Editor's note: Mountain biking in national parks can be a controversial topic in some corners, with supporters and detractors debating whether there's enough space on trails for both hikers and cyclists. At the International Mountain Bicycling Association, Communications Director Mark Eller sees mountain biking and national parks as a great match. Here, to counter views that mountain bikes should be banned from park trails, he explains why.
Howdy Partner,
If I were a standup comic, I'd call this a tough room. Penning a pro-mountain bike essay for the National Parks Traveler website feels about as comfortable as delivering zingers in a boardroom meeting, but I'll give it a try.
The occasion for this piece is a recent dustup about a trail at Big Bend National Park, but first let me say a few things.
I wouldn't bother trying this if I didn't respect the Traveler's audience. For several years, I've read Kurt Repanshek's articles about mountain biking in national parks and engaged in the ensuing debates on the comments section. I get to do this from my work desk as the communications director for the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) — a role that I often point out when I post as "Mark E." Hearteningly, I'm usually not the only commenter who speaks favorably about mountain biking, and many of these discussions have been both civil and enlightening. On the Internet!
I think it's fair to describe Kurt and some Traveler contributors as concerned about the possibility of expanded opportunities for mountain biking in national parks (I considered terms like "hysterical" and "apoplectic" but l'll go with concerned.) In particular, the notion of bicycling on narrow, natural-surface trails sets off alarm bells.
The group I represent has long advocated for the idea that mountain biking is an appropriate activity for just those kinds of trails. IMBA holds a partnership agreement with the National Park Service and is the largest member-based mountain bike organization in the world, with 80,000 individual supporters and programs in more than 30 nations. We have published two books and hundreds of web-based articles on topics like trail design, recreation management and ways to encourage volunteer stewardship. IMBA's network of more than 700 grassroots chapters and clubs records nearly one million hours of volunteer service on public trails every year.
From my seat, that makes us a strong partner for national parks. IMBA only works with NPS units that invite us to help them plan or build trails — if park staff requests assistance, we're happy to help. If a park has no interest in adding shared-use trails we do not try to insert ourselves into their planning efforts. We have no plans to demand that "extreme" (or whatever derogatory terms you've read) mountain bike trails get built on Yosemite's Half Dome or down the middle of Yellowstone. Really.
Now, what about the trail in Big Bend?
Back in 2005, when IMBA signed its first partnership agreement with the NPS, Big Bend was called out as a potential site for a pilot shared-use trail project. A vast park with huge amounts of backcountry terrain, Big Bend offers many miles of dirt roads that are suitable for mountain biking. Heck, they are suitable for hiking too, but mountain bikers are like hikers in that we generally prefer an intimate interaction with the natural world that a trail provides.
At the invitation of the NPS, IMBA helped plan a short trail near the Big Bend Visitors Center. Over the years, the idea picked up steam, clearing regulatory hurdles and gaining support among park staff and in the local community. Although just a few miles in length, the trail will provide a welcome chance to stretch the legs after the long car trip that's required to reach Big Bend. On its own, the new trail won't lure many mountain bikers to the park. However, there is other good riding nearby (including the Fresno-Sauceda Loop, an IMBA Epic ride) and it will be a nice addition for walkers and, eventually, bikers (especially families with kids who might not want to tackle long-distance rides on the park's isolated dirt roads).
The Big Bend trail project is underway, but its future is uncertain. As the Traveler has documented, NPS regulations require a lengthy process before anyone will be allowed to ride a bicycle on the trail — a fact that has not prevented IMBA from supporting the project. My group has sent veteran trail specialist Joey Klein to Big Bend again and again, allowing him to consult with NPS staff on the trail layout and construction. We have done this in a spirit of partnership, in hopes that a successful trail at Big Bend will promote a better understanding of how mountain biking can enhance national parks.
Several web pages on the NPS website address the topic of partnerships. The partnerships landing page opens with these words: "Increasingly partnerships are essential and effective means for the National Park Service to fulfill parts of our mission and foster a shared sense of stewardship that is so crucial for our future." Mountain bikers want to see better and more widespread opportunities to ride on NPS-managed lands, and we believe a partnership approach is the best way to get there. We don't demand that singletrack trails should be opened in every corner of every park — far from it. Where park staff sees an opportunity to work with IMBA and its local affiliates we will take them up on it, moving ahead on a case-by-case basis. We firmly believe that mountain biking, and IMBA, can be good for national parks.
