[pct-l] What do you say to mountain bikers on the PCT

[JPL]

One quick and easy thing to do is to not remove down trees.  Hikers can 
easily step over them.  As can (I guess) horses.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Barry Teschlog
Sent: Sunday, October 27, 2013 3:10 PM
To: PCT-L
Subject: [pct-l] What do you say to mountain bikers on the PCT

Tim said:
"Say what you will. They don't care. They're prepared to be challanged. The 
ones that do care aren't on the trail in the first place."

Response:
This hits the nail on the head.  MTBers that poach simply don't care - they 
show that they don't care by their actions.  They care not about rules, nor 
of the environment, nor of other users - they care about nothing other than 
themselves in their selfish pursuits of taking over others hard work for 
their own purposes (and ruining it for the current users in the process).

So, the real question is how to deal with people that only care about their 
own enjoyment.  Simple, take the joy away from them.  They poach the PCT 
because it's fun to poach.  If the PCT wasn't fun to poach, they wouldn't.

What makes a trail fun to ride?  Flow, in a word.

So, to halt MTBers from poaching the PCT, there needs to be a way to break 
up the flow, the fun of riding it, without affecting the experience for 
hikers and equestrians (to any large extent).

Flowly trail is winding and twisting, with smooth tread that is totally 
rideable and constant radius climbing turns (in lieu of hard, sharp 
switchbacks). A trail that one can ride, and ride, and ride....without 
having to stop because it's too steep, or too rough, or there are unrideable 
features.   That also sounds mostly like prime hiking and equestrian trail, 
which it is.

HOWEVER, feet can step over some obstacles with barely a notice that give 
wheels all kinds of problems and will force a poacher to stop, dismount, 
hike their bike over the obstacle, then remount to continue the ride, or 
crash and be physically halted while (foolishly) trying to ride over said 
obstacle (much as a truck would crash & be physically halted if trying to 
drive through the bollards that surround Federal buildings these days - see 
how this works MTB clowns - a passive barrier, to be effective, must 
physically make it difficult to impossible for the proscribed party to pass, 
yet allow others to - pedestrians can walk between the bollards without 
difficulty, for example).  This (force a stop, dismount, hike-a-bike, mount, 
continue) defines breaking up the flow.  No flow, no fun.

If poachers are having to stop at unrideable obstacles often enough, it's 
simply not fun and they'll go elsewhere.  Perhaps poachers would even begin 
engaging in positive behavior, such as building trails that are open to 
MTB's in full compliance with NEPA, the land managers wishes, etc.....But I 
put the probability of that at vanishingly small, since IMBA and the poacher 
clowns seemingly aren't interested in the hard work it would take to 
actually build and maintain trails by the book, rather they seemingly always 
take the lazy way and attempt to do a hostile takeover of the trails of 
other user groups.  The sad thing here is had IMBA, et al taken the positive 
step of planning, advocating for and taking a lead in building a parallel 
MTB route to the PCT, I suspect the hiking groups would have been 
supportive.  Instead, IMBA and the MTB clowns chose to start a war.

I await the day when there are design guidelines from the USFS for anti-bike 
barriers on the PCT.  You can bet the trail crews in the poacher affected 
areas will be installing them with a passion.
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