Bikes in Wilderness area ban could be lifted...

[IntoTheWoodsWeGo]

I do not believe trying to prove that the public had access to trail-worthy bikes or the desire at the time to pursue trail riding is where the discussion should exist. The current law is that they are illegal. The question for the future is two-fold: (1) safety of mixed uses and (2) environmental impact.

I agree that historical arguments are mostly a sideshow. And I agree that safety and environmental impact are the relevant questions. But maybe you're being rhetorical because those questions are largely answered.

Trail sharing, with modern mountain bikes, has been occurring safely and successfully on thousands of miles and millions of acres of federal, state and local lands for almost 40 years. The injuries, the incidents and the bloodbath promised by anti-bicycle advocates have not materialized beyond the occasional anecdote. The experiment is over. The question is answered. That doesn't mean all trails in all places at all times should be shared, but it certainly supports the view that sharing Wilderness trails with bicycles would likely continue to be successful. Similarly, we have 40 years of bicycle management experience and a fairly decent set of studies generally indicating that bicycles have similar environmental impacts to foot travel and less impact than horse travel.

Of course, there have been many specific lessons learned about how, when and where various uses can or should be allowed on public lands in order to preserve safety and environmental quality. The proposed legislation simply allows land managers to employ those lessons and apply current best management practices to Wilderness lands.

[Charley]

Charlie, you’re working too hard to prove something that just didn’t exist.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm seeking merely to disprove your original assertion as false. I've provided photographic evidence of your assertion's falseness, and would rest my case. However, you keep putting words into my mouth.

I'm not claiming, and have never claimed, that "mountain bikes" such as those today, existed in 1964. I've never claimed that one could buy a mountain bike at a store. I'd be happy to drop this as soon as you stop making up things I didn't say, in order to disprove them!

You wrote, "The bikes from a hundred years ago would not survive a ride down a trail in the mountains." I provided photographic evidence of bicycles both on an off trail from, proving your assertion false. Did I claim that one could buy a mountain bike at a store? No. Check what I wrote.

You wrote, "And taking one of these bikes available to the public in the 60s onto a rooty, rocky trail would have been suicide." Again, this assertion is false. In fact, that's exactly how mountain biking started: youngsters scrounged the local dump for old, thrown-away bikes to ride down the trails of Marin County, California. Contrary to your assertion, these folks did not commit suicide, they lived to tell about the early history of mountain biking! You can read a primary source right here:
http://cbklunkers.com/page.cfm?pageid=13206

Am I missing something here? When you'd like to argue with something I actually wrote, then maybe we'd have a more useful discussion.

[Webfoot]

I just submitted a new bill for the next legislative session. It says that unless a decision is made by November all bikes will be prohibited on all public lands. My secrete hope is that no one will notice the bill and it will slip thru since it puts any action item on any opponents to create a no vote.

No matter what your opinion on bikes in designated wilderness is, everyone should be appalled by this and those politicians who submitted such a bill should be recalled.

I am not appalled by this (the original bill as represented in the opening post). There is a reasonable perspective that bicycles should be allowed in Wilderness Areas. Proponents of this perspective would like to see the current prohibition repealed and if there is any real hope of that the lethargy of bureaucracy must be avoided: an "opt-in" policy change would be effectively useless. A sudden global change would be open to manifold abuse. The "opt-out" policy seems to me the only viable option.

[Koda]

I tend to favor the whole voting process myself.

[Webfoot]

I think allowing bikes in designated wilderness would destroy the whole purpose of designating them in the first place.

Here also I must disagree, to the degree that I find that an almost absurd position. Perhaps allowing bikes would erode or infringe upon its purpose, but it would surely not "destroy the whole purpose" as you state.

The purpose of the Wilderness Act is ostensibly expressed in the opening paragraph:

"In order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechanization, does not occupy and modify all areas within the United States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For this purpose ..." (emphasis mine)

The wilderness that is therefore being preserved is concisely described in the third paragraph:

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain."