I'll close with a top-ten list (always a reliable shtick). Sincere thanks go to Kurt and the National Parks Traveler for allowing me to post this.
10 Reasons IMBA and Mountain Bikers Make Great Partners for the NPS
1. Prolific Volunteers: IMBA members conduct almost one million hours of volunteer trail building each year and advocate for public lands. With more that 700 bike clubs and chapters, chances are an IMBA group near you stands ready to volunteer at your park.
2. Relevancy: Kids love to mountain bike and opening appropriate trails to kids is a great way to help make parks relevant to today’s recreating public. According to the Outdoor Industry Foundation, bicycling is one of the most popular outdoor activities for kids.
3. Professional Trail Design: IMBA’s team of professional trail designers has vast experience. From Parks Canada to U.S. facilities managed by city, county, state and federal agencies, IMBA has helped create some of the world's most popular trail systems.
4. Bicycling is Already Popular in the NPS: Mountain biking is already successfully managed in 44 national parks and more superintendents are considering places that might be appropriate for mountain biking. IMBA partnered with a half dozen parks in the last two years to build and repair trails.
5. Savvy Fundraisers: Mountain bikers rise to a challenge and our community is known for writing grants, holding fundraisers and working to make sure public lands, facilities and trails have proper funding.
6. Gets Visitors Into Natural Settings: Bicycling allows park visitors to smell, feel and fall in love with the natural world. Parks are meant to be experienced and bicycling is one of the best ways to get people out of their cars and engaged in a nature-based experience.
7. Building the Recreation Economy: Bicyclists spend money on food, lodging and might not even take up a parking space. Adding mountain biking as a park amenity builds on the activities offered by the park and lengthens visitors stays, building gateway community economies.
8. Where Can I Ride My Bike? How many cars or RVs visiting parks right now already have bikes on top? The demand for cycling is growing, and IMBA has a wealth of experience and success stories that show how it can be managed as a low-impact recreational activity.
9. We Wrote the Book: IMBA literally wrote two of the best regarded books in the world on the art of sustainable trail building and managing mountain biking. Complimentary copies go to NPS staff at their request.
10. We Play Nice in the Sandbox: IMBA clubs and chapters know the importance of reaching out to other trail user groups, getting unlikely constituents involved in parks and realize the diverse constituency that embraces national parks.
Mark Eller is the communications director for the International Mountain Bicycling Association.
Comments
The basic problem is too many; Two many trails, too many mountain bikers, too many hikers, too many dirt bikers and ATV's, too many rude people, and last but not least too many people for the world to support. We might all be able to get along if there were far fewer of us.
Kirby Adams said: "When the next President wants to sell parcels of national parks for mineral extraction, we'll be squarely on the same side, I think."
Exactly right! And thank you for the well-considered post.
There are places within the national parks where mountain bikes are appropriate, but not many. Mountain bikes exist very well with hikers on the carriage paths at Acadia, or on dirt roads in other parks. They will never coexist well with hikers on narrow singletrack trails. There are a number of reasons:
- They just go too fast. They endanger children and elderly people (I have several times seen elders knocked over by careless mountain bike riders), and detract from the natural experience we all seek in our national parks.
- Because they go much faster than a hiker, they make us hikers feel that there are many more people on the trails. If 50 hikers are spread out on a 10 mile trail, you won't see a lot of other hikers - there will be distance between them and some feeling of solitude. But put 50 mountain bikers on the same trail, you'll see every one of the bikers because they go so much faster, and will pass every single hiker.
- They cause erosion. No matter how well a trail is designed, it only takes few rogue bikers who feel that they have to go up on the edges for the thrills, and the trail starts degrading.
I lived in Boulder Colorado for many years. Mountain bikes destroyed the hiking experience in virtually every place that they were allowed. There were a few wide trails/roads where the hikers and bikers could coexist relatively comfortably, but most trails that allowed bikers didn't have many hikers. Our national parks are our last great places, and we should be able to go there for a relatively natural experience. If we are willing to work for it and hike a distance from the roads, we shouldn't see many other people. Bikers will destroy that feeling of solitude.
Despite the seemingly well reasoned arguments of this article, it just doesn't work to have bikes in the parks.
