Bicycles to be allowed in the Wilderness?!

“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”

― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Equating a mtb to power drilling is a stretch.

Remote areas with difficult and considerable uphill terrain are natural defenses to the stereotypical "downhill" rider. And, yes, study after study has shown that trail damage from horses (not even talking pack animals) is many times more destructive than rubber tires.

Its not the bikes on trails I object to its the extension of single day access much farther into the wilderness with way more people.

Who in their right mind can argue against horses and mules being the most destructive?

This has ended up making enemies of users that should be natural allies in the defense of public lands and preservation.

Mountain bikes today, drill rigs tomorrow.

Doing the most with the least, a la Doug Robinson, is the best suited ethic.

Supporting anything that weakens wilderness seems short sighted at the moment.

I guess I just have trouble with the concept of bicycles

So get over yourself.

When their vision of creating a scenic cycling trail through a protected alpine backcountry hit a snag, San Diego area mountain bikers turned to an unlikely ally: congressional Republicans aiming to dilute conservation laws.
The frustrations of the San Diego cycling group and a handful of similar organizations are providing tailwind to the GOP movement to lift restrictions on the country’s most ecologically fragile and pristine landscapes, officially designated “wilderness.”
Resentment of these cyclists over the longstanding ban on “mechanized” transportation in that fraction of the nation’s public lands presents a political opportunity for Republicans eager to drill fissures in the broad coalition of conservation-minded groups united against the GOP environmental agenda.

It seems to me anything that encourages wilderness use--within the confines of the original 1964 Act--will ultimately strengthen support.

Presumably, bicycles are not allowed in wilderness because they potentially detract from the wilderness experience of others.

So what you are saying is that I am not entitled to my opinion, based upon my own experiences? I'm not sure what your status is, to be able to dictate that.

I have no experience on the Bob, although I do on the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, where my friend was the ED of the Foundation. He paints a different picture than you.

As a pretty avid biker, I generally agree with most who have posted here about not granting absolute authority but not outright denying it either. As much as I love getting out into remote areas on the bike, I also believe that it's not appropriate for some wilderness areas. It's not that I think bikers cause more impact than some other users. It's just that bikers are people, and people cause impact. Inconsiderate people cause far more impact. Some of that is based upon perceived impact. Some if it is based upon my own observations of other riders.

I'm often up in the Camp Nelson area near the Needles, which has become a popular riding area. Lots of long downhill singletrack, some of it through Sequoia groves and a highway running parallel to it that let's the slackers avoid having to earn their downhill. One trail, the Nelson Trail, has long been popular with hikers but has become equally popular with bikers. They have full DH rigs, full face helmets, shin guards, etc., and they blow down this narrow singletrack like it's the X Games. No etiquette, no concern for safety of other user. Total a-holes. Unless it's the dead of midweek or off season, I won't take my kids on that anymore. Just way too sketchy. I'd hate to see place I love in the Sierra denigrade into that. As awesome as I think it would be to bike back into some remote area and blow out same day without trashing my feet and knees, I know I can still get back there; it'll just be without my bike.

One question I have is what happens if a biker is injured, and has to be flown out. What happens to the bike?
I know of a situation that occured last year where three bikers got lost, and had to be escorted out by SAR. SAR would not let them bring the bikes out(they had to go back the following week to get them).

What happens to the bike?

Inconsiderate people cause far more impact.

Ever have a mountain biker fly past you, missing by mere inches, going at speed of Mach 2?

Not once did I ever see a mountain biker ever slow down when passing pedestrians on the trail, nor did they even move off the narrow trail to minimize the risk of collision with pedestrians.

I can't agree with the idea that there are no existing wilderness areas compatible with XC biking

I can. There are no existing wilderness areas where cross-country biking should be allowed. Have you seen what dirt bikers do to the desert? A mountain bike is just a low powered dirt bike.

Gary, are you cool with aggressively cleaning cliffs(using crowbars, wire brushes and removing vegetation that might be threatened and endangered(because cliff-life can be fragile and really frikkin rare) or be the resource of other cliff-life)) so that folks can climb it? Is cool with you to remove or disturb nesting birds such as peregrines and others so that folks can climb it?

encouraging the pent-up weekend warrior to take advantage of their tax dollars and get out there and tear sh!t up.

The ATVers already to a great job of tearing sh!t up. Do we need more?

Not once did I ever see a mountain biker ever slow down when passing pedestrians on the trail, nor did they even move off the narrow trail to minimize the risk of collision with pedestrians.

It’s complicated. When the 1964 Wilderness Act was signed, it stipulated that "there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport..." At the time, mountain biking as we know it didn’t exist and mechanical transport was defined to mean a cart, sled, or any other vehicle "powered by a non-living power source.” As the sport began to emerge, the Forest Service updated its rules, with the most influential change coming in 1984, when the agency banned the "possessing or using a hang glider or bicycle.” Note, however, that wheelbarrows did exist in 1964.

.And Why You Might Not Want To
Not everyone has such a favorable view of the legislation. There are fears that the bill could create a rift between cyclists and the environmental movement with the inadvertent effect of empowering pro-extraction interests. Outside’s Grayson Schaffer raised this concern last April when 275,000 acres among the Boulder and White Cloud Mountains were signed into federal wilderness:
Most dangerous of all is that the fragile coalition of recreation interests that’s critical to wilderness advocacy will have to spend time and political capital shoring up its own ranks instead of actually fighting for conservation. If hikers and bikers are at each other’s throats, the only interest group that will benefit is the one that would prefer extraction and development.

(3) REQUIREMENT.—In making a determination pursuant to this section, a local official shall seek to accommodate all forms of nonmotorized transportation, to the maximum extent practicable.

I just recently completed the JMT (just to prove I can hike too ;) and have always mountain bike'd. I fully support a case by case assessment by the land manager. I wouldn't want to see MTBs on the JMT, but some stretches of the PCT I have hiked were just begging for mountain bikes!

Blanket policies misinterpreted to a ridiculous standard, mechanical doesn't mean human powered IMO, are not a good policy. Let's use our brains peoples!

A second reason is history (this is why horses are and always have been in Wilderness).

and threats apparently necessary.

Let more Wilderness Areas be created where bikers had been allowed, resulting in even more pissed off bikers

Post up a few links to people who think land managers are required to give access. I could not find any. "maximum extent practicable" is not a requirement.

It is left to the local official to determine "maximum extent practicable". If it's not practicable, then it's no.

"Let me make this very clear: It in no way interferes with the discretion provided in other regulations and laws that gives land managers the ability to close or restrict the use of trails according to site-specific conditions. These agencies have always had authority for example, to prohibit access if a trail is damaged or is incompatible with other uses, and that authority is undisturbed by this law," he said.

Everything can be litigated, when the language is not absolutely no or yes. How would you word it to allow a land manager to make the decision without letting them decide no due to their personal whims?

As a land manager I would consult with a range of experts to determine the effects on the particular are of interest. And the maximum extent practicable would be those areas that would have minimal impact, leaving the rest as closed to bikes.

And it seems you found no links to support your absolutely required interpretation.

"Let me make this very clear: It in no way interferes with the discretion provided in other regulations and laws that gives land managers the ability to close or restrict the use of trails according to site-specific conditions. These agencies have always had authority for example, to prohibit access if a trail is damaged or is incompatible with other uses, and that authority is undisturbed by this law," he said.

It's gotten so bad that there is now very little support among the hiking community for a proposal to expand North Cascades National Park.

It is the camel's nose under the tent. There's the bill itself, which is only about four sentences long, and the bill just says without qualification that bikes will be allowed in the wilderness preservation system. Proponents say it will give land mangers a chance to pick and choose where they go, but the bill doesn't say that.

The International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) announced Wednesday that it will not support a bill pending in Congress that would potentially open federally protected Wilderness areas to mountain bikes. The announcement came as IMBA submitted its voluntary official testimony on the bill before a House subcommittee hearing.

“We know Wilderness hits some mountain bikers’ backyards, and we understand why those riders support this legislation,” IMBA President Dave Wiens said in a statement that acknowledged the bill's support within the mountain-bike community. But it also reaffirmed IMBA’s position that the advocacy group will not seek to reopen existing Wilderness areas—lands untouched by human development and managed by the federal government—to bikes.

We've found that hikers have the same effect as bikers do, regardless of the number of trips along the path.

Lifting the bike ban on a few obscure/remote "wilderness" areas will go unnoticed by 99.99% of the ignorant posters on here.

SECTION 1. USE OF CERTAIN WHEELED DEVICES NOT PROHIBITED IN WILDERNESS AREAS.

Section 4(c) of the Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1133(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following: “Nothing in this section shall prohibit the use of motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized bicycles, strollers, wheelbarrows, survey wheels, measuring wheels, or game carts within any wilderness area.”.

“Section 4 of the Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1133(c)) is amended by adding at the end of subsection (d) the following: "(8) Allowable uses. Each agency administering any area designated as wilderness may allow the use of motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized adaptive cycles, non-motorized bicycles, non-motorized strollers, non-motorized wheelbarrows, non-motorized survey wheels, non-motorized measuring wheels, or non-motorized game carts within any wilderness area. For the purposes of this paragraph, the term 'wheelchair' means a device designed solely for use by a mobility-impaired person for locomotion, that is suitable for use in an indoor pedestrian area.”

"Agency responsibility for preservation and administration to preserve wilderness character; public purposes of wilderness areas
Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, each agency administering any area designated as wilderness shall be responsible for preserving the wilderness character of the area and shall so administer such area for such other purposes for which it may have been established as also to preserve its wilderness character. Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation, and historical use."

Section 4(c) of the Wilderness Act (16 U.S.C. 1133(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following: “Nothing in this section shall prohibit the use of motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized wheelchairs, non-motorized bicycles, strollers, wheelbarrows, survey wheels, measuring wheels, or game carts within any wilderness area.”.

F%#k mountain bikers, and keep those idiots out of the wilderness.

Ken M, I'll help you out by providing you with a google search using the new language. Notice the dates quoting the new language are all on or after December 13.

December 13 Wilderness Amendment

Why do you struggle so much on such simple concepts?

Joe Breeze is normally credited with introducing the first purpose-built mountain bike in 1978. Tom Ritchey then went on to make frames for a company called MountainBikes, a partnership between Gary Fisher, Charlie Kelly, John Frey (Marin County mountain biking innovator) and Tom Ritchey.

Indeed, hikers produced the second largest increase in sediment yield following the horse treatments, and overall the horse and hiker plots suggest that hooves and feet make more sediment available for removal than wheels on pre-wetted soils.

First, there is a real incompatibility between bikes and other uses. It has to do with the speed of bikes, particularly downhill. I've seen many collisions with hikers. With stock, it scares them, and they go wild, bucking, etc. Very dangerous

Part of the reason we don't run chainsaws is that the very loud sound can be heard for miles, and it clearly is not the natural sound. The concept of continuously ringing bike bells seems laughable in that light.

I blame the big bike lobby.

1978 is when the common term mountain bike was coined, not the activity of off-road cycling. And your assertion that, because you in the Sierra in 1964 didn't detect a bike there, bikes were absent in Wilderness? Read what you wrote one more time and see if it doesn't sound utterly ridiculous.

without hearing an engine

Wilderness designation is primarily about preservation, not recreation.

What do you think wilderness designation means?

I don't see mtbikes causing much harm to the environment in a lot of these wilderness areas, and that includes some areas in Yosemite.

Ken, the fact is you do not possess the universal knowledge you think you do, regardless of what you want to "testify." Good luck.

The muddled thinking in this thread is indicative of why we keep spinning our wheels. Half of you are just scared of change, most have completely unrealistic perceptions of what wilderness is, hardly any realize that some are using Wilderness commercially, and have steadily locked out other users by a variety of means over the years.

I realize most of you will never have an opportunity to actually observe Wilderness being used on a daily basis, but if you did you would be appalled that for a few heavy impact users it is business as usual, while the rest of us light users are locked out so it can continue. You are being screwed as you mouth your reverent words about the fantasy of pristine wilderness. The only pristine wilderness is the stuff that is so rough and remote it can't yet be exploited commercially.

The more recreational users in Wilderness the more protected it will be, and the more secure. So it's time to wake up... unused Wilderness can be commercialized with the stroke of a pen if necessary. Get as many recreational users out there as possible, maybe it will shine some more light on what is really going on.

One bike track across a pristine meadow would take years to dissolve. Points that footprints do as well are lost on me, sorry.

There is no real law enforcement in true wilderness.
Do what you want, respect other users, f*#k the tool.

Then why didn't you simply say that, instead of asserting that you have some universal knowledge about cycling and wilderness? Thank you for your tacit admission that you do not.

Stc supports local land managers having the ability to implement original inent of the wildnerness act. It was never intended to ban bicycles.

I'm sorry that this has devolved into personal attacks.

Bikers want what Bikers want and don't give AF.

While I haven't made a study of it, it seems ridic on the face to say a bike on a meadow has no more impact than a person walking on it.

Ken, can you ride a bike? Would you like to learn about mountain bikes and people who ride them? How tall are you?

PS: If you'd rather not ride a bike, you are still welcome to meet the group and see what MTBers are about. You'll never meet a nicer bunch. Besides me, of course.

it was disgusting. So would be bicycles.