Trail user groups

So far its’ likely glaringly obvious that I’m lacking in knowledge with regards to the ‘roadie’ side of things… The simple fact of the matter is that I haven’t been on a road bike since I was a teenager, so I’m not much one to speak to the genera. Instead, I get my kicks out of the dirt; digging in it, massaging boulders out of the way, adding ‘flow’ to every corner, straightaway and landing. I love that ‘Zen’ feeling one gets when they can sense the exact amount of force that the tire’s contact-patch will withstand before it breaks loose, how fast and far one can lean into a corner, ‘feeling’ the slippage of the knobbies as you press to the limits of what physics/traction will allow. I’m also a big believer in shared trail use. Its all too easy for us to simply discount other trail users offhand as we too rarely see them on the routes in the forest. I used to think that way as well – it was a matter of “these are bike trails” and that was that, hikers, dirt-bikers, equestrians, naturalists and even wildlife were looked upon quizzically.

The summer of 2008 changed all of that. I started writing a book to catalogue as many Okanagan Valley trails as possible. At first, I thought that there were surely a couple of mountain-bikers that I could query and I’d have all of the trails down pat… (stifle your laughter). I sincerely assumed that there would be a small handful of bike gurus who would look into their mental oracles and pull out all of the answers. My eye-opener came when I started asking questions… Turns out that there are very damn few bike-trail-gurus; in fact, the reality of the situation is that there are a great many folks from all walks of life who each know a little bit of a specific area, generally the acreage near their homes or some spots where they spent time as kids – which makes perfect sense. It also turns out that the deepest wells of knowledge were to be found in hiking and dirt-biking groups. Yes, “those guys”, the ones with the fiddly walking poles and their alter-egos; the folks with noisy engines and a bad rap. The hikers also tended to be retired folks, what we might call ‘senior citizens’. From what I can gather, they have a lot of time on their hands and tend to wander the mountains a hell of a lot. They also have the been on this earth a heck of a lot longer then most of us; hence, more time to cover ground. At first hiking groups weren’t so keen about this ‘mountain-biker’ asking so many questions, but once they saw that I wasn’t out to desecrate their trail systems, and had proven to them that I had maintenance and stewardship foremost in mind, they opened up to me, sharing their wealth of knowledge. In fact, their catalogue of trails is jaw-dropping – these old cats have one or more (generally multiple), trails up and down pretty much every peak you’ll see in every direction within 20Km of Penticton! Since getting to know the three main hiking groups in the area (The Penticton Outdoors Club, The Outdoors Adventurers and the Naramata Woodwackers), I too have been hiking a lot this summer. Its a great sport and allows one to slow down and really give the trails a serious cleanup.

Dirt-bikers have the capability to cover massive ground in a day. Heck, they can traverse more terrain in two hours than I can in an entire weekend on mountain bike. Furthermore, it turned out that not all of them are “trail-thrashing hyenas” as I had previously assumed :-) Sure there are a few bad apples, but every type of group has that problem. What I discovered is that many of them are responsible for the creation of some of the valley’s longest, most well maintained trail networks. It makes sense if you think about it; they have the ability to go places in hours that we couldn’t go in days. They have the horsepower to haul in large tools and the weight to pack down trails. I learned of some of the coolest trails in the valley from several local dirt bikers. On the other hand, I had to smile when some of them wouldn’t part with trail knowledge because they felt that if Mt. bikers knew about certain trails, we would ‘commandeer & claim them’, thus disallowing dirt-bikers from using them in the future; what they call “button-lip trails”. I had never considered their side of the story before… My best luck was had with dirt-bike riders who were also mountain-bike riders; they ‘got it’ big-time and were more than willing to share trail knowledge with me from the get-go.

What am I driving at with this wandering diatribe? Its that we have to embrace the concept of shared trail usage. We’ll learn about a heck of a lot more cool places to ride if we befriend and form dialogues with our fellow user-groups, rather than see them as using “our trails”. I haven’t even touched upon my discussions with equestrians, birders, environmentalists, skidoo clubs etc., but you get the idea. Share and encourage sharing; you'll learn a heck of a lot more in the process; I did.

Andrew D.