Pocahontas Single Track Trail Alerts
There's nothing more upsetting to a lot of riders than driving all the way to the park only to find that the singletrack is all mudded out by rain or snow. And there's nothing more harmful to our trails (short of a forest fire, that is) than having folks ride trails that really need a couple of days to dry out. Because tires tend to make holes where water has collected deeper, they cause problems weeks or even months later and draw resources away from building or improving trails. One day's riding can cause an entire season of problems.
To help riders know when they should plan to ride fire roads instead of singletrack, we have an automated system to let riders know what conditions are like on the trails.
There are five possible alert levels:
If you manage trails or a trail-related web site outside Pocahontas, please feel free to add alerts to your site using the following code:
<iframe src="http://www.canarypartners.com/fopsp/widget.php?city=Midlothian&state=VA&bg=F8F8F8&fr=1&amt=1&delay=1" width="300" height="420" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
To customize it to your location and web site, you can set the following parameters which are added to the URL:
You can also add a widget-sampler which displays all of the alerts so users can understand them. To do this, add the following code to your site:
<iframe id="trailFrame" src="http://www.canarypartners.com/fopsp/widget_sampler.php?city=Richmond&state=VA&bg='f8f8f8'&fr=1" width="900" height="1100" frameborder="0" scrolling="yes"></iframe>
You can use all of the customization variables on this script as well.
Here's what the alerts look like:
To help riders know when they should plan to ride fire roads instead of singletrack, we have an automated system to let riders know what conditions are like on the trails.
There are five possible alert levels:
- Good = Go Rip some trails!
- Slippery = We've had some rain and the trails will be fine but watch out for slippery roots.
- Icy = Cold temperatures or snow make for icy conditions but trails are open
- Muddy & Slippery = A good day to get in some high speed runs on the fire roads.
- No Data - We don't have enough data so just be careful and, if you get to the park and conditions are bad, please switch to fire roads and save the trails.
If you manage trails or a trail-related web site outside Pocahontas, please feel free to add alerts to your site using the following code:
<iframe src="http://www.canarypartners.com/fopsp/widget.php?city=Midlothian&state=VA&bg=F8F8F8&fr=1&amt=1&delay=1" width="300" height="420" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
To customize it to your location and web site, you can set the following parameters which are added to the URL:
- To set it up for your trails, set city to your target city and state to VA. Be aware that all locales will work but some (e.g. chesterfield, chester, etc.) don't record accurate rainfall so it will always seem bright and sunny.
- the fire roads indicator: "fr" If "fr" is set to 1, when the singletrack trails are closed, a line will be added indicating that fire roads are open for riding. If you don't have fire roads, either exclude the variable or set it to 0 (zero).
- the rain/snow trigger amount in inches (default is 1") - you can set it to any number you like. A 1 means that, for every inch of rain, the trails will be posted as restricted for the number of days set in the delay (see next bullet). The system closes trails for 24 hours per inch of rain (which means it will indicate muddy or slippery for short periods after a brief but heavy rain)
- bg = background color (so you can match your context) - this takes a RGB Hex code without the leading '#' e.g. on our site we use 'f8f8f8' to get a light gray, default is white.
- tc = text color - same rules as bg will set all text except the "condition" text to the selected color, default is black
- cc = condition color - default is red ('ff0000')
- wulogo = this controls whether you get a white or black weather underground logo. set wulogo =1 for a white logo if you have a dark background. The default is black. This logo is required under the data licensing terms.
You can also add a widget-sampler which displays all of the alerts so users can understand them. To do this, add the following code to your site:
<iframe id="trailFrame" src="http://www.canarypartners.com/fopsp/widget_sampler.php?city=Richmond&state=VA&bg='f8f8f8'&fr=1" width="900" height="1100" frameborder="0" scrolling="yes"></iframe>
You can use all of the customization variables on this script as well.
Here's what the alerts look like:
