9-5-07 // Online Exclusive: Bike Ban Threatens CDT Singletrack

A popular MTB trailhead on the Continental Divide

It’s a sunny August Saturday, and the 9 am van shuttling bikers up Monarch Pass is packed beyond capacity. “We’ve been slammed,” says our driver Seth Ratering, who works for High Valley Bike Shuttle in Poncha Springs, Colorado. “Everybody’s trying to ride the Crest while they still can, before it gets closed to bikes.”

Colorado’s Monarch Crest is one of mountain biking’s legendary rides, an above-treeline epic on a segment of the Continental Divide Trail, which hugs the Rockies’ ridgeline for 3,100 miles from Canada to New Mexico. But the entire CDT—including the Monarch Crest and other classic Rocky Mountain rides—could become off-limits to mountain bikers under a new proposed directive from the U.S. Forest Service.

Already more than 6,000 mountain bikers have weighed in against the proposal, says Mark Eller of the International Mountain Bike Association. The Forest Service is accepting public comment on the proposed directive until October 12.

Announced in June, the directive seeks to establish hiking and horseback riding as the primary uses on the Continental Divide Trail. Bikes would not be banned outright. In fact, the Forest Service and the Continental Divide Trail Alliance, a private organization that supports the CDT, both claim to favor bike access on some CDT sections.

But the directive does establish mountain bikes as a non-preferred use—and signals likely trail closures for cyclists should the proposal be finalized. “It goes out of its way, in our opinion, to look critically at bike use on the trail,” says Eller.

Forest Service officials say the directive will help the agency manage the trail. When Congress established the CDT as a National Scenic Trail in 1978, it made no preferences or exclusions regarding recreational uses. Hikers, horseback riders, mountain bikers, and in some areas, motorized ATV users now access the CDT.

“As a number of different users come on board, we need to try to define the primary uses of the trail,” says Steve Sherwood, Director of Recreation, Heritage, and Wilderness Resources for the U.S Forest Service. He says that other National Scenic Trails prioritize hiker and horse use, and that the CDT should follow suit.

Yet mountain bikers currently outnumber hikers and horsemen on some CDT sections. The rolling, high alpine tundra of the Monarch Crest is far less popular with equestrians than cyclists. And on Rabbit Ears Pass, where the CDT skirts a series of meadow-rimmed lakes, hikers and cyclists hit the trail in roughly equal numbers.

Sherwood insists that user conflicts did not prompt the directive, but says “we’re looking out ahead, and seeing the possibility of user conflicts.”

The CDTA’s current conflict is with motorized users. According to Paula Ward, co-founder and co-Executive Director of the CDTA, her group supports the directive because it promises to evict ATV’s. “We want to see a continuous, non-motorized trail,” she says. “We do not oppose mountain biking on the CDT, where it’s appropriate.”

“We agree that mountain bikes are an appropriate use in appropriate places on the CDT,” says Sherwood. Just what “appropriate” means—and who decides—isn’t clear. Under the directive, it would be up to local land managers to ban or allow mountain bikes in their region.

But since local managers are likely to be steered by overarching directives, “we want to combat directives that say mountain biking is not a preferred use,” Eller says. “IMBA isn’t asking for access to segments of the CDT in designated Wilderness. But there are many non-Wilderness sections where non-motorized users can get along and mountain biking should continue.”

Sherwood emphasizes that comments filed with the Forest Service before October 12 will be critical to the agency’s final decision on the directive. He says hand-written letters carry more weight than form letters.

File your opinion with the Forest Service. Then get out and ride the CDT. Because if you don’t notch its classics now, next year may be too late.

View IMBA’s position HERE

View the proposed directive HERE

Mail written comments to the Forest Service at:
US Forest Service, attention CDNST
740 Simms St.
Golden, CO 80401-4720

Or e-mail comments to: cdnst@fs.fed.us.

Help keep the CDT open to mountain bikers!