Q-
If you were in a quarry and could pick ANY 10 blocks of stone;
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what different heights would they be (and general size),
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how far apart would you place them, and
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in what particular pattern would you place them,
to service the widest possible range of Trials experience and skill levels, from beginner to World Champ?
Perhaps the emphasis should be intermediate skills with less opportunities for beginner and World Champs. 
I would be very interested to hear your suggestions and imaginative designs. If we build it we might even name it after its designer!
Something like the rock steps on a slope here at the Wilduni.com gallery. See picture 66 and videos 65, 64, and 63. With only 10 blocks of rock you’d have to do it on a smaller scale.
Okay, the way I see it, you want stuff for hopping up onto, grabs, gaps, and drops. I reckon if you have access to it you should use a couple of round wodden poles and a plank along with the rocks. That’ll give you much more variety.
Rock 1 - Maybe 30cm high and pretty flat on top, but sloped so that people don’t have to hop as high on one of the sides.
Rock 2 - Roughlly the same height and pretty flat on top so the intermediate people can gap to it successfully.
Rock 3 - 30cm or so on the top side (top of the picture) sloping up to 50cm on the side facing rocks 4 and 5. People can practise hopping on odd angles on it.
Rocks 4 and 5 - Anywhere between 30cm and 50cm high and reasonably bumpy and irregular on top for the intermediate to advanced to guys to gap around on. It would be good if one of them had a flat side to do grabs onto.
Rock 6 - 50cm high and pretty flat. The more advanced guys can gap from rock 1 and pedal grab on the closest side (which should be reasonably flat) if need be. I reckon that should be a pretty big gap for a good challenge.
Rock 7 - About 1m high so the advanced guys and girls can either grab onto it or jump all the way up.
The two circles are vertical cylindrical wooden poles that are solidly planted in the ground. I learnt fairly recently that it’s heaps of fun gapping between these things and it’s nice and technical. They’d both be about 1m high and have about a 10 - 15cm diameter each.
The last thing is the plank. It would be going from the ground up to that rock and people could work on their narrow plank riding a tiny bit. Maybe it could be longer and narrower than that.
That’s my design…now I’ve got the sudden urge to go out and buy some rocks and poles. 
It keeps telling me to check that the file if a GIF or JPG file which it is. I can’t attach the picture. What’s going on?
Andrew
…hopefully this time…
Building a Trials Obstacle
Thank you very much for your suggestions Andrew and John.
John - The Wilduni site is excellent and until you posted that I had not seen it before. The rock steps idea is very good but hard to make it cover a wide range of experience without having some gapping stones on flatter ground.
Andrew - I think we will go for something more along the lines of your plan. I’ll keep you informed. Until then has anyone else got any suggestions about the sort of patterns they would like to see built etc?
Simon Rolph