Um, how come shared use on trails works in every other country in the world except for (allegedly) the United States? Could it have something to do with America's unique Puritan tradition and the hostility to play and fun that are among its modern manifestations?
If I believed Anonymous's comment that hikers and cyclists can't get along safely on trails, I'd have to ask him/her why hikers shouldn't be banned in that case for their own safety. After all, no one has yet produced a study showing that hiking is inherently more worthwhile than riding a bicycle, so why not restrict trails to cycling? Especially because mountain bikers don't seem to have a problem passing one another on narrow trails and generally don't complain incessantly about the presence of others.
Since I don't think Anonymous is correct, however, I'll set that aside. I think Mark E. and others have mentioned that bicycles shouldn't be on every trail in every national park. I agree with that. In fact, there are many miles of trail that we either couldn't ride or wouldn't want to.
Where trails are as crowded as Anonymous mentions (a small subset as far as I know), the NPS could limit people's numbers by permit or provide for alternate-day trail use so that uses perceived to be incompatible won't encounter each other. That, after all, is what most public swimming pools do: faster swimmers at this time, slower ones at that. Seems to work.
The erosion complaint is a long-discredit canard and I think IMBA's website has a plethora of independent scientific studies showing this. Rain is a bigger problem than either a tire tread or the human shoe. Horses are another question—one that doesn't seem to come up among people who assert that mountain biking causes erosion. Hikers aren't free of criticism either, by the way. You should see all the cut switchbacks in my local parks, all caused by hikers, not the mountain bikers who safely share the same narrow trails.
imtnbke, since the first horseless carriage arrived, pedestrians have been trying to get out of the way of machines;-)
While I'm straddling the fence a bit myself, I thought I'd share the following items a quick Google turned up.
Some of these items are somewhat dated, but nevertheless point out some of the dangers that can exist when bikers and hikers share trails. Among the interesting items is a trail system in Michigan where they warn hikers about heavy mountain bike traffic on weekends "to the point it's best to avoid hiking these trails on the weekends."
And then there's the one where a downhill biker in California ran into a woman hiker who had to be airlifted out of the area. The biker also sustained some injuries that required medical attention.
I left out the stories about bikers who killed themselves on rides.
And there are a couple letters/petitions from groups concerned about damage to trails system.
http://www.parkspreservation.org/EllisonParksPlan/incidents
http://altadena.patch.com/articles/biker-vs-hiker-on-the-way-to-echo-mou...
http://mjvande.nfshost.com/mtb104.htm
http://www.headwatersmontana.com/news/mountain-biking-its-fun-trail-user...
http://michigantrailmaps.com/Washtenaw/PinckneyRA/PinckneyIntro.html (6th graf warns hikers to avoid trails due to speeding bikers...)
http://www.socaltrailriders.org/forum/rider-down/50933-biker-vs-hiker-pe... nice photo!
http://www.savestrawberrycanyon.org/documents/Letter_2012-02-06-Biking.html
http://www.isu.edu/~nickbenj/bike/mtbdic.htm
http://www.sosboulder.org/organizations/sosboulder.pdf
As for trail wear-and-tear, it continues to be a problem in my burg, which, interestingly, IMBA recently designated as its first-ever "Gold Ride Center," a designation bestowed for Park City's many miles of biking trails as well as its restaurants and hotels.
Problems I'm seeing involve v-shaped trails caused by the amounts of riding, widened trails where riders either swerve to avoid going over rocks or roots or when they decide they'd rather ride around a hiker than dismount and let the hiker pass, and banked turns. Other problems are created when well-intentioned but unskilled trail crews try to create water bars by simply scraping a trench into the trails. These do a great job of funneling top soil away when it rains.
Granted, not all (if any) of Park City's trails were constructed by IMBA crews, so perhaps better designed trails would alleviate these issues. But could they possibly be an issue if mountain biking is permitted on existing trails in parks, as opposed to trails built from scratch and designed to handle the pressures?
That said, I agree with you that hikers create trail problems as well. Social trails in some parks are a nuisance, and in some areas you can find spider webs of trails where hikers like to set out two, three, or even four abreast so they can chat before filing into a single line.
Mark E and Kurt R, thank you for providing this relatively sane thread for expressing opinions in a professional manner. I have resisted posting until now because as we all know, you can't win an emotional argument with facts.
