Bikes in the (Non) Wilderness

According to an October 29 story in the Great Falls Tribune, a new crop of National Forest travel plans will ban mountain bikes from wilderness study areas and certain other non-wilderness areas in Region 1 of the Forest Service (Montana and parts of Idaho). Fat-tire bicycles have been prohibited in areas established as wilderness by the Wilderness Act of 1964 as long as the bikes have been around, since about 1980. But the new travel plans will exclude mountain bikers from certain areas where until now they've been permitted to ride — in other words, areas in which they have a history of use.

"Previous to these new travel plans, bicycles were treated a lot like horses or hikers," writes reporter Michael Babcock in the Tribune; "they could go just about anywhere as long it was not in a designated wilderness area — even in wilderness study areas."

Babcock then quotes Region 1 wilderness program leader Chris Ryan, who's stationed at the region's headquarters kitty-corner from Adventure Cycling's offices in Missoula, as saying: "Why would we tell the public we think these areas are the best of the best, the cream of the crop, but continue to allow uses that ultimately will be excluded?"

Babcock writes that the new travel plan for the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest will exclude mountain bikes from almost 400 miles of singletrack trails they've previously had access to. There's another 23 miles of trails in the Gallatin National Forest near Bozeman, approximately 74 miles in the Bitterroot National Forest south of Missoula, 139 miles in northwest Montana's Kootenai National Forest, and about 79 miles in north Idaho's Clearwater National Forest.

The International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) and the Montana Mountain Bike Alliance have appealed the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge Forest's new plan, which contains the most miles of trails in question.

As far as we've determined, the new travel plans won't affect the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in Montana, as it predominantly follows unpaved roads, rather than trails.

photo by M. McCoy

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BIKING WITHOUT BORDERS is posted every Monday by Michael McCoy, Adventure Cycling’s field editor, and highlights a little bit of this or a little bit of that — just about anything, as long as it’s related to traveling by bicycle.