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September 2, 1996 Dear Manager Of Wilderness Areas,
I started hiking and backpacking in the Sierra Nevada when I was in college. After graduating, I began to work for the Yosemite Institute and the National Park Service in Yosemite as a trail guide and naturalist. After two decades of hiking and backpacking and naturalizing, I began mountain biking.
Over the last ten years I have mountain biked extensively in California, Utah, and Colorado, and have come to love biking on singletrack trails much more than on dirt roads, just as I would rather hike/backpack on trails than on dirt roads. Singletrack trails offer much more of a feeling of being in nature, tend to be more scenic, and are much more enjoyable and challenging to ride.
Land managers are finding that a mountain bike has little impact on a properly built singletrack trail, and certainly has less impact than a horse. Some trails need to be closed temporarily to both mountain bikes and horses to prevent damage during wet conditions, but I see no reason to close trails to bikes permanently.
I am wondering why singletrack trails are not open to mountain bikes in Wilderness Areas, when they ARE open to horses. A mountain bike not only has less impact on a trail than a horse, but also heals over scars made by a horse, and is narrower and therefore easier to pass than a horse.
I was riding Trail 401 near Crested Butte this summer and was thoroughly enjoying the scenery and wildflowers. I reached a trail junction and wanted dearly to take the trail which led through alps of wildflowers into the Maroon Bells Wilderness Area, but I was not allowed to do so. MUCH evidence of horse use was present.
When I see trails open to horses but closed to mountain bikes, I feel discriminated against. If the issue is one of impact, then trails should be closed to BOTH horses and bikes. If the issue is one of discrimination, then this discrimination should end and all singletrack trails which allow horse use should also be opened to allow mountain bike use.
Even though Mountain Bikes appear to be more closely related to motor cycles and 4 WD vehicles than to hikers and horses because of their wheels, they are actually more closely related to hikers than to horses, motor cycles, and 4 WD vehicles because of their low impact, their ability to be carried across fragile areas, the ease with which they may pass and be passed on trails, and the fact that both hikers and bikers travel "under their own steam".
Please reconsider your interpretation of the word "vehicle" and remove mountain bikes from that designation so that mountain bikers may be free to explore the wilderness as are hikers and equestrians.
Thank you for your attention!
Sincerely,
Roger McGehee
Copies sent to:
Jack Thomas
Chief, National Forest Service
Fourteenth Street and Independence Avenue SW.
Washington, DC 20250
Mike Espy
Secretary of Agriculture
Fourteenth Street and Independence Avenue SW.
Washington, DC 20250
Secretary Bruce Babbitt
Department of Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20240
Director, Bureau Of Land Management
Department of Interior
1849 C Street NW
Senator Barbara Boxer
112 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Senator Dianne Feinstein
331 Hart Building
Washington, DC 20510
Congressperson Lynn Woolsey
439 Cannon Building
Washington, DC 20515
President Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Sierra Club
730 Polk St.
San Francisco, CA 94109
Marge Sill, Sierra Club Task Force Chair
720 Brookfield Dr.
Reno, NV 89503-2615
Craig O'Hare, Sierra Club Task Force Chair
1207 E. Silver
Tucson, AZ 85719-3147
Minimizing Trail Conflicts On Singletrack Trails
Minimizing Trail Impact On Singletrack Trails
Hints For Beginning Singletrackers
Back to Roger's Favorite Singletrack Mountain Bike Rides