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[pct-l] bicyclists, horses, trails



My own preference would be to have, where appropriate - outside of
national parks and wilderness areas -  as many as four separate parallel
routes for hikers, bicyclists, equestrians, and bikers/snowmobilers -
the last at some considerable distance measured in miles, I hope.
I wonder if the
CDT is going to develop this way; it seems there isn't one route in lots of
places.   Parts of the AT look like they will always be hiker-only.

The PCT around Crater Lake is already partly like this (the bicyclist/
biker route is the paved road, there is a hiker-only trail and a
horses-mainly route on old fire roads.    Eagle Creek can be thought of
as a hiker-only route parallel to the horses-mainly PCT on the Benson Plateau.
North of Sierra City, and even more so west of Ashland, the trail parallels
public roads.    It wouldn't hurt much to declare those roads part of
a bicycle/biker PC route.    This sort of approach would mainly apply to
federal and state lands; getting further easements from private property
owners is hard enough for the statutory route and probably impossible
for bicycles and bikers.

The statutory PCT, somewhat government-funded (probably less in the future)
would probably remain the constructed trail for hikers and equestrians as
envisioned in the original legislation.     When there is a separate hiker-only
route, I'd think it would truly be a route rather than a constructed trail,
mostly in alpine areas, much like some parts of the CDT.
A lot of the OR and WA PCT has a parallel route,
namely the old OST and CCT, which is usually lower with more forest, more
water, more bugs, longer seasons, milder weather, and less fragility.

The question is whether another way to do the Pacific Crest Trail would be
good enough for these other constituencies or whether the temptation to
grab for the forbidden fruit would still be too strong.
I noticed when I was working on San Diego county sections in early
2001 that there seemed to be bicycle tracks
on much of the trail from Campo to Hwy 74.
There are irresponsible hikers, irresponsible equestrians, irresponsible
bicyclists, and irresponsible bikers.     The question is what's the
percentage in each population, and that has to be magnified by the relative
harm one irresponsible individual can inflict.

Would there might be more of
a sense of ownership if the bicyclists and bikers maintained their own
routes?