Trail Etiquette and Wilderness Protection

Bend, Oregon: Biking, Climbing, and Beer

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Preservation of the entire aesthetic experience of wilderness for man, and not simply environmental purity, is for me what wilderness protection is all about. Even if a perfectly quiet, non-damaging mountain bike were invented, I would not want it whizzing by me in the wilderness. Why? Because, for a moment, I would be mentally transported to the urban vehicular world that I had traveled to the backcountry to escape.

Like most of you reading this, I love to ride trails. Like you, I know how sublime it can be to pedal single-track, whether you're in mountains or high meadow. Perhaps unlike many of you, I also love to run on trails, and to hike them. Throughout the year I spend, I'd guess, as much two-footed time on trails as I do two-wheeled. Thus, knowing both sides—or rather, three of the many, many sides of trail conflicts and the trail-use debate created by so many different trail users—comes naturally to me.

I've yelled at mountain bikers whizzing past me too quickly and too close as I ran or hiked along. Likewise, I've endured the we-were-here-first sneers of hikers as they stare with disdain at my bike and refuse to answer my hello. It's all so depressing. And it could get worse as we immigrate and repopulate ourselves into the situation of ever larger numbers of Americans vying for a finite amount of trail space.

Even though this conflict has been widely discussed almost since the inception of mountain biking in the early eighties, it is still the sport's most delicate and explosive issue. So, rather than simply repeat the same old arguments posited by the various trail-using sides, let's begin with the history of this issue of wilderness preservation and mountain bike exclusion, and then move on to a look at the nature of the controversy.