Time for a new backcountry coalition of MPVs: muscle-powered vehicles
Outdoor-recreation constituents who oppose motorized vehicles need to consider the concept of 'Wilderness Lite' instead of full wilderness designations for federal lands. It means allowing traditionally banned mountain bikes but would bring more political clout to the preservation cause.
By Bill Schneider
October 13, 2007.
Two weeks ago on the Web site New West, I wrote a quiet-trails proposal for the central Continental Divide of Montana. I left the ensuing debate with two thoughts. First, local mountain-biking clubs and the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) are getting very sensitive about being called anti-wilderness, which is a great sign. IMBA seems to have moved away from opposing efforts to protect wild lands to working collaboratively with wilderness advocates.
Second, for wilderness advocates, it might finally be time to suck it up and push for Wilderness Lite. This new strategy could allow us to move forward and truly protect the last roadless lands in the New West.
Regrettably, wilderness is still the "W word" to many people – except to wolf haters, I suppose, who might argue with me on that one. For a myriad of reasons, we've gone more than 20 years without a new designated wilderness in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. One of those reasons, if not the major one, is that natural allies for wild land protection can't work together for their common good.
The recent debate over the Montana High Divide Trails proposal nicely illustrates the dilemma. I went to one of the collaborative sessions for this proposal, and it was like seeing the movie Ground Hog Day for the 10th time. Almost all mountain bikers want roadless lands protected from road building and motorized abuse, but they don't want wilderness because agencies have made administrative decisions to prohibit bicycles in designated wilderness. Instead, they want a new designation that only allows MPVs – muscle-powered vehicles like bicycles, horses, hikers, and climbers – but bans roads and motorized recreation, or wreckreation, as it's been called. (If agencies can create new terms and acronyms like OHVs or PFDs, I figure I can do it, too. So bring on the MPV zones.)
The rub is, Congress really hasn't given us an alternative to designated wilderness that allows all MPVs. We have several administrative alternatives, but these can change with the political winds of any administration and don't offer lasting protection.
Wilderness advocates aren't really pushing for Wilderness Lite or a "little w" alternative designation that prohibits road-building and allows only non-motorized use, because they know that once we get it, the political reality is there will be no more "Big W" wilderness. Their fears are well founded, but it might be time for them to give up and support the creation of new congressionally mandated MPV zones. If they don't change course, we could easily be looking at another 20 years or more before getting any lasting protection for roadless lands, and during that time our roadless land base will continue to shrink.
There would still be opposition, of course, but I have to believe that if all non-motorized constituencies could form a united front, we could protect a lot of our roadless lands in a hurry.
Politicians like this type of "bottom-up" collaboration among user groups, so we might actually get one of them to introduce a bill, perhaps even a Republican.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the Bush administration might actually sign a few wilderness bills next year, especially bills with local Republican co-sponsors. And there are several such bills in the hopper right now, but none for Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming, where no Republican or Democrat in Congress is championing roadless land protection, a far-too-common theme that needs to change.
It would be even better, I suppose, to have the motorized users involved in these bottom-up collaborations, but the goals are so polarized instead of so similar that it makes compromise so difficult. Instead, we probably need designated motorized areas.
The other way out of the debate with mountain bikers is to allow them in wilderness. Whenever I say this, my wilderness-advocate friends almost have coronaries, but there is at least a valid argument that the Wilderness Act doesn't really ban mountain bikes. The modern mountain bike barely existed and certainly wasn't widely used when Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964. Even though the Wilderness Act doesn't even contain the word, bicycle, government agencies wrote administrative rules banning bicycling in wilderness and steadfastly refuse to reconsider this administrative policy.
Some hikers worsen the problem with their attitude toward mountain biking on single-track trails. Most if not all hiking and wilderness groups oppose any change in the Wilderness Act or related administrative rules to allow mountain biking, and some are blatantly anti-mountain biking, even in non-wilderness hiking areas.
A few years ago, I did a stint on the Board of Directors of the American Hiking Society, and I was surprised by the attitude of key staffers and fellow board members. Basically, the feeling is that mountain bikers are dangerous and obtrusive to the hiking experience when riding on single-track trails shared with hikers.
I take the opposite view. I own a mountain bike, but it has street tires on it and has never been on a single-track. While hiking, I've encountered many mountain bikers. Not once have I seen a problem or had a conflict. Even in two areas in Montana used extensively by both hikers and mountain bikers, the Mount Helena area near Helena and the Rattlesnake area near Missoula, the two groups peacefully co-mingle.
I know there are exceptions, and I'm sure I'll get a comment or two from people who have had a bad experience. But there are always some conflicts, even between hiking groups or backcountry horsemen. We can't set policy and establish our attitudes on what one thoughtless mountain biker might have done somewhere. We shouldn't manage for the extreme. I see no reason hikers, horses, and mountain bikers can't share single-track trails – and join hands in support for protecting our roadless lands.
I also hear talk of resource damage from mountain bikers, but that seems like a shallow argument. I suspect the environmental impact is similar if not less than hiking, and definitely minuscule compared to resource destruction from motorized use of trails, which is the real alternative we face if non-motorized users don't form a pact and work together to protect their common ground.
There is at least one precedent for the Wilderness Lite concept, the national scenic area designation created by Congress last year as part of the type of collaboration I'm proposing, between wilderness advocates and mountain biking groups in Virginia. Perhaps this can spread to the New West and bring an end to the seemingly endless wilderness debate.
Footnote: Over the past three years, I've written a lot about the issue of natural allies for wild-land protection, so I've compiled A Natural Allies Chronology at New West, if you want to read more.
Comments:
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 5:16 a.m. Inappropriate
Keep bikes out of the wilderness. We go there for the silence, the birds, the sound of, well, nothing, and the smell of forest. One rubber toe in and before you know it, we'll be waking up to the whine and scream of ATVs and motorcycles and NASCAR will be wanting to open a track.
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 6:15 a.m. Inappropriate
On the other hand, just as not crossing switchbacks are a challenge to some selfish people, the tempting call of off trail riding screams, even to my very conservative eye. Ignoring the lure of an almost infinite number of groovy lines would be very hard for a hormonally poisoned youth on a very capable machine. How could this be policed, and how could the damage be tolerated?
I abhor offtrail bootprints in the wilderness when "no trace" routes are obviously nearby. Can this be viewed as an equivalent? Is this, too, just as bad as seeing a continuous bike track across an evaporated muddy pond? Will we be able to tolerate bike tracks just as we have to accept these bootprints?
It would most certainly be a tempest to begin with. Everybody would have to be tolerant (a challenge for this society overall). Maybe some testing? Use the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie trail as the dual use model, designate a few alpine testing areas and let's see what happens.
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 11:59 a.m. Inappropriate
Nothing like a bootprint in the mud to remind you that you aren't really in unspoiled wilderness. Plus boots make it so much easier to go off trail in fragile alpine meadows or other sensitive terrain. And boots are so much noisier than bare feet.
I mean, hiking is fine, it's the equipment, you know, being able to carry stuff in wrappers that get thrown along the trail. Guess backpacks should be banned, too. And those people gabbing on cell phones, the crinkling of paper, the smell of cooked food.....
Maybe Wilderness really needs to be restricted to people in a state of nature. That will keep it pure enough, won't it?
I realize it will make it worthless for most voters so they'll see no reason to create any Wildnerness, but who cares about that?
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 12:31 p.m. Inappropriate
It was only in the mid-80s that the Forest Service reinterpreted the Wilderness Act to ban bicycles from places that people had been bicycling in for generations, since long before the Wilderness Act was passed. (And it took an Act of Congress in the 1990s to rein in restrictions on wheelchair access.)
Unfortunately for advocates of restoring the meaning of the Act as Congress passed it, "Extreme Sports" types are the most visible and disliked segment of the much larger mountain biking community. Most mountain bikers are not testosterone-crazed teenagers screaming down trails and rampaging through wetlands. But that's what bike bigots can point to when they justify banning all bicycles. It's not true, but it works well, as long as they don't try the same thing with horses -- too many well-off politicians and campaign contributors own horses.
Posted Sat, Oct 13, 8:32 p.m. Inappropriate
Cuts in Forest Service road maintenance budgets offer another reason to rethink use of bikes as access to extremely remote areas.
•••
Btw, very thoughtful essay by Schneider.
Posted Mon, Oct 15, 10:35 a.m. Inappropriate
I am a bit off topic here, but I think one of the most important things we need to learn is how to 'zone' rural land near wilderness areas. The Wild, Scenic, and Recreational rivers hierarchy is a good example of attempts to do this through a 3 tier 'zoning' system. But has it really been well implemented.? Heck, even on Highway 2 there is no overlook of Sunset Falls, nearly as beautiful, and powerful, as Snoqualmie Falls.
A specific, timely, suggestion, and a bit closer to topic. How about creating parkways accessing the SUPERB wild areas near Pugetopolis that improve the tourist viability (maybe starting with Hwy 7 in Tacoma?) and also serve the residents along those approach routes? Shoot, even charging tolls in these tourist loving sprawl encouraging roads might well make sense, dollars wise.
Heck, even include bike trails as a part of the corridor!
Oh, and IMO, allowing bikes on wilderness trails on a case by case basis, as with horses, is a good idea.
-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA
(a few blocks from Hwy 7)
Posted Mon, Oct 15, 10:53 a.m. Inappropriate
The Bumping Lake area of the William O. Douglas Wilderness is perhaps the closest remote spot to Pugetopolis - when Chinook pass is open. It is not widely used, which is a good thing.
I was planning on a hike off the end of the Deep Creek road above Goose Prairie, but the road was closed due to wash outs, at an unknown distance from the end.
A minor point - it would've been quite usefull to have posted the distances to the trailheads above from the closure point. The alternative trail Mt. Aix is a lifetime must do for a local, and I was not disappointed overly by doing it a second time.
That road from the Aix trailhead up would be great for bikes, as would other trails in the area - also popular with horses.
BTW, a picture, looking east from Nelson Ridge.
-Doug
Posted Mon, Oct 15, 11:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Comparing the Burke-Gilman Trail with single-track mountain biking is a red herring. The average speed of a cross country mountain biker is vastly less than a bike commuter / racer on the BGT. As for me, when I want to ride my road bikes, I choose the hazard of traffic over the hazard of weaving walkers, rollerbladers, dogs on leashes on the BGT.
Thanks for the article, let's ramp up the debate-
Schlem
Posted Mon, Oct 15, 5:59 p.m. Inappropriate
Maybe you would get farther if you would tell the truth. Mountain bikers ARE allowed in Wilderness! Only BICYCLES are banned. Why aren't mountain bikers willing to enjoy Wilderness the same way everyone else does: ON FOOT? I have never heard an explanation for that mystery. Obviously, mountain bikers are capable of walking. . . .
And the environmental impact of mountain biking is MUCH GREATER than that of hiking. The difference is easy to see. Besides travelling at much greater speed, and thereby causing much greater erosion, mountain bikers also travel several times as FAR as hikers. Just listen to their ride announcements. How many people can HIKE 25-50 miles in a day?!
Posted Tue, Oct 16, 11:09 a.m. Inappropriate
By route of reason used in excluding bikes from wilderness... kayaks, skiers and paragliders are also excluded. I have said for many years that we need to all work together... or we are all going to lose. This is the first article i have read where someone agrees with me. Hikers, cyclists, climbers, paddlers. paragliders, skiers, runners... we are all in this same boat together! We need to start working together or we are all going to lose! I often wonder if bikes were excluded as our numbers exploded in a brilliant method of fracturing the solidarity of the outdoor community to make the taking of wilderness lands easier... it has worked perfectly. We are losing every year because cyclists are so divided on this issue (and honestly a lot of us who hike and climb, etc... are also mountain bikers!).
for some actual scientific findings on bike impact:
(granted these studies are being published by a bike organization... but i have yet to see a single scientific study who's findings were counter these)
- IMBA Impact Summary
- IMBA Comparative Study in Different Ecological Regions of the US
(and Mr. Vandeman (if i may give you enough credit to add a Mr. to your name), if the speed of cyclists is so bad on the trails.... maybe YOU should stop RUNNING (as stated in your linked diatribe of manufactured statements about trail use/abuse). You should ONLY walk. It is the ONLY way to enjoy being outside. Don't even walk too fast... you could kill small wildlife and plants with your careless pace).
Posted Tue, Oct 16, 2:10 p.m. Inappropriate
A couple things about mt biking might add to this debate. Much of backcountry mt biking involves driving (shuttling) up logging roads and riding down trails. On a trip two weeks ago to ride the Devil's Gulch/Mission Ridge trail, most of the bikers on the trail we going down only after having been driven to the top. I think I only counted 7 of us who were cycling up the trail as well as down. This is on one of the premier mt bike trails near Seattle. It is really really really hard work cycling up a trial. So unless a trail is VERY close to the Seattle metro area, it will not get that much bike use unless it is flat or people can drive to the top. Also, the heavy-duty "downhill" mt bikes that can be aggressively ridden down very steep slopes are way too heavy to cycle uphill. They weight 40-45 lbs. In a wilderness location without a road to the top, no one will ride them.
I also do a lot of hiking. I can only think of 2 or 3 times in 25 years I have run into a mt biker on a trail that is more than an hour from Seattle. There are just not that many people who mt bike if there is a lot of uphill on the trail or if the trail is not close to Seattle. Mt bikes are permitted in much of the Teanaway Valley, but when was the last time you saw them there? The number of mt bikers who will actually ride backcountry trails (as opposed to taking a road to the top) is very small. Much smaller than the number of folks who ride horses, the number who ride motorcycles and snowmobiles, and much much smaller than the number who hike.
Bob mentioned the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie trail a few posts earlier. A friend rode that on a sunny sept weekend last month and didn't see ANY other mt bikers.
The northwest mt bike community is also very good at taking care of "their" trails. The Seattle and Olympia clubs do lots of trail maintenance.
As for cutting switch backs, most mt bikes can't do it. Going off the trail in the NW is usually too soft and the wheel will dig in and you will go right over the handlebars. People take the path of least resistance, and in this case it's following the trail.
People impact their environment, period. Jainism is a great religion, but its lousy public policy. Hiking in reality has impacted much of the Cascade Range. Just look at the trails in the I-90 corridor. Some are as wide as jeep roads. On a per user per trip basis, I would argue horses do much greater damage to trails and alpine meadows that mt bikes. But I'm not taking on the horse crowd here. They're great folks. I would rather see someone on a horse than a SUV or ATV.
Steve
Posted Tue, Oct 16, 2:22 p.m. Inappropriate
Possibilities: Regulation? Privatization? Certification? Licensing? Policing? Education?
There are probably more similarities between most MTB bikers and hikers perceived wilderness experience than either side realizes. We can only find our similarities by both sides taking a chance to trust each other during some serious testing and honest evaluation. Again, the Middle Fork is a great model (I encourage a visit to this trail) with alternating use days and closure during the winter.