Bush to open national parks to mountain bikes

Dear Mr. President,
Please take the Ledge Trail on your bike.
Damn, why is this necessary?!?! There are plenty of trails to ride bikes on.
Just look a little bit and find them.

Is it possible for the park manager to take the wilderness designation
off of the area around a trail so that a bike can go on it?
I hope not.

Also, I hate when they write articles like this because it tends to
end up being "you can ride your mountain bike on all National Park trails".

Anyway, I doubt much will change for SEKI or Yosemite.



Post Edited (10-16-08 07:51)

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Everything I know I learned from

The category of "mechanized vehicles" aren't allowed in any wilderness areas under the National Wilderness Preservation System. Even in non-wilderness, I shudder to think of what happens if bikes are even allowed on a trail as crowded as the paved part of the John Muir Trail.

It might be possible for bikes to ride down trails in places like the Grand Canyon which doesn't have any designated wilderness from what I hear. Still - that seems rather dangerous. Didn't someone get arrested for trying that?

Point Reyes National Seashore seems to have a reasonable accommodation for bikes. One can ride a bike down the Bear Valley Trail, but that's essentially a wide fire road. There's plenty of room to pass. I'm not sure how that fits into the NPS plan though. Point Reyes has somewhat of a strange deal going on with commercial farming activities.

Usually, fire roads in NPs are open to bicycles. In Yellowstone, there are several old roads no longer used by motor vehicles that permit bikes. Some Utah parks, notably Canyonlands, allow vehicles on some spare roads that even include 4WD vehicles.

I don't think bikes belong on foot trails. I hope this does not permit bikes on any narrow pathway in Yosemite or elsewhere.

Grand Teton is constructing a brand new long-distance bike trail that parallels the Park Road. The miles-long graded gouge they created in the prairie there was awful, but hopefully the margins can revegetate quickly after they pave the pathway.

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Wilderness forever,
Bruce Jensen