Group Skill Levels Different - How to Handle?

My riding group, "The Local Citizens" always places the newbies in the middle of the pack, and we rotate which experienced member leads. That way, each strong member will always get a chance to stretch his or her legs, and sometimes...we'll take trail. Walkie-Talkies (Talk-abouts or hand-held radios) work really well here.

I don't recommend splitting the group. It will insult your newbies and probably turn them off. How would you have felt years ago if some all-star jus shuffled you off to the kids table?

waiting for others can be a good opportunity to work on trial exercises or logs, rocks... anything you find.... i agree not always easy

Yea I would break the group into two. Maybe have some experienced riders that want to teach, go with the newbies and help them out and the other experienced riders can go ride. You should also rotate experienced riders around so the same guy doesn't always have to teach or help the newbies. (unless he wants to)

I don't know, thats how I would do it. Everyone gets a fair chance. The Newbies get help and soon will become experienced, and everyone switches turns teaching and helping and soon...you will have a a nice riding group!

I ride with a small group of about 3 or 4, and I guess I am about the second strongest, and that's not saying much. I can tell you that being blown off the trail is kind of insulting. The strongest one in our group has gone up hill with his hands behind back, whistling some silly tune! All the while I am huffin and puffin, grinding up the hill at 4 mph and the last guy is pushing his bike up the hill.

In my situation, what we are going to do on the next ride is go somewhere pretty flat and smooth so that we can all enjoy it. You know the walkie-talkie thing isn't a bad idea for a larger group.

Stumbled onto a potential solution yesterday. Teaching a newbie and did 5 very slow, very easy miles and returned to the parking lot. The newbie had had enough and reached the point where he wasn't learning anymore and just wanted out of the woods. We brought him to the parking lot. The remaining two of us helped him load his bike, told him that he did great, sent him on his way and went right back into the woods for a quick spirited 5 mile sprint.
We didn't plan it this way, but in hindsight it worked out great. We were able to give lots of advice, the newb rode until he was shot, and we still got in our good fun faster paced ride without insulting him. Key is that we had more than one car at the trailhead. Just another option to consider.