Our paintball course was constructed years ago. It seems like every year we’re trying to add things to it to make it better. We’ve added a pavilion so that while you’re waiting to play you’re not in the sun, we’ve added paintball marker racks, tables, logos for each team, etc.

But one problem that we’ve had is that the course itself isn’t balanced.

So here’s what our old layout compared to the new one. I mapped out the course with gps, and then put markers down fr where the barricades were before. Then I resized the course and added routes using google maps.

The size of the course isn’t that much different, but the placement of the barricades and the direction of the trails.

I’m also planning on making the barricades portable. The idea being that in the future, we can try a different layout or the barricades can be brought in to be cleaned and stored in the winter.

We started moving all of the paintball barricades to the maintenance area to be cleaned before being re assembled and put together with supports. The cleaning is slow going though, since the old paint on the targets seems to act almost like dried glue. Normally, paintball paint will just rinse off with water, but it may be that some of this dried too much and the multiple layers keep it from coming off. If you get the pressure washer within an inch or two, it does come off, but at that distance you might as well just be peeling off pieces of wood too. Before summer starts, I’m sure we’ll bring them back in and actually finish cleaning them. But when we were building these, we were in a rush, because we had a group coming in 3 days.

Some of the barricades were split into two smaller ones, which should encourage people not too group up too much. Our course is small, so we want people to keep moving while they play, instead of just sitting in one spot.

Reassembled barricades with supports

We had to remove a lot of smaller trees and brush to make enough room for the wider trails. For now, the brush is just out of the way, but we’ll soon get some help to remove it all.

Update:

We recently had a group come in and play on the course. The “Y” barricades in the center weren’t in the place and so once you reached the outer edge, it was difficult to advance. So I have some ideas for some more barricade placements after I finish the center. I also just finished updating our paintball racks so that they’re now mounted to the beams of our paintball pavilion instead of using legs. They’re much more stable now, at a more reasonable height, and and level.

This is currently on going, so I’m sure there will be more update later.