June 2014 - Parks & Recreation - 52

International Mountain Bicycling Association

M O U N TA I N B I K I N G T R A I L S

Mountain biking has undergone a significant shift in recent years. What was once seen
as a fringe pursuit is now a widely practiced family-friendly sport.

Although " Pedal-Driven " focuses
primarily on the federally managed
Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests near Leavenworth, Washington,
illegal trail building is a problem land
managers deal with on federal, state
and local levels nationwide. The conflict continues in many areas, with
mountain bikers dodging park employees as they cut down trees and
build jumps for their sport, and park
employees becoming weary of these
recreation enthusiasts tearing up the
land and creating more work. But
in other locales, park managers and
their local mountain biking communities have been able to come together to develop truly elaborate and exciting trail systems, much better than
either side would be able to develop
alone.
Building Bridges and
Alleviating Concerns
A few mountain bikers, concerned
about the closure of trails to cyclists,
formed the International Mountain

Parks & Recreation

Bicycling Association (IMBA) in
1988 as the sport of mountain biking began to really take off. That first
year, IMBA created and marketed
its " Six Rules of the Trail, " which
outlined the common rules mountain bikers would need to follow in
order to ride on public lands. " Land
managers throughout the U.S. (and
abroad) started posting these rules on
trailhead signs and in trail brochures,
which helped them get comfortable
with the idea of allowing mountain
bikers on public trails, " according to
IMBA's website.
From the start, IMBA knew that
open communication, compliance
with established rules at trails,
and strong volunteer turnouts at
trail-building and maintenance
events would be the best ways to
foster good relationships with public land managers. Since then, the
group has made continual strides in
establishing mountain biking as a
legitimate recreational activity, and
the sport owes much of its current

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success to IMBA's efforts. IMBA
has also worked hard to gather reputable research on mountain biking
in order to dispel misconceptions
about the sport.
" We've been quite successful
in documenting that the impacts
mountain biking has on the natural
world are not significantly different than other trail activities, " says
Mark Eller, IMBA's director of communications. " It's pretty demonstrable and well-accepted to recreation
ecologists that mountain biking has
more or less the same impact as hiking, and probably slightly less than
equestrian use. The biggest determining factor in how much the natural world is going to be affected is
how the trail is designed and built. "
Park managers may be interested
to learn that mountain biking enthusiasts often have considerable
knowledge about sustainable trail
design that minimizes erosion while
also creating exciting riding conditions. As the sport has developed,
several trail-building companies
have formed as well, and they often
work in concert with park agencies
and large groups of volunteers from
the mountain biking community to
establish sustainable, well-planned
and lively trail systems.
Aside from conservation concerns,
land managers also often express
fears that allowing mountain bikers
on multiuse trails will disrupt other
trail users' experiences. " That's a little harder to disprove, because then
you're into people's perception, "
Eller says. However, " we actually
have some sociological research that
shows consistently that people's perceptions of conflict on trails are much
higher than actual rates of reported
incidents. " To reduce the possibility of conflict, IMBA recommends
park agencies separate usage across
trails individualized for each activity

June 2014 - Parks & Recreation

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