drtgirl said:
I have to say I'm a mountain biker first and a hiker second , yet I don't feel that mountain biking has it's place in a national park. I wouldn't want riders flying by me as I try to enjoy a quiet trail. I think it's disruptive. Just my opinion.
Thanks for speaking up, as a mountain biker you are not alone. You raise a couple points i would like to share my own initial opinions toward.
What do you feel about multi-user trail in general. Like the trails in Greenwater. Besides an imaginary boundary/designation what differences are there that makes a "National Park" different than a trail like Cutthroat Ridge, or Palisades.
The reason i ask is that what i percieve you saying is that bikes are disruptive, and any place worthy of solitude, bikes should be banned (slippery slope). Also note that Mt. St. Helens is being proposed as becoming a National Park, so this has future repurcussions.
Me personally i enjoy seeing "freindly" people on horses, bikes, hiking, dirt biking, if they're out there enjoying the great outdoors like me. To me it's all about attitude, and perception. Do other trails users disrupt the cadence of my ride, yes. Do other trail users disrupt a feeling of solitude with their presence, yes. Does that really bother me to the point of it screwing up my experience, no way.
i am curious though what you and other people who choose to be sensitive to sharing the trail with bikes feel about the Middle Fork Snoqualmie restrictions. Where the trail is closed to bikes on even days. (it's also seasonally closed) But there you have an option as a hiker to have the trail all to yourself on half the days of the month (or 3/4 of the year if you include winter bike closure with Middle Fork).
drtgirl said:
Last Labor Day we saw some tools mountain biking on the Hoh River trail and it really ticked me off. The last thing I wanted to hear was their bikes clanking down a rocky trail. They were also very rude. We reported them at the ranger station but I doubt they were ever caught.
Was mountain biking and stopped a party of moto dirt bikers on Preston RR Trail at Tiger Mountain. Since i'm a big guy they didn't really give me attitude, but i didn't really yell at them. Just told them they were poaching, and that mountain bikers spend a massive amount of time and labor fixing the trail, and that the trail will not hold up to dirt bikes. They gave me a song and dance that they were lost and trying to get somewhere. But everyone knows that Tiger has no moto opportunities...
Anyways it is frustrating when you encounter poachers. i mean really if you're poaching the trail at least lie, like these guys, and play dumb and not be a dick....
But how do you recruit young riders into a fold of advocacy if there is a perception of nothing getting done and no riding opportunities being presented.
On the West end of the Olympics there are 2 riding opportunities to be had that i know of, Humptulips, and Mt. Muller. Humptulips is very primitive and barely rideable, and Muller is a steep climb and steep decent. You may see this as simply an excuse, or a justification to the dikkhedds who poached Hoh, but where else are the opportunities to ride? What are the symptoms to the problem, why are these guys poaching?
Anyways Hoh is in Wilderness Designation i believe, so it's NOT going to be effected by the National Parks decision. So that's why i say in an above post it's not going to have much of an impact at all in Washington State. Unless they decide to convert Mt. St. Helens area into Park.