Bikes in Wilderness Areas

[Bunion 2020]

Rode Mile Creek to Lionhead yesterday.

Another Montana Classic that needs to be closed just in case it ever becomes Wilderness.

http://www.trailforks.com/trails/mile-creek/

[SchralphMacchio]

Did you guys see that Jeff Flake [R-AZ] is now a cosponsor?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-...205/cosponsors

[Bunion 2020]

^^^ Yes, WTF where are any (D) Cosponsors?

[RootSkier]

^^^ Yes, WTF where are any (D) Cosponsors?

Don't hold your breath.

[TahoeJ]

^^^ Yes, WTF where are any (D) Cosponsors?

Two words: Sierra. Club.

[SchralphMacchio]

I bet the bill could gain more traction without the 2 year language. Just the act of empowering local manager to go through study process to allow or grandfather trail access could be huge. Granted, some local opposition would tie up actual trail access under that scenario, but at that point it would follow standard public input and review process.

[stuckathuntermtn]

The reason there are no Democratic cosponsors is probably partisan politics as usual.
IMHO, All these organizations have everything to gain and nothing to lose by including mountain bikers. The fact that they won't because of their shitty, ignorant, steadfast ideology is just obnoxious.

[Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo]

I bet the bill could gain more traction without the 2 year language. Just the act of empowering local manager to go through study process to allow or grandfather trail access could be huge. Granted, some local opposition would tie up actual trail access under that scenario, but at that point it would follow standard public input and review process.

Bingo! Obviously each wilderness area/trail/ranger district will be different but IME working with the FS pretty extensively over the last 11 years the Forest Service rarely has the manpower, time, or inclination to do anything like this in only two years. Which basically means this bill will open up almost all Wilderness Area trails to mtn bikes 2 years after it passes because the FS will never complete a review for each trail in that time. The review process language is just in there to try and make the bill more palatable to opposition.

[jono]

The review process language is just in there to try and make the bill more palatable to opposition.

I see that assertion by those opposed pretty much everywhere but I have yet to see it supported by an analysis of the language in the bill. Every time we've been through it on here I come away convinced that the bill specifically states the rights of the land managers to close trails and manage users includes the right to close trails to bikes for any valid reason. In other words, they don't need to turn out a 100 page travel plan for a given trail, they can just adjust the allowed uses and state any reason at all for doing so (as long as it's not that bikes are incompatible with Wilderness as a philosophical point). I would think that would even include simply reaching a maintenance agreement with local bike groups that says trails a and b are open to bikes and trails c and d, despite being equally suitable, are closed in order to focus maintenance efforts.

If that perception is incorrect please show why. A full understanding of that would be very valuable here.

That said, I totally agree about adjusting the time limit language: open all trails that have been open in the past and which were not closed to bikes for a valid (post passage) reason within 30-90 days (about how long it took to change signs at BWC) and leave the others until there is a specific request/grassroots effort or the area comes up for a travel plan review, whichever comes first. And include WSA and RWA trails in that.

Maybe it's difficult to create a way for a land manager to have to respond to a petition or the like, but it would probably be worth it in lots of other ways.

[Empty Beer]

How long has it taken any federal land manager to close trails to mountain biking in the past, and what process did they follow to do so?

[toast2266]

How long has it taken any federal land manager to close trails to mountain biking in the past, and what process did they follow to do so?

Varies massively from one situation to the next, and depends a lot on the reasoning behind the closure.

If the STC bill were passed, and absent some new regulations to the contrary, I see no reason why any forest supervisor couldn't keep all trails in a given wilderness area closed to bikes with a simple decision memo. The bill doesn't force trails to be open to bikes, it simply allows them as an option.

[TahoeJ]

Local FS manager: all trails will remain with the same user access as previously stated until further notice.

Seriously. They can do this in like three minutes and be compliant. It's a silly non-argument. They have two years to at least do that much. Gimme a break.

[Empty Beer]

Local FS manager: all trails will remain with the same user access as previously stated until further notice.

Seriously. They can do this in like three minutes and be compliant. It's a silly non-argument. They have two years to at least do that much. Gimme a break.

Exactly. I expect most will keep all trails closed (although they will need to provide a plausible reason why), and some will re-open trails that had historical bicycle use. But the blanket ban will be over and local riders can begin working with their land managers to try and get access to trails that make sense.

[Bunion 2020]

That time of year again.

Editor’s note: This is the third installment of our four-part series, ‘Lines in the Dirt,’ chronicling mountain bike access around the U.S. You can read the first two chapters here and here. Up next on April 11: how a watershed in central Massachusetts became the fiercest fat-tire battleground in America.

“Access is not a God-given right,” Eric Melson declares. “It’s ours to go and get.”

Melson, the 30-year-old advocacy manager of the International Mountain Bicycling Association, is standing next to a bike-legal trail surrounded by Wilderness four miles north of Missoula, Montana, where he lives. It’s a toasty mid-August morning in the Rattlesnake National Recreation Area, not to be confused with the adjacent Rattlesnake Wilderness, which encompasses 33,000 acres to the north. Congress designated both areas with one act in 1980, and 37 years later, the national rec area remains a rare companion designation to Wilderness—basically an inholding where the ban on activities including mountain biking doesn’t apply.

Savvy bike advocates will highlight the wording Congress used in the Rattlesnake act, which identifies bicycling as a form of “primitive recreation” akin to “hiking, camping, backpacking, hunting, fishing, and horseback riding.” All of those activities are permitted in Wilderness, of course, except for biking, which was banned four years after the Rattlesnake bill passed.
Advertisement

As Melson points out, it is significant that Congress provided a way for mountain bikers and wilderness to coexist here. Missoula is where the Wilderness movement was born. The Wilderness Institute is based here. So is Wilderness Watch and the U.S. Forest Service’s Region One headquarters, by many accounts the most pro-Wilderness region in America (and the launching pad for the last three Forest Service chiefs).

Thanks to a spate of recent forest plan revisions and lawsuits brought by the environmental community, as well as a groundbreaking lawsuit from the bike community, Montana remains the controversial epicenter of mountain-bike access on federal land. Depending on whom you ask, mountain bikers in Montana have lost access to between 700 and 1,000 miles of trail in the past decade. Much of that has been high-alpine singletrack in recommended wilderness areas, or RWAs, where the future is as fuzzy as the Forest Service’s management doctrine.

Read more at http://www.bikemag.com/lines-in-the-...RfxZh6hJrPL.99

http://www.bikemag.com/lines-in-the-...dwR7pXtuBUG.97

[homemadesalsa]

That's a REALLY good article. thanks for posting, Bunion. I just shared it on the MBT page. We are in solidarity with you guys. If and when it comes to the Lionhead, we will mass in support. I am behind the scenes with all the varied Montana bike groups as they plan.

But if I have to get a #@#%&^ Montana visiting bike sticker- fuggedabouddit!