National Parks Open to Mountain Bikes

[ilima]

If it involves opening up designated wilderness to mountain biking, I'm 100% opposed.

[Irulan]

Did you even read the information, and the links provided? Or are you just being emotional?

You are welcome to be opposed to opening wilderness to bikes, but that is just a small part of what this is about.

1. It's about individual park managers being able to make decisions based on what is best for their particular park. There are plenty of non-wilderness type national parks that this could affect. Natchez Trace Parkway, anyone?
2. There is additional commentary about the forest service universally managing bikes as non motorized
3. and a few comments about losing access to NON-wilderness areas that are currently and historically used by bikes, through new wilderness designation.
4. and yes, how this might in fact affect the wilderness act

[Andrea]

I've ridden horses for a long time- though the only trails I ever rode were on private property. However, I can definitely see where dilemmas/conflicts could arise & understand the arguments on both sides. It sort of reminds me of conflicts between motorists & road cyclists. I'm afraid that bad apples and ignorance in both groups will prevent a "happy medium" from being reached between them.

I hope I'm wrong, though.

[ilima]

Did you even read the information, and the links provided? Or are you just being emotional?

Whoa. Quite the snotty and knee-jerk response there. Would you have posted that question if this was a gender-neutral forum? Hmm. Doubt it.

And to answer your highly gender-biased question: Nope, this ain't about me being emotional. This is about me thinking that bikes in wilderness areas are a bad idea. Bikes and wilderness aren't explicitly mentioned in the story to which the OP linked but I know from years of knowledge it is implicit to this story/issue.

Long held belief of mine. And that's it. Period (no pun intended). End of story.

[ilima]

Look deeper...this ain't about cyclists so much as creating a wild west atmosphere ripe for development of our public lands by Bush and Cheney's buddies.

It's a deal with the devil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/18/op...=1&oref=slogin