Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire bicycles ruining forest trails

I know we have a lot of mountain bikers here. What are your suggestions for this?
A couple weeks ago, we hiked a lot of miles on forest trails around Ketchum, ID. I hadn't hiked up there since last year and I was appalled at the amount of destruction that had been done to the trails by bikes in just 1 year's time.
The problem is simple - they ride in the rain and mud. The tires leave muddy grooves all the way down a hill and rain runs straight down the trail causing erosion. After a few sessions of that, the trail gets so V'd that hikers have to walk to one side of the trail because it's murder on the ankles.

Poor trail design for multiple use and/or no restrictions for the conditions. Run a couple strings of horses in the same conditions and you'll have torn up trails too.

Horses leave round holes. They fill with water and in a short time, the sides collapse. Before long, the tracks disappear. They might be bumpy for a while, but nothing washes out. It's no different than elk tracks on steep side hills that don't cause erosion.
A bike leaves a long continuous groove that causes major erosion. There's no comparison.

Rchuck, I know you have a thing for homo's in lycra but,like I said... If the trails are not designed properly for the usage, bitch to the forest service to fix it. But don't try to pass off the "no comparison" crap between horses, elk and bikes. I've walked too many trashed, knee deep mud gullies caused by horse strings in the Bob and half a dozen other wilderness areas in Montana to buy in to your argument. I've traveled elk trails that were worse than any trails I've been on that were regularly traveled by mtb's. Enough animals, whether two legged(two wheeled) or four, in the right conditions will trash any trails.

Bikes of every kind tend to create misery.

Or Lamas....

Problem I have with Mtn Bikes---I'm hiking up & they come blasting down. It's either jump out of the way or have a heck of a wreck. I'm carrying a walking stick now. Plan on using it like a spear into the spokes.

Horses are far worse on trails than bikes in my experience

I've never seen a Mtn bike "blasting" down anywhere. I do see a few with people riding them though and thats where the problem lies, with the PEOPLE.

Some like Rockchuck burn too many calories on attaching politics to inanimate objects instead diverting that energy to the individuals that utilize said objects.

I've always found it best to judge people as individuals and how they conduct themselves. Otherwise you act like sniveling, antigun liberals when indicting whole groups for the actions of a few.

Rock Chuck, I've seen lots of things ruin forest and the trails within them,but mountain bikes ain't on that list. "Hunters" would be #1..

4 wheelers here, they got to chew sh..up.

??

Perhaps you don't get around much?

...and the damage they do to trails is well known. Most every form of travel will tear up trails, mountain bikes seem to do it faster than any other. All that shearing torque applied to a couple of square inches of knobby tread, it'd be difficult to design a human-powered device more effective at gouging into the dirt.

Likewise the rudeness of mountain bikers is well known, particularly in flying by at close proximity to pedestrians and horses. OF COURSE it ain't all of them, but I'd say its most.

Birdwatcher

Count me in on the Against the bike side. They are not only a problem on the trails, but also on the street.

I have never encountered a bicyclist on a FS trail.




Travis

Share the trails and shut the hell up.

Here in the East, they even discourage the use of shoes with aggressive tread on heavily travelled trails.

Anything with wheels is illegal on the patch of public land I usually hunt. Occasionally, I find horse tracks, but not enough to tear anything up. I do however, seem to find litter along with the tracks.

The goal is to ban all use of public land making it only available for viewing from the perimeter through fences <face palm>

Banned from on-road vehicles, banned from motorcycles and atv's, banned from horses, the next ban is bicycles and the last will be banned from all but bare feet.

Sure sounds like incremental erosion of gun ownership.

My best dead elk/deer hauler is an old mountain bike with a 2"x6" with a couple of holes drilled in it that reaches from about the front of the front tire, to the back of the back tire. The holes are for where the goose neck that used to hold the handle bars goes through, the other goes over the post that the seat used to be on. The peddles, sprockets, and chain have all been removed, and the steering has been spot welded in place. You just put the carcass over the lumber after it is gutted and roll it out. So you want me to leave that home now?

Now there's a useful solution to a real problem.