That is the primary purpose of the Wilderness Act. On that scale permitting bicycles or not is an almost petty matter.

[Webfoot]

I tend to favor the whole voting process myself.

This bill would be voted upon as any other would it not? This country has never been a pure democracy, for better or worse. Or do I misunderstand you?

[Koda]

I tend to favor the whole voting process myself.

This bill would be voted upon as any other would it not? This country has never been a pure democracy, for better or worse. Or do I misunderstand you?

its possible Ive misread the article, do the land managers have two years to decide after the bill is passed thru the voting process?



as far as actually allowing bikes, I disagree they should be allowed. I feel the bikes will contrast mans works upon the terrain by greatly increasing use. Limiting use to what it is now is a natural barrier to human impact. Its also more than just a crowding issue, i.e.: simply seeing more people... designated wilderness areas are a place where wildlife have refuge from human encroachment and impacts. Its also a place to escape modernization (man and his own works...), I cringe at the idea of no longer having a place I can hike several days to camp and get away only to have bikes wiz by in just a few hours. When those places are taken away we will have undone everything we have done to protect those natural environments and habitats.

I also don't understand the pro-bike wilderness movement, bikes have virtually unlimited public lands spaces open to ride to develop new trails or use existing trails in very remote places even (non-designated wilderness). Why aren't they working in that direction?

[Webfoot]

its possible Ive misread the article, do the land managers have two years to decide after the bill is passed thru the voting process?

I thought so; that is how I read it, but I did not read critically.

A few points in reply, not necessarily in respective order:

I don't have a strong opinion about this either way. I still think it could work well or be a total disaster depending on the details of implementation.

I feel the bikes will contrast mans works upon the terrain by greatly increasing use. Limiting use to what it is now is a natural barrier to human impact. Its also more than just a crowding issue, i.e.: simply seeing more people... designated wilderness areas are a place where wildlife have refuge from human encroachment and impacts.

This to me is not a fair motive for prohibiting bikes. You appear to want your use unrestricted but other use limited, simply because it is use and not more damaging than your own. If overuse threatens the Wilderness then all forms of use should be rationed.

Its also a place to escape modernization (man and his own works...), I cringe at the idea of no longer having a place I can hike several days to camp and get away only to have bikes wiz by in just a few hours.

Is that not a bit selfish? Perhaps someone else cringes at the sight of you and your gear. Modernization is already allowed in Wilderness Areas in other ways as far as I can tell: hearing reproduced music I would rather not makes me cringe, for example.

I have not the strength to hike several days to camp. Should your desire not to see bikes whiz by trump my desire to see beauty in remote places? If you cannot demonstrate that bikes harm nature in a way that foot travel does not this is not a matter of preservation of nature but only of your own preferred experience.

When those places are taken away we will have undone everything we have done to protect those natural environments and habitats.

Seeing/hearing a bike is not damage to nature unless it causes substantial distress to wildlife. You have not heretofore demonstrated that bikes are any more a threat to natural environments and habitats than are foot travel or horses. (Incidentally I think they are if they are allowed off-trail as a bike can scar a far larger area faster and ruts are prone to rivulets and erosion to a degree that I believe footpaths are not.)

I also don't understand the pro-bike wilderness movement, bikes have virtually unlimited public lands spaces open to ride to develop new trails or use existing trails in very remote places even (non-designated wilderness). Why aren't they working in that direction?

There are many things in Wilderness Areas that I would like to see before I die that are too far for me to hike to. Should this policy change ever become law I will probably learn to ride again expressly to visit the presently unattainable. You place special value the Wilderness Areas for your own visitation yet are bewildered that others should want to visit these places also?

If the aim of allowing bicycles in the Wilderness is to turn as much of it as possible into a downhill race funpark I see that as destruction and of course I am against it. If however the aim is to allow access to the previously inaccessible without harming nature (not merely your preferred perception of it) then I am all for it. Which is why as I stated in my first post it's all in the details.

[texasbb]

... The question for the future is two-fold: (1) safety of mixed uses and (2) environmental impact.

... And I agree that safety and environmental impact are the relevant questions.

Not sure I agree. It's clear in the text of the Wilderness Act that wildernesses are being preserved for humans to experience. All the little rules we have in place (both written and by convention) are better described as preserving that experience than ensuring safety or even preserving the environment. Example: that banana peel you dropped will have no noticeable impact on the environment, but it makes the place feel like a garbage dump to others coming behind you. Example: that tree you chopped down is way, way, way down in the noise compared to all the trees killed each year by wind, lightning, bears, and avalanches. (And bigfoots. ) But you've deprived the rest of us of the right to see it the way you saw it.

The WAs are too small and a bike's impact too localized for the related damage to be more than a blip beside the real environmental issues. But a bike screaming down the trail at 30mph pretty well explodes my wilderness bubble. All that to say: the issue of others' ability to experience "wilderness" is at least as important as the safety and environmental questions.

[Koda]

This to me is not a fair motive for prohibiting bikes. You appear to want your use unrestricted but other use limited, simply because it is use and not more damaging than your own. If overuse threatens the Wilderness then all forms of use should be rationed.

not so. Overuse is being addressed in the form of permits and reservations. I'll admit I don't really like that either but I have to live with it because its within the reason and meaning behind designated wilderness areas. This is why I'm also an advocate for creating more wilderness areas.

Is that not a bit selfish? Perhaps someone else cringes at the sight of you and your gear. Modernization is already allowed in Wilderness Areas in other ways as far as I can tell: hearing reproduced music I would rather not makes me cringe, for example.

I have not the strength to hike several days to camp. Should your desire not to see bikes whiz by trump my desire to see beauty in remote places? If you cannot demonstrate that bikes harm nature in a way that foot travel does not this is not a matter of preservation of nature but only of your own preferred experience.

not selfish at all, its natural and nature in effect. Not everyone has the ability to see wilderness. We do actually have an accommodation for wheelchair bound persons, but that doesn't mean its actually viable for them to go, realistically its virtually not possible for now. How fair is that? I'll also say, and I mean no offense by this but just for discussion, if you don't have the strength to hike several days to camp, you don't have the strength to bike there in a day. And to clarify, I don't cringe at the sight of mt bikes or that gear its the idea that their means can upset the expected solitude that is quite commonly sought out in wilderness areas.

Seeing/hearing a bike is not damage to nature unless it causes substantial distress to wildlife. You have not heretofore demonstrated that bikes are any more a threat to natural environments and habitats than are foot travel or horses. (Incidentally I think they are if they are allowed off-trail as a bike can scar a far larger area faster and ruts are prone to rivulets and erosion to a degree that I believe footpaths are not.)

Mostly agree. I'm not trying to demonstrate that. XC bike travel is not more destructive than foot travel and I might even argue less damaging. What I meant is the addition of bikes gives more increase to human traffic, it doesn't matter how they get there it matters how many and how often. Increased human traffic displaces wildlife and can affect migration patterns.

There are many things in Wilderness Areas that I would like to see before I die that are too far for me to hike to. Should this policy change ever become law I will probably learn to ride again expressly to visit the presently unattainable. You place special value the Wilderness Areas for your own visitation yet are bewildered that others should want to visit these places also?

If the aim of allowing bicycles in the Wilderness is to turn as much of it as possible into a downhill race funpark I see that as destruction and of course I am against it. If however the aim is to allow access to the previously inaccessible without harming nature (not merely your preferred perception of it) then I am all for it. Which is why as I stated in my first post it's all in the details.

likewise there are many places in wilderness areas that are too far for me to hike to, that I will never see and allowing bikes will never change that.