[pct-l] Bicycle Usage Proposal

[Joel Fisler]

I was not planning to respond again but the discussion keeps on going and going, everyone adds an even worse story and I see the issue in a new light. From what I read it looks like in the US (or maybe just California, I dont know) trails are a "war zone". No one respects no one, nobody uses common sense, no respect and no manners. I have never heard of similar extreme fights here in the Alps, maybe I am naive, but there are certainly no hikers killed by mountain bikers here... Under these circumstances I agree that it is best to have separate trails for hikers, bikers and maybe horses. Although I think that this is a very said conclusion. My assumption and experiences, my "background knowledge" when writing the last email two days ago were as following:

In the Alps I have been biking since roughly 1986 or 1987 (Kettler, someone remember those? Did that German bike brand even exist in the US? Anyway...), I made a two week tour around the Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps (more pushing and carrying than actually biking, to be honest) in 1988, was riding the Swiss National Mountainbike Competition in 1989 etc. - I would call myself and experienced oldschool mountainbiker - and NEVER had any problems until now (touch wood). Use common sense, stop when approaching hikers, smile, talk, whatever... The way you are approaching people thats the way they are approaching you. So simple... Not only valid for biking.

Now last year I was living in the LA area, did section hikes on the PCT between March and August 2010 but also did a lot of mountain biking. Diane, I know exactly the trails you are talking about. Cold Springs trail? One of the best and most beautiful (scenic) trails I have ever ridden. Being new in the US I joined a local LA-MTB group last year and last fall they made a trip to Santa Barbara and I joined. We were a small mixed group from twenty-year-olds to a guy probably way over 60. I asked them about trails and laws, do's and donts in the US and they started to tell me horror stories about aggressive hikers in Santa Barbara (one guy was a local, grew up there), they will put sticks between your wheels (although its not illegal to ride the trails), shout at you or even start fights if you're alone and they're not. So "be aware" was their advice... Basically the same stuff you were talking about Diane, just the other way around. In their eyes, hikers were the "bad guys", the "ignorant ones" etc. After that I went two or three more times to Santa Barbara, together with my son who was equally impressed and we enjoyed the trails there. We met nice people, funny people (a guy with a unicycle riding down 3000 feet on one wheel :-) if we met hikers we stopped or they stepped aside and we avoided "peak" times like sunny Sundays... Never any problems, neither in Santa Barbara nor somewhere else. 

On the other hand I was hiking for days on the PCT sometimes right next to a dirt road (Lake Morena area, Mt. Laguna area where the trail sometimes is less then a 100 feet from the main road, Agua Dulce area where there are lots of dirt roads etc.) or hiking through ATV/Dirtbike-"country" like in the Tehachapi area (some nail traps were just removed by the police three days before I hiked through there - how sick does someone have to be if you bury nail traps on a hiking trail? That is pretty close to war... Whats next? Landmines? I guess there will always be people who think its their "right" to "play sheriff" and with doing so endanger others...) and I was thinking to myself: Why not allow bikes here? I have people driving around me right next to me with there stupid ATVs or Dirtbikes or SUVs and I walk and walk? Of course the whole Sierra area is a whole other thing, there you have "pure" wilderness, no roads for days and days, no cabins or alpine huts like in the Alps, there I can understand that you want to leave it open to foot "traffic" and nothing else. But all the rest?

But you convinced me now, reading all those posts, I guess it really is not possible to share e.g. the PCT with mountain bikers, no one would be happy, not the hikers, not the bikers... It is totally the opposite of what I experienced during my last year in the US: I met only nice people, on the PCT or elsewhere in Wilderness areas, by foot or on my bike, met super nice trail angels, met very nice hikers with whom I still communicate, met other bikers who gave me their number and invited me to join them on their next ride etc. Not one negative experience. So I guess I was lucky, could have been a lot worse.

@Greg Mushial, talking about "missing, or lacking, what's called manners, aka appropriate behavior". You really spoiled my Sunday morning with your rude email. This wasn't necessary and I dont know what your intentions were or what you wanted to achieve with that (besides spoiling my Sunday). Plus you misunderstood me: If someone puts a smiley (funny symbols like :-) after a sentence, like I did in my reply to Chuck:
"Anyway, thanks for the link, I'll try to promote it where I can :-)"

then that means joke or "not serious". If I would talk to Chuck directly I would maybe have smiled or tapped on his shoulder and said "thanks for the link, I am going to promote it where I can". Due to the electronic nature of email that social interaction is not possible and thats why Emotiocons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon) were invented to fill that gap. No need to get rude here... The point I was trying to make in the first place: You can't just post a link to a mailinglist like this and tell everyone to vote "no" because there are different people with different opinions and experiences. But I guess I was wrong and Chuck was right, under these circumstances you can... 

@Halfmile: I did have rain gear but after walking six or seven hours in a mixture of rain/snow I was nevertheless pretty wet and cold, rain from the outside and sweat from the inside. Soaked. My worst day on the PCT but looking back and reading it again its rather funny :-) By the way, I stopped writing my trailjournal (www.pct2010.org for those who are still interested) in early June because I thought no-one is reading it anyway and for my friends and family I'll just write them an email. So its funny to see that someone actually is reading is. I just dont understand what your point was when posting that email. Were you trying to imply that I am a "bad" or "not qualified for comment" person because I like bikes and dont like cars? Or because I rant about the public transport system in Souther California? I have never owned a car in my life and probably never will. When we lived in LA last year my wife bought a car but she used it to commute to work so basically when she left the house my son and had to use either public transport (not really existent in Topanga) or bikes or our feet to get somewhere. There are tons of things I could rant about when talking about courtesy of car drivers in LA traffic towards bikes, missing public transport, kids getting driven by car to school every day instead of using their feet or bikes (out of about 300 kids I think my son was the only one who had to walk to school - but we have exactly the same problems here in Switzerland, even though kids get fatter and fatter they dont walk, they get driven to school by car, totally absurd in my opinion), but that was not the point here.

Bye
Joel




___________________________________________
Joël Fisler - joel at fisler.ch - http://blog.fisler.ch

HOME:	Hegibachstrasse 20, 8032 Zürich
PHONE:	+41 43 4998365 oder "joelfisler" (Skype)
CHAT:	fisler at mac.com (Messenger & iChat)
___________________________________________