TheJason
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Lack of municipal and county planning, and lack of forethought by people moving there is in no way sufficient justification for opening wilderness areas to bikes.
S. 1695: Human Powered Travel in Wilderness Act
- Thread starter Nameless Range
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I was actually going to mention the Adaks as a good example of wiser use. Esp for how close they are to so many users.
Yeah Denver is LA, 2.0 no city planning, just a rampaging monster. The edge of eastern development is ~6 or 7 miles past where it was when I was in highschool. The entire Boston metro isn't 7 miles wide. A not a single area of green space of any significance.
There is a 25,000 piece of state land immediately East of the city, that is completely closed to the public because state lands in CO are not public lands.
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I think it's a fair bit more complicated than that...
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rwc101
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I mountain biked for two years after I moved out west before I started hunting again. Never saw a lack of opportunity to ride except overcrowding on the Front Range. Any cyclist pushing for this needs to think about how they'd feel if the non-motorized areas they ride were opened up to UTVs and dirt bikes.
TheJason
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It also makes me think about all the 4-wheelers and dirt bikers in Moab that had so many of their spots inundated with mtb over the past 40 years
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rwc101
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Not really "their spots" unless they were motorized only areas.
Nameless Range
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I don't know much about the front range, and I am not picking on you here, but this is a line of thinking I question in general, not in this specific instance you provide necessarily.
I think the idea that if we increase the amount of trails available to mtn bikes, or if we were to implement the rally cry mountain biking groups - build new trails! - that we would see a general dispersal of pressure across the landscape. I almost think there is an aspect of, "If you build it they will come", when it comes to mountain bikers. Not because they are any more nefarious than other users, but because a brand new 10 mile mountain bike trail can be knocked out in a morning. On to the next one. They cover so much ground so fast that to satiate an increasing demand to a point that it would water down pressure it would take a massive amount of new trails available and/or created. Particularly when trails are tied to loops.
It would be a difficult study to set up and have it apply to different geographies, but I would like to see evidence that opening up new trails to mtn bikers decreases use on historic ones within similar geographies. It's not the sense I get around here.
Casey Greene is a cartographer who used to author a bikepacking blog I followed. Not because I was particularly interested in bikepacking, but because he is a black belt cartographer. Anyway, it really opens your eyes to what guys on bikes can do on singletrack in the backcountry, and to be clear I don't have a problem with it, and generally think their pursuits are beautiful and difficult, but that we also shouldn't be expanding those possibilities to the last 3% of the contiguous US where it doesn't happen.
Bike Touring Special: The 500-Mile Idaho Hot Springs Mountain Bike Route
For more than 35 years, the Adventure Cycling Association's maps have beckoned riders to unfold them, dig in, and dream about the next big trip - mostly long-di
www.adventure-journal.com
Irrelevant
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So I live in an area where the foothills are protected from development, mostly through community non-profit private lands purchases in the 1980's and 1990's. The conservation of those lands at a time when it was I'm sure not comfortable or convenient, now allows for amazing recreation close to town. Those lands are truly the crown jewel of our little valley.I agree, but to think of the Bob as indicative of all wilderness is myopic.
Take the I-70 corridor, Denver has very limited req opportunities. Honestly one of the biggest plus of coming to Boston, tons of single track from the house... no crowds. Partially this is due to a fraction of the user group + and partially every single town has it's own green space, and a lot trail systems. Aurora, no dirt within 45 mins, (highline canal.. haha). Basically everyone is funned into evergreen/conifer for close access or up and down I-25 or I-70. Traffic is a mother all summer and winter.
So wilderness issue, you head up into the mts and you got the Mt.Evans, James Peak, Vasquez, Ptarmigan, Eagle's Nest, Lost creek, Indian peaks, RMNP, Comanche Peaks, and Rawah. A huge portion of CO's wilderness is essentially on the outskirts of the city, you want to bike without crowds you are driving a long ways. You aren't doing a there and back 5 hours 1 way, so more people camping, more people shitting in the woods, etc.
People move to CO specifically because of the rec opportunities, this problem is only going to get worse.
Perhaps opening up specific wilderness areas on the front range to a wider variety of uses would help alleviate pressure on the western slope. Folks aren't going to car camp to bike if they don't have to...
I mean bikes in Eagle's nest... there is a double track road that run's through a lot of it with big metal gates from before it was designated, portions of it are within a couple hundred feet of peoples houses. It's big 'W' wilderness but certainly not wilderness in the way the Bob is wilderness.
Instead of pushing for bikes in the wilderness the mt biking community could do something a little more uncomfortable, and actually start conserving property. Bit by bit, and little by little over the next decade or two, they could easily create their own space.
Current large parcels for sale near Denver.
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"Lack of municipal and county planning, and lack of forethought by people moving there is in no way sufficient justification for opening wilderness areas to bikes."
So when I say more complicated, I'm thinking about the inevitable behavior of humans.
You can't bike here, here being close to home, doesn't even kinda mean people will stop biking.
What happens in dry counties, states where they ban fireworks? Basically the closest places that you can do those things/buy those have a ridiculous amount of that activity occurring.
In my mind this is similar to the rock cairn thing, people are gonna go if you don't make a trail they are just going to walk up the mountain however they want and there will be a million trails.
In my mind this is a how do we protect the most landscape, the I-70 corridor/front range problem is having effects all over.
I dk maybe we think about shifting wilderness around, remove the designation from some areas or shrink them... expand others?
Personally I'd absolutely sacrifice the Mt. Evans wilderness, if you could cut traffic to the western slope/Moab by 1/2 to 1/3 during the summer months. Hell I'd put a ski area in and cut down on the winter travel. Bring back the hidden valley permit for rocky mountain.
I don't have the right answer but I think 1950s thinking and resource planning doesn't fit well with 2020s use patterns.
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Irrelevant
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That's still the easy out; that option will always (generally) be there. Conserving the foothills may not. And will only become harder and harder in the future.
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Deleted member 28227
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100% agree, great points and valid concerns in my book.
Denver is a good example as it's a massive problem, but WA, OR, MT, and WY are all feeling the pinch.
marksjeep
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If you could reduce the number of people coming to the west slope from the front range by 1/3 to 1/2, I might reconsider my position....
NO! There are so many pronghorn out there
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Which you can't hunt... because it's close to the public.
so don’t give it to the mtb crowd, was my point.
classic if I can’t have it no one can, was maybe more the point
Irrelevant
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With that compromising logic we should just disband the Wilderness Act now. Doesn't matter what it meant at the time, scrap it, my selfish needs now are more important. That's what I hear you saying.
marksjeep
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In all seriousness, those front range W areas don't belong to the Denver MTB crowd any more than they belong to me. This would set an awful precedent.
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I'm thinking of the conversation of how to we control the dispersion of humans on the landscape.
Personally I'm 100% against this bill, but I think the conversation about resource planning is important. All this was created decades ago, say knowing what you know now you could redraw all the boundaries, rewrite all the provisions.
What could you do to maximize habitat, herds, protect spaces, and yet at the same time still provide recreation access.
Personally I think ski areas are kinda amazing, look at the per capita impact of backcountry skiers in terms of carbon (snow machines), LEO resources (avalanches etc), and on critters. Compared with ski areas. Tens of thousands of people using 5,000 acre parcel. What would CO be like if you eliminated all the ski areas. Sure 19 in 20 skiers wouldn't be out there... but think about how much of a cluster it would be even just the number of people who visit 1 CO ski area in a day all bought sleds and went out of bounds.
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