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Illegal Trail Builders Ruin It For Mountain Bikers Everywhere
This is the title of an interesting peice from singletracks.com:
http://www.singletracks.com/blog/trail-advocacy/...
The writer says, "...renegade mountain bikers had secretly cut up to 30 miles of trails... Despite having 255 miles of trail access in national forests around Tahoe, that isn’t enough for the free-riders."
These guys overseas have 255 miles (410km) of local trails, and I'd assume much of this would be dedicated to MTB. Looking at our own back yard, we have 187km of trails (this includes some, known illegal trails) and only the recent action at Manly Dam makes around 2km of them dedicated for MTB riding.
The writer goes on, "On the spectrum of things that are bad for the reputation of our sport, building illegal trails has to be one of the worst (if not the worst) things we can do. So if you’re thinking about putting a shovel to dirt this spring on land you don’t own or have permission to use, give us all a break and volunteer with your local club to improve existing trails."
You have to agree with this and that the only way forward is by doing things the legal way. It's a nice idea to channel energy into clubs, but the issue here is that our local clubs don't have the authority to maintain trails so in reality there is no outlet for those wanting to do the right thing.
So while I completely agree that illegal building is damaging, local authorities need to look overseas and realise that in order to prevent it they must engage local riders. What this also shows is that no matter what utopian trail network that exists, sadly there will always be a rogue element (100% compliance is an unrealistic goal), but that the majority of riders will pitch in to undo any damage rogues may do given the chance.
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What's needed is trail networks that cater for the board range of riding styles.
250M of basic fire roads are no use to series XC riders. 250M of XC trail is no good for DHers. 250M of DH trails are no good fro beginners
If you have a bunch of local free riders and you offer them 250M of Xc stuff it's like telling the F1 series they can use the dirt rally trails already provided
I agree with the above, but i always cringe when we start demanding that we have facilities built for us. Just because we buy expensive toys doesn't automatically mean that a council should build us a facility to use them on. Said purchase also don't give us the right to build illegally either. DH and FR are always going to have trouble getting council permission to build tracks because of the percieved inherent danger of the sport and percieved impact on the surrounding land. Jeez its hard enough keeping the Dam open
everywhere else in the world, and even Australia, so what makes us so different?...DH is a major worldwide sport, the environmental impacts are minimal if built correctly.
There are inherent dangers in every sport (Surfing,Footy,Skating and so on).
As Rob Says, If the need is there, which it obviously is, as we can see by the amount of use the local DH,FR,XC and DJ spots get, then it indeed is the responsibility of the Council to provide a Legal outlet for the legitimate recreational pursuit, regardless of discipline.