Anonymous 2:13 pm refers to concepts of spatial economics, a subset of economic geography. Places become much bigger when we are on foot. As an example, the occupants of ten row boats in a small lake will be happy and content, as each boat has plenty of room to roam around and the occupants can easily avoid conflict with the occupants of other row boats on the lake. Replace those row boats with motor boats, however, and competition for space enters the equation. Suddenly the lake seems to have shrunk in size, because ten motor boats are now zooming around the lake, disturbing other boaters with wakes, noise, collisions, etc. Substitute for hikers for row boats and mountain bikes for power boats, and the principle is the same, yet exacerbated even more because the lake seems to have shrunk yet again, from two dimensions (lake area) to one dimension (a trail); therefore, conflicts increase even more.
There is a place for everything, and I do not believe that the purpose of national parks, in general, is consistent, with mountain biking. Exceptions exist, of course, but as a rule, no. Premier mountain biking opportunities exist outside of the national parks. I invite those who have not already read it to read "Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections of the National Parks" by Joseph L. Sax, which available online at http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/sax/. Mr. Sax articulates the concepts that are applicable to this subject better than I have seen them articulated anywhere, and certainly better than I can articulate them myself. The book was written in 1980 and although the author does not discuss mountain biking specifically, the subjects and principles that he does discuss are parallel with mountain biking.
Who am I? My name doesn't matter, I could be anyone. Where do I live? I have lived in 22 states (so far), so that doesn't matter either. Nor does it matter what I do for a living or what I like to do for fun, as I have both worked and played on both sides of this proverbial fence. I have worked in the oil fields (yes, I drive a car), on a road construction crew on some rather, um, controversial, paving projects, as well as in the national parks. My backpacking miles measure in the thousands, and I have won more than my fair share of mountain bike races. Once I even, accidentally of course, killed a squirrel on my mountain bike -- in a national park, gasp. The squirrel ran directly into my path and it was over before I could even react. That was 27 years ago, and it still bothers me to this day. I am fortunate it wasn't a small child that I hit.
As we all do, I learned from each experience in my life. I go to parks for contemplative recreation, not domination. I want to see the wildlife, not scare it away and see nothing but my front tire and the trail about a foot in front of it. During one mountain biking trip around the White Rim in Canyonlands NP (one of those welcome exceptions referred to previously) I lagged far behind my compadres. Occasionally one would drop back to make sure I was okay. "Sure," I said and pointed, "I was just watching that group of desert bighorn sheep over there." To the next person I pointed out an archaeological site that we were standing right in the midst of. I reached down and picked up what he described as "Wow, that's a really cool-looking rock!" It was cool looking because it was actually a scraper that been well-used by the Anasazi many centuries before. Before long my entire group slowed down and became more attentive to their surroundings and began to see wildlife and find really cool things on their own, too. They just had to learn how to see, and slow down enough to be able to. You can't do that if you're barreling along on a purely physical challenge. In fact, the White Rim might appear "boring" to someone on such a mission.
The more one knows, searches, and understands, the greater the interest and satisfaction of the park experience. Those in search of domination over national parks and wilderness areas only intrude on those in search of contemplative recreation. Opportunities for dominion outside these boundaries abound. Because the purposes are not compatible, my vote is to keep mountain biking out of the national parks, save for the wonderful and welcome mountain biking opportunities that already exist within the parks. Competition for space within the parks is already an issue, and adding bikes to hiking trails will only increase the number of conflicts.
I do a lot of hiking in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many of the trails are open to mountain bikes. I have never had a negative encounter with people on bicycles. If fact, they tend to go out of their way to be respectful of the rights of hikers, runners, and equestrians. My one gripe is that some of them ride on trails where it is clearly posted that they are not allowed.
Perhaps a few national park trails could be designated for mountain bikes on a trial basis. New trails could be added if it works out.
Mark Eller has made an excellent argument and gotten a good response in return. I fear that I may already have committed the sin of dragging the thread off-track with my prior post. So let my reply to Kurt be quick: (1) no one ever said mountain biking is completely safe, either to mountain bikers or other trail users; the questions are whether it has value and whether it can reasonably be accommodated; (2) I looked at the one picture Kurt recommended and noticed the accident occurred on a fall-line fire road with total visibility, and even the more vociferous mountain biking critics don't object to riding on dirt roads with good sight lines. I'll stop this post here! Apologies to Mark for veering away from his main points.