Posted on 01/23/2008 9:52:22 AM PST by george76
Mountain bikers worry proposal could kill epic ride.
Many of the area's skilled mountain bikers are concerned about a proposal that would ban them from some of their most-prized local trails, including a segment of the Colorado Trail.
The proposal is part of a draft plan by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to guide management of 2.4 million acres of public lands in Southwest Colorado.
The plan recommends classifying 55,000 acres as new wilderness, including 51,000 acres west of Hermosa Creek.
Congress is ultimately responsible for establishing wilderness areas, which cannot be used by motorized vehicles or mountain bikes.
"There's 500,000 ways to preserve it other than by banning bicyclists," mountain biker Gardner Catsman said.
The Colorado Trail, a 500-mile route from outside Denver to Durango, is "a premier, world-class, long-distance" trail for mountain bikers, according to the trail's Web site, with the strenuous 75-mile segment from Molas Pass to Durango being especially revered among the sport's elite.
Severing it, Catsman said, would eliminate the area's "only classic, epic ride."
(Excerpt) Read more at durangoherald.com ...
A sailboat is a mechanical device, a horse merely a collection of flight reflexes waiting to be triggered.
I rode in the mountains of Colorado, when I was at prep school in the Carbondale area. Give me a good mule any day. They are much more sure footed, far less likely to panic and kill themselves and their rider at the same time, etc.
There is the problem of horse exhaust, which all other trail users find vastly more objectionable than any motor exhaust.
Having said that, I have little sympathy for any hiker too dumb to keep its feet out of the horse exhaust piles on the trail.
A little courtesy wouldn’t kill any of the trail users.
I thought they were talking about motorized bikes.
But no matter.
Mechanized vehicles don’t belong in places that are preserved for their natural beauty.
If people want to ride dirt bikes, I’ve seen plenty of rural garbage dumps with lots of bumps that should give them challenge enough.
I'll stick up for the environmentalists here. Wilderness areas are places to get away from the snowboard set. When hiking on a trail in the Collegiate Range in Colorado I had to dodge some swift bikers. It's not their place. They can bike in the city, as they aren't slowing down to look at the scenery.
The result of each user group should be considered. Wilderness should be for the most basic forms of transportation....and no frigging speakers.
You'd be surprised how calm a properly trained horse can be--but nonetheless, wild places are a horses natural environment, so he should be deferred to. Bicycles have plenty of concrete and asphalt, horses have the little that is left of wilderness trails.
There is the problem of horse exhaust, which all other trail users find vastly more objectionable than any motor exhaust.
Horse waste products are biodegradable--good food for plants and animals.
Having said that, I have little sympathy for any hiker too dumb to keep its feet out of the horse exhaust piles on the trail.
Manure from a healthy horse is not objectionable once you get acquainted with it. It's like earth. I have no problem picking it up with my hands.
A little courtesy wouldnt kill any of the trail users.
That's for sure.
Yes.
“I’m sure if you shoot a couple that would end.”
Probably true, but there is the problem that one should eat what one shoots.
Ever tried to dress and clean one of those things?
;-)
Why don't you try to prove him wrong???
They’ve been trying to do this for years now. Sad to see them push so hard to ban cyclist from the back country.
The liberals want to ban everyone from doing anything, anywhere.
Biking is just one check on their list.
Maybe some will wake up.
Not only cleaning and dressing them, but have you checked to see how expensive it is to ahve a mountian biker stuffed and mounted(on their bike, of course)?
LOL!
Time for him to do a little of this "stroke of the pen, law of the land" stuff.
Cheers!
Ten...lousy...fricking...kilometers?
I can bike that much on a round trip to work!
/sarc>
(10,000 miles a year is 30 miles a day every day. Hats off to him, when does he find the time?)
Cheers!
Bush should lean on the BLM, USFS, NPS, USFWS...
He could have done so much these past years to help us, but...
Tell it like it is george.
I have been meaning to freepmail you some articles on the Forest Service, wilderness area land grabs, etc., I have come across while researching for some articles I have (over) due, and am sweating bullets to get done now.
Most of these I found on some links I have shared with you via freepmail, so you may have seen them. I’m leaving for the SHOT Show in Las Vegas in a week, will be there a week, so if I don’t get these to you before, I’ll freepmail them to you when I return.
Thanks for your pings, I haven’t been on FR much lately, but when I get back I’ll read them all.
“(10,000 miles a year is 30 miles a day every day. Hats off to him, when does he find the time?)”
He works hard and long during the wine crush, he often works 10-12 ten hour days. Fortunately, the weather is usually good and he rides his bike 35+ miles a day round trip.
Now, he is on 4-10’s and if the weather is good, he will often put in a a couple of 100 mile days during his days off. If the weather is half decent he rides to work most days.
In the spring, summer and early fall, his truck barely gets used as he rides his bikes to and from work.
Riding his bikes is a passion and a way of life for the past two decades.
Roger that!!
Love those machines!!
He is way too busy making nice with the left-wing nuts!
I did have a 20-mile each way commute down in Phoenix, but with the heat and hills I only did the full thing once a week; most often getting dropped off halfway.
Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale is *NOT* bicycle-friendly.
I did bike the round trip once (!) in 108 degrees. Took me 2 hours, 45 minutes to get home 20 miles.
Now that I have moved back to my beloved Minnesota I can bike both ways but it is only 3 miles each way. But my toes can only take it down to about 4 below.
I have started a new fitness program (P90X, Beachbody, as seen on TV infomercials) which is taking the place of cycling for now.
Cheers!
I had to give up my mountain bike a few years ago. My chain slipped as I came into our driveway and hit the lip between the driveway and the street.
So I was being flipped head first over the handbars, and I stopped my flip and came down without a fall with a sudden stop. The sudden stop tore my bicep head and retore my rotator cuff. The pain was so bad I thought that I was having a heart attack, and then I realized the pain was in my right shoulder and behind my right shoulder.
We left for Oregon the next day, and I was a miserable old dog for the whole trip. No fly Casting or real hikes. I couldn’t sleep at night.
When we got home my wife told me to see my doctor or she would divorce me. When I described the accident and the pain, he touched me on the bicep head. It took him and the nurse to scrape me off the ceiling.
Amazingly enough, I recovered fairly well in a couple of months. The only aftermath was no more bike riding nor casting a single hand fly rod. So I gave up the bike and moved on to the 2 handed Spey rods.
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