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forest lands and multiple use

Can Missoula’s Mountain Bikers and the Forest Service Get Along?

By Dana Green, 4-12-06

It’s a beautiful spring day in Missoula – the perfect day for an early-season bike ride. But Dave Ryan, who would ordinarily be out on his bike in the warm sunshine, is instead sitting in a downtown coffee shop, talking about mountain biking instead of doing it.

The president of Mountain Bike Missoula, a cycling advocacy group, is holding a weathered, two-week-old newspaper article in his hand. Ryan, an attorney with graying hair and an athletic build, doesn't look like the typical stereotype of a mountain biker – a teenager illicitly building big jumps in the woods. But Ryan, a Missoula native, has been biking the trails around here for 20-odd years, and knows his way around just about all of them. Ryan describes MBM members as an eclectic mix of middle-aged bikers and younger freeriders.

The reason for his frustration is the article in his hand: A month ago, the Forest Service warned local bikers in a terse letter to stay off the Blue Mountain National Recreation Trail, a nine-mile, scenic trail overlooking Missoula’s valley floor.

Following the letter, an article in the Missoulian reiterated the letter’s warning – noting that a hefty $175 fine would be slapped on anyone caught on two wheels on the trail.

The sudden announcement took the local mountain bike community by surprise. But for a few years, their relationship with officials on the Lolo National Forest’s Missoula Ranger District has been on the rocks. In their view, the increased fines and abrupt letter were typical communication in a string of conflicts between local land managers and mountain bikers.

The trail in question is part of Blue Mountain Recreation Area – a quick-stop, natural mecca for Missoula urbanites, with more than 41 miles of trail on the western edge of a growing town. On any given day, there is a ragtag mix of horses, dogs and their owners, mountain bikers, and off-road motorcycles on Blue Mountain’s rolling hills.

The trail closure didn’t take the bikers by surprise – the National Rec Trail has been officially closed to bikes since 1986, when the Blue Mountain Recreation Plan first came out. But as the sport has become more popular, mountain bikers increasingly found their way up to the trail. For one, currently it’s the only access to the top of the mountain and its fabulous views. It is also one of the few highly technical trails, with bone-jarring rocks and gnarled root systems, in the entire recreation area.

Before the letter’s arrival, mountain bikers thought they had opened a constructive dialogue with Forest Service officials about opening the trail to bikes. Just two months ago, Mountain Bike Missoula leaders invited Missoula District Ranger Maggie Pittman to a meeting to discuss the planned construction of a new trail – which Pittman had proposed – which would branch from Deadman Ridge in the Hayes Creek area up to the Blue Mountain lookout, to finally provide access to bikers to the top of the mountain.

With Forest Service permission, MBM planned to help design the trail and help with upkeep, leaving in more challenging features instead of smoothing over every rock and root.

But bikers also questioned why the Rec Trail was closed to bikes in the first place. They insisted there were few bike-horse conflicts on the rocky trail –- in fact, they said they saw few horses on the trail most of the time.

Ryan said Pittman listened to the group and said she would look into it – then they got the letter in the mail.

“We were taken aback,” Ryan said. “There was (a sense) the Forest Service might tell you one thing, then turn around and do something completely different.”

In Ryan’s view, Pittman, who took over as district ranger in 2004, did not understand when she started in the job what mountain bikers were looking for in a trail system.

Now, Ryan has one overriding goal – to start opening the lines of communication again and start working together with Forest Service officials to improve trails and access around Missoula – and create trails that will draw mountain bikers to the area instead of sending them headed elsewhere.

“I think we both feel we don’t understand each other,” Ryan says. “(But) I do think we have a dialogue now that might be productive.”

Ryan and Pittman sat down this week to discuss their concerns – a big first step, according to both parties.

In a telephone interview, Pittman insisted she was out of town when the newspaper contacted the ranger district – and that she never intended the letter to be inflammatory.

Of course, there’s a backstory here. MBM members insist they had an understanding with Pittman’s predecessor, former District Ranger Don Carroll, that they could have input on trail design and use – and they were free to create technical features using natural materials. When Carroll asked them a few years ago to reveal all the trails they were using to create a thorough inventory of the entire trail network around Missoula, the bikers agreed – with the belief that the trails would largely remain unaltered.

Then Carroll left, and Pittman came in. In March 2005, Lolo forest officials issued a management decision on the three major rec areas around Missoula: Pattee Canyon, Blue Mountain and the Rattlesnake – affectionally known as “PBR” by trail wonks in the Forest Service.

Forest officials added more than 34 miles of user-created and non-system trails in PBR into the maintained system – a boon for mountain bikers already using those trails.

But Pittman, who had just started in the job, ordered the features for jumping, logs and technical turns removed from the Blue Mountain area using mechanized equipment.

The removal of the logs and other features “left some hard feelings,” Ryan says drily – an understatement for the outrage some younger riders felt.

“It was a huge mess,” he says. “The kids were really frustrated.”

The conflicts continued, as Forest Service officials removed downed logs and other features on a trail off Woods Gulch in the Rattlesnake area – only to find them back again the next day, according to Ryan.

“They went in and took it all out,” Ryan says. “Cyclists kept going back and putting them in again. It would see-saw back and forth.”

For many MBM members, the final straw came when a group volunteered to do trail restoration work by hand on Woods Gulch trail, a popular trail in the Rattlesnake area. After the work was completed, Forest Service officials brought in an excavator last fall to install a small wooden bridge – creating a wide, gullied-out road where there used to be a challenging trail.

Ryan shakes his head at the use of the mechanized equipment. “They’d destroyed the work we’d done in good faith,” he says. “It seemed wasteful and redundant.”

Relations between local mountain bikers and the Forest Service were at a low point last month, when Pittman’s controversial letter reached the hands of MBM members – adding further fuel to the fire.

Pittman, of course, has a different view of what she calls the “series of unfortunate events” over the past three years that has led to animosity between bikers and forest managers. Straightforward and direct, Pittman takes some blame for the communication breakdown – but also says the goal all along has been to expand Missoula's trail network – while trying to balance the needs of different users.

The features were removed on Blue Mountain in 2005 because she felt they were out of sync with the nature of the trails, because no environmental impact assessment had been conducted, and because there was no clear protocol for such structures on Forest Service land, Pittman said.

“My intent was to shore up our trail system,” she said. “There was no Forest Service standard at the time. The notion of building structures on public land is being discussed (all over), not just in Missoula.”

Regarding the excavation work on Woods Gulch, the excavator was brought in to install large bridge stringers that had been donated, Pittman said, with the intent that the vegetation would eventually grow back around the dug-up trail.

“The excavator clearly did some damage,” she said, acknowledging bikers felt “disenfranchised” after putting in volunteer hours there. "But I feel when that has a chance to grow back, folks will be happy with the work that was done there."

Pittman admitted that, in talking with local mountain bikers, she has learned a bit about where trail work could be done by hand to maintain the overgrown, natural terrain rather than treating older logging roads with a heavy hand.

“Many of our trail are old logging roads, 10 to 12 feet wide,” Pittman said. “But only three feet is being used as a trail. It looks like a trail, not a road. There (are) ways we can lessen our use of the mechanized equipment … we (plan) to talk more about that.”

In retrospect, Pittman believes communication could have been more clear over the last few years between her office and the mountain bike community.

“We stumbled a bit,” she said. “But I’m confident we can learn from that and move forward.”

Pittman is hoping to start with the new trail off Deadman Ridge on Blue Mountain: The new trail, she believes can be a showcase for how the Forest Service and mountain bikers can work together to design a trail and maintain it.

Right now, plans for the trail off Deadman Ridge call for including a spur trail leading to more advanced drops, log jumps, and other challenging terrain, according to Pittman. MBM members will be involved in the design – walking the trail with Forest Service trail managers and mark out the features they would like kept using GPS technology.

“They have helped us understand how you can use natural features,” she said. “I think we can find places we can do that. I’m hopeful we can build some trust between us – without the built structures I was opposed to.”

Ryan is optimistic that the Forest Service and mountain bikers in Missoula can work together to create challenging terrain – a partnership already forged in other Western states.

In Sedona, Ariz., Portland, and Sun Valley, Idaho, on the Sawtooth National Forest, Forest Service officials and local bike shops and clubs have teamed up to design and maintain large trail systems that draw advanced cyclists from all over the country, Ryan says.

In Sedona, volunteers have logged more than 40,000 hours of time in trail maintenance and restoration – work that relieves a thin Forest Service maintenance budget and helps give bikers, motorcyclists and other users a feeling of ownership and responsibility for local trails, Ryan believes.

Ryan is now hoping to recruit the Missoula area bike shops to help organize volunteer teams to “adopt” area trails. There are challenges to using volunteer labor, but Ryan believes the payoff could be less mechanized equipment on the trail and less damage, leaving agency resources available to expand Missoula’s trail system.

“It depends on both bikers and the Forest Service backing up promises we’ve made,” he said. “Hopefully we can work together to create something like Sun Valley. But we need to have sole responsibility. In the past, they would agree volunteers could take charge. And then the machines would come in and re-do it.”

Right now, Missoula doesn’t have much a reputation as a mountain bike town. There are other challenges besides the communication issues – many popular trails cross a patchwork of private land, primarily owned by Plum Creek Timber, with no legal easements established for bikers, hikers and other users. In addition, the dearth of camping opportunities near Missoula city limits is another challenge.

Despite past failures to work with Forest officials and other obstacles, Ryan remains hopeful that Missoula could become a regional biking destination in the future.

“It hasn’t worked yet,” he admitted. “But it could – I’m optimistic.”

For Pittman, juggling multiple use on popular recreation areas is a huge mandate for the Missoula Ranger District, and the Forest Service in general. Bringing diverse groups together to solve issues, as users want more technical and specialized trails, is just one challenge the agency is facing in the future.

“Missoula is a great place to be a showcase,” Pittman said. “The bottom line is we need to communicate. My feeling right now is we have a lot of opportunities to do that.”

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By Dana Green, 4-12-06 | comments (4) | email story | print story

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