I have been an active member of a mountain biking group in NJ (JORBA) for years (including building and maintaining trails for multi-use following the IMBA method). I have been mostly opposed to wilderness area bans on bicycles (having enjoyed several wild areas in CO and UT that presently remain open to mountain bikers). On the other hand I have also see how overuse can ruin a beautiful trail. Fruita CO is one area where I personally think has gotten semi-trashed after being over-hyped/over-ridden. There are so many places to ride; I personally am opposed to wholesale banning, but support the idea of selectively closing certain sensitive areas to mountain biking.
I have several hundred acres of nice trails behind my residence, and lately they have been overused (and it shows), mostly due to ignorance (i.e.riding when the trails are too wet/soft)... Education can go a long way (before closure becomes necessary) BB On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 at 12:44:47 AM UTC-4, dstein wrote: > > Saw this today and curious of the group's thoughts on this: > http://www.sustainabletrailscoalition.org/ > > On the one hand, all they are aiming to do is lift a blanket ban on bikes > in federal wilderness areas and trails so that land manager can make a > decision on whether bikes would be allowed on a per park/wilderness area > basis. It would not, for instance, automatically allow bikes on the AT, and > that seems like a reasonably far fetched thing anyway. But would allow to > keep things like the Continental Divide open, and also open up other > wilderness areas that are much less traveled by foot than the AT. > > But on the other hand, things like the discouraging news of the Oregon > Outback this year make me wonder if opening the doors too wide is a bad > thing--not that that was a federal wilderness issue, but shows what can > happen when too many eager cyclists take to some unsupervised bike routes. > > As for trail impact, there seems to be an argument either way as to > whether bikes have more (or as much as) an impact as hikers. With riding in > muddy trails being the biggest concern. > > Especially interested here since the RBW crowd seems to generally be super > responsible and smart about hitting trails and stealth camping where bikes > aren't typically allowed. > > For or against? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
