Interesting twist for the "Public Hands" of Public Lands.

[rwc101]

That's the problem: it only takes a small percentage. With increased population and the availability of bikes the number of stupid people will increase even if the percentage stays constant. And no matter how hard you try you can't fix stupid.

Yeah, mountain biking will need to have a reckoning with it's impact on the land. Very few, if any, of these backcountry trails were built and planned for sustainability and won't hold up long-term to intense use by new waves of users on bikes.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

@RobG those are some real A-holes

I’ve been biking way longer than I’ve been hunting and I believe unequivocally that if that kinda shit happens there should be a LEO in the parking lot writing them $1000 fines, totally unacceptable behavior.

 

[onpoint]

".....if that kinda shit happens there should be a LEO in the parking lot writing them $1000 fines ".....

Yeah well the "parking lot" is about 4 miles and 2000' below where the photo at the lake was taken.
Thus, illustrating a few things:
1. The urban view of things - "LEO should be there to write a ticket". Not reality.
2. The ease and complete unaccountability with which this stuff does occur. Reality.
3. And the blatant disregard for habitat - this one, a fragile alpine lake shoreline. A-holes.

 

[BigHornRam]

My bike doesn't come off the rack if I find a trail I was planning to ride is wet. Most mountain bikers do the same, but it only takes a few inconsiderate or thoughtless people to leave ruts. At the very least, I have never left big piles of shit on the trail.

Places I hunt I've never run into a mountain biker. But I do run into deep rutted elk trails with elk shit all over them. Lots of thrashed up wallows too.

 

[grizzly_]

My wife and I backpacked the west side of the Bridgers north of Bozeman, starting at Fairy Lake, hiking over the ridge and then south along the Bridgers Foothills Trail, which has been heavily impacted by tires and wheels. There were stretches of the trail with steep sloped sides and flat narrow bottoms ... extremely difficult and risky to hike with a heavy backpack. It was impossible to hike in the bottom of the rut. It required either straddling the trail awkwardly or balance-hiking a rough narrow bank on either side. We vowed never to hike those stretches again!

This is exactly what happened to my wife while training for backpack desert sheep tag two years ago.

Those bike ruts are definitely dangerous.

 

[BigHornRam]

Lesson learned MBG. If you would have just laid low and not intervened in this forest management lawsuit, you would not be getting blamed for wrecking everything under the sun on this public land hunting site.

 

[Sytes]

It’s definitely a balancing act between the groups, I think the more folks you get that participate in multiple activities the better as they learn to look at issues from several points of view. I bike a lot, but because I hunt I would rather see a lot of people on the bike trails so I see less people while hunting.

Thoughtful planning like directional trails makes a huge difference, there are backs seem far more crowded than loops and provide far more opportunities for negative interactions between users groups.

I think the main difference on impact between horses and bike is that for the most part bikers will avoid trails when wet, but riders will not. That makes a huge difference. Obviously there are a-holes in every group but I think there are probably 30x as many bikers as riders and .5% will use a trail when wet/muddy while maybe 70% of riders will... which makes sense, if I’m going hunting I’m going to use a trail no mater the condiditions... if I’m just going on an afternoon ride I will wait.

I've ridden many an old logging road or closed gated road. It's great especially with the trailer. I've ridden a couple trails and reached a destination point where I ditched the cycle and packed in another couple miles to fish/hunt - works pretty well.

The more the extremes spew their hate (from both sides) the more conflict. This does not bring anything to the table.

 

[AvidIndoorsman]

".....if that kinda shit happens there should be a LEO in the parking lot writing them $1000 fines ".....

Yeah well the "parking lot" is about 4 miles and 2000' below where the photo at the lake was taken.
Thus, illustrating a few things:
1. The urban view of things - "LEO should be there to write a ticket". Not reality.
2. The ease and complete unaccountability with which this stuff does occur. Reality.
3. And the blatant disregard for habitat - this one, a fragile alpine lake shoreline. A-holes.

Should versus could...

I’ve ridden the emerald lake trail before with my wife, she almost mutinied on me... it’s a terrible biking trail, we did it on a misguided tip from a friend.
There are several trails in the Bozeman area that I think need to be restricted to horses and foot traffic only, another being south cottonwood.