Re: more mountain biking in national parks?

On Mar 22, 2:11 pm, "Wolf Leverich" <lever...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 2007-03-22, y_p_w <y...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Mar 22, 8:58 am, "rick++" <rick...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The national park service is holding a series of
town meetings around the country. The local
paper reported at the local meeting a big request
for moutina mountain bike trails in the national parks.

I own a mountain bike myself (haven't ridden it in a while) and
coexist peacefully with riders who stay on legal, well-designed
trails. I understand the love for challenging singletrack, but for me
it just runs too big a risk of collisions with hikers.

I'm not sure if mountain bikes are really compatible with the
traditional mission of the National Park Service. There are some
places where they're perfectly legal, such as the unpaved White Rim
Road in Canyonlands NP. It might be appropriate at some more
developed sites in the NPS system. Much like dogs aren't allowed on
the majority of narrow, unpaved trails, I'm not sure mountain bikes
would fit the mission. I really can't imagine mountain biking allowed
at a place like Yosemite.

There are plenty of places where there are already well-designed
mountain bike trails.

The same argument can be applied to hiking and climbing on
NPS land. There are plenty of other places for those
activities.

Or bring a dog. I think it's incredibly cruel to take a dog to
Yellowstone where they can't go anywhere, but I've seen people doing
it anyways. It's a careful balancing act in preserving the resource
while allowing human access/activities.

Actually, we could close all the parks entirely to human
visitation, because there are plenty of other places.

Seriously, there's an awful lot of land in the NPS that
just isn't very heavily trafficked for most (or all)
of the year. One might wish that the NPS would stop
making one-size-fits-all policies and distinguish between
Yosemite in August and, say, Guadalupe National Park in
November.

Yosemite has a decent system of paved bike paths. There are of course
heavily switchbacked trails where it would be incredibly stupid to
allow bicycles (although people might try).

(I remember being GNP's visitor -- it's *only* visitor --
in the area around Guadalupe Peak on a November's day a
couple of years ago.)

I think they've taken some fairly reasonable stances depending on the
individual parks. The Bear Valley Trail at Point Reyes National
Seashore is nice and wide. Some of the full-blown "National Parks"
have some reasonably wide dirt roads that are great for mountain
biking. Yosemite would have the problem that some of the best trails
are extremely wet during the summer months from waterfalls and are
almost like a zoo.

It not a coincidence that the most pristine areas around Moab are
Arches and Canyonlands. There's plenty of great mountain biking in
the area, but I'm sort of glad that a little piece is off-limits to
that activity.

.

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