We use 6", 12-hour green for marking trail,
and we have known them to glow for days. It would depend on the weather
and temperature, I'm sure. I attended a ride some 25 years ago, and they
put glow bars inside plastic milk bottles. That makes a wonderful lantern,
and you can set them alongside the trail. Start having your friends
collect milk bottles, and be sure they rinse them out before the milk residue
sours. Yuck!
We use red for "warning" - large hole,
overhanging tree branch, etc. We don't have to mark water
locations.
For marking trail, get the 6 inch, not the cheaper smaller 4 inch, the
smaller ones don't last as long. Green was definitely the brightest,
their pink was not as bright as I would have expected. All were still
visible from sundown to sunup though. I had a green sample one still
producing a faint glow more than 24 hours later. USE A DIFFERENT COLOR
FOR MARKING WATER. Even in the open NV desert we had at least 2 riders
tell me they didn't see the troughs, they did see about a million glowbars but
the troughs were on a turn to a different trail and they thought we had just
marked the turn really well. And I have this suspicion that we as riders
missed some water on our 100 for that same reason, could not see the troughs
in the dark. We'll probably use the pink next year to hang off the
troughs and use green and blue or orange to mark trail (2 different loops to
mark). We ended up using so much chalk and glowbars that we didn't even
need to have put out ribbons, and probably won't next year. I'm still
looking for a good method to pick up the glowbars off the ground after the
ride, we don't have a lot of vegetation so were just putting them on the side
of the trail/roads, could only actually hang a few.
