The fact that Outside Magazine chose to run a piece on trails and trail advocacy in the March issue called “The Trailblazer” speaks to the popularity of trail based recreation and fitness. In not too many words, the article presented one snapshot of what has been happening in the world of trails since the inception of the mountain bike. Not that trails weren’t important before, but mountain biking, more than anything, brought trails into an entirely new realm.
This whole history has played out in the past 30 years or so and the evolution hit upon in the Outside article has been remarkable. The story of this evolution of trails on the public lands around Gunnison has played out in similar fashion in countless other places all around the globe; anywhere there were mountain bikers passionate about riding trails. Some areas, such as Colorado and Utah, are blessed with an abundance of public lands so the trail networks proliferated on these holdings. In other places, the trails flourished on private lands. Whichever, controversy and conflict followed.
Also pertinent was the population of an area and the preexistence of trails and the users of these trails prior to mountain biking, primarily walkers and equestrians. We had few (any?) user conflicts around Gunnison because there were no trails before mountain biking other than a couple of cow paths that had been ridden in by motorcycles. As the article mentions, the public lands close to Gunnison were a neglected dumping ground, the domain of range cattle, kids partying, 4×4’s and a handful of motorcyclists. Mt. Tamalpais, near San Francisco, however, was an entirely different story: a state park, miles of established trails and lots of hikers. A huge storm waiting to happen, just add mountain bikers.
These two areas might represent the extremes and certainly many places are somewhere in between. Important to me is to provide more detail about the story of our area and how it has changed for the positive since those early days. The Outside article scratches the surface but there is so much more. Similar evolution is happening in countless other areas, too.
The bottom line here in the Gunnison Valley today is that trail users, including our freeriding community, and our land managers at the BLM, the Forest Service and the Division of Wildlife, have established effective working relationships and maintain consistent and open dialogue. Do we always agree? Probably not. Have our local land managers made an effort to understand our disparate group of trail users? Absolutely. Have we as trail users been able to get our constituents to understand the perspective and the scope of what land managers must take into consideration while managing public lands? We’re working on it and making progress. More to come.
