
  • correction of typos,
  • updated the acknowledgements page.

3.21 May 2022 Release

This was the first public release of ITRS.