Issue link: http://trailridermagazine.uberflip.com/i/1545994
August 2026 21 Trail Tales Trail Tales By Chris Burton By Chris Burton X Marks The Spot X Marks The Spot So I was thinking about an o en overlooked off- road topic: Danger markers. Used to denote a "High Skill Area", a dangerous obstacle, or just a transi on from a high-speed sec on to a much ghter trail, as a many- me Trail Boss I tend to obsess over them. Most events use X's, some use down arrows. An old mentor once told me that there should be one X for every gear the rider would need to downshi , but for guys like me who rarely venture past third gear that's kind of subjec ve. Clubs use Danger markers lots of different ways; produc ve uses like at the top of a steep down- hill (wouldn't want people doing a Doug Henry Budd's Creek-style launch), or just to decorate the big stump or log they were too lazy to remove. My favorite is the head-high tree limb X, where instead of a li le saw work the club requires you to grind your helmet on your gas tank to avoid being decap- itated. While most of the me a single X on each side of the trail will do the trick, some clubs will employ more. If there's three or more X's you can be confident the trail boss crashed there. My best X story comes from a pre-enduro arrowing session in prepara on for the Fools Gold Enduro near Georgetown, CA. I had the honor of work- ing with a salty crew of former AMA District 36 A Senior Class champions Rick and Tom Guidice, and Cliff Glidden. We were se ng a mean pace leap-frogging from corner to corner when I hit a dark wet spot in the clay coming into a fast corner. Trac on went from hero-to-zero instantaneously. Only those who ride clay understand how slick it can get at just the right (wrong?) moisture level. I slid deep into a trailside bush sideways at speed. Before I could count the limbs and develop an exit strategy Rick and his KTM hit the same patch and landed on me in the bush. We could hear his broth- er Tom ripping towards us and yelled to warn him but before you know it all three of us were in the "crash bush". Luckily Cliff had seen Tom leave the trail and scrubbed enough speed to merely low-side when he hit The Spot. For half an hour we pulled bikes and bodies out of the bush, laughing but concerned what would happen when 300+ adren- aline-fueled enduro riders came through there a couple of days later. We envisioned a horrific pileup like the ones you see on icy winter highways on the Weather Channel. We couldn't re-route the trail as Forest Service rules and our Special Use Permit pro- hibited it. We thought about a flag man but feared that might make things worse. As we discussed the ma er that night at the club campfire over some Southern Comfort, things got a li le silly and the formal name of the loca on ini ally became The Wet Spot. Taking note of the last names of most of its vic ms, that eventually morphed into the G Spot. The next day we went back out and although the spot was a bit drier, we deployed approximately thirty X's to warn the riders of the danger. Of course, by race day it was bone-dry and a er the event several riders asked us what the deal was with all those X's. "Well, it's a long story…".