Trail usage, especially insofar as it relates to federal land use designation, is a complex issue. The conflict I find myself in the middle of so often is this: the 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits “mechanized” travel. This has come to mean bikes, though in the 60’s mountain biking as a coherent user group did not exist, and the mechanized restriction referred to things like portage carts and other wheeled contraptions. I am a supporter of wilderness, and of Wilderness. The act itself is a visionary piece of legislation that had it been proposed anytime in my lifetime (coinciding with the Reagan presidency) would have never made it out of committee.

Barbara Boxer, my favorite senator, has tried many times to introduce an expansion act that would apply only to areas in California. I inventoried many of the areas in Northern California myself during an internship I created in college, getting paid $1500 (a half grant) for a summer of finding out if that trail on the 1930’s map still existed on the ground. Most often, it did not. I did a lot of truly heinous bushwacking on the payroll that summer, eating ramen and living out of my car between stints of crashing in my supervisors house (100 yards for the beach in Trinidad, CA). It was a tough life.

Many times during that summer my supervisor lamented the anemic membership of the nascent Mountain Bikers for Wilderness coalition. I didn’t ride mountain bikes seriously back then, so I didn’t really pay attention. An irony today when I am surprised at the blind vitriol so many bikers hurl at Wilderness activists. While I value trail access, especially in the areas more likely to get Wilderness designation (which are uniformly the spectacular and rugged areas in which building anything is wildly impractical). Areas like the San Francisco peaks near Flagstaff, many of the alpine areas in CA and CO, or a handful of rugged sandstone mazes in SoUt. Occasionally cyclists loose access to pieces of great trail, but on the whole the very ruggedness which enables the buisness, mining, and timber lobbies to let such areas go render the trails impractical for riding. For me, the advancement of the cause trumps small pragmatic victories, especially in the era of the User Fee travesty perpetrated by the Gingrich revolution and it’s heirs.

The ambiguities that for the most part lie dormant have woken in a significant way in the case of the Maah Daah Hey extension project currently in the final stages of review. It’s worth your attention, as cyclists, hikers, students of geography or students of federalism.

The MDH is at present a ~100 mile trail linking the two parts of Theodore Roosevelt National Park in far western North Dakota. It’s a fantastically interesting and diverse place, tucked up out of way and still benefiting for it’s geographic obscurity. You can see the NPS brochure and map: here. M and passed through in the early stages of our stint living out of our truck in the fall and winter of 2005/6, and were very impressed. We hiked, explored, took pictures of Prairie Dog colonies, and I rode a chunk of the MDH on our last day. I want to return, and recently wrote about my ambitions here.

Last fall/winter (I can’t remember specifically) I sent a letter of comment to the Medora, ND district ranger concerning a proposed ~50 mile southern extension to the MDH trail. At the time, they were considering banning bikes entirely, and I encouraged him to reconsider doing so. Besides the economic arguments, me believing that in the long term hiking and cycling hold more economic promise for any given town than hunting and horse riding, there was to me a double standard.

I loath horses, and lament on a weekly basis that American nostalgia allows them to enjoy rights in Wilderness and general privilege on trails far beyond what they deserve. It is my studied opinion, backed up by a lot of hiking across the country, that horses have an exponentially greater impact than cyclists per person. (Hiking impacts being negligible by consensus.) Not only are the horses themselves going to bring about erosion much faster, they shit on the trail, and most importantly allow uncaring (or inadequately attentive) people into places where they should not be. The labor of getting to a given location under one’s own power tends to filter out the rifraf, make folks more likely to pack out their trash, etc. If you and your SO and friends can have a mount and two pack horses apiece, ease and luxury come to the forefront, and bad things happen. My desire to eliminate horse is entirely impractical.

In the case of the MDH extension, I was puzzled. The rest of the trail (except the sections through the parks, for which their is a bypass in the southern zone) allows cyclist, in addition to being located in grazing allotments. I’m not going to go into cattle impacts, which make all others discussed thus far trivial. Why eliminate cyclists?

I said as much, and apparently quite a few of the 1100 or so commenter’s did as well. The new version has two alternatives: H and J. H would allow bike access on the northernmost (and most accessible) 1/3-1/2 of the new trail. J would create a bypass around an area, and presumably extend bike access to those areas immediately above and below the bypass as well (the document is unclear on this count). The bypassed area is problematic for two reasons, it has the potential to be designated Wilderness in the future (being of a sufficiently contiguous roadless size), and it contains prime Bighorn Sheep habitat.

The 92 page NFS impact assessment resides here. Peruse page 35 for the Alternative J map.

I support the J alternative, it seems to me a reasonable compromise on both counts. Bighorn’s are a fantastic keynote species, and Wilderness designation is important, especially in any area like this which is and has been so susceptible to oil and gas drilling. The question it raises is that of trail construction as such. There is an alternative plan which does nothing, building no trail at all. Any trail will engender impact for the area, positive and negative, and take away from the wilderness (lower case) character.

In this case, I believe with Abbey that “The idea of wilderness needs no defense, only more defenders.” The educative experience possible in this unique part of the country will in the net benefit from more trail. And I plan to write on Monday saying as much. I would encourage you to consider doing the same, even if you’ve never been. Because some day, you should.