Only a report – and not mine. There is also much illegal trail
building by mountain bikers. Read the following report and get a clue that not
all is well when it comes to multiple use of the trails.
“Mountain bikers go off trail after asking the equestrians if
it is OK to ride through on a trail in O'Neill Regional Park. Communication is
key to sharing trails.
By DAVID WHITING / STAFF COLUMNIST
More people
than ever are flocking to Orange County’s trails, with disputes and body contact
rising among equestrians, mountain bikers, trail runