In Federal legislation proposed by Colorado Representative Mark Udal and Colorado Senator Ken Salazar, 250,000 acres of Rocky Mountain National Park will be designated as Federal Wilderness Areas, meaning mountain biking would be completely banned within the park boundaries. But after negotiations between the National Park Service, the Wilderness Society, the Headwaters Trail Alliance and the International Mountain Bicycling Assocations, the bill was revised to exclude the East Shore Trail, a 6 1/2 mile route that runs south from Grand Lake along the western edge of Rocky Mountain National Park.
Although mountain bikes are not currently allowed on RMNP trails, Park Service rules do allow for the possibility of mountain bikes. The IMBA has been working with local, state, and federal agencies for a bike trail connecting the villages of Grand Lake and Granby, and the East Shore Trail is the option most people are talking about.
Read more in the Rocky Mountain News.
2 comments:
R, you need to post the email addresses of these two politicians and let me know, I'll crosspost on my blogs as well. This is nothing more than an assault on cycling rights and they need to get a flood of email from the cyclists out there! After my featuring on the MSN homepage as well as What's your Story, my readership is way up! If I can't use this new popularity to support my sport, than something would be wrong, eh? Get with me and we can see about a unified effort as well as a few other blogs in the ring!
I thought under federal law, mountain bikes were not allowed on national park trails, period, only roads designated for all vehcile traffic. How would a wilderness designation change this?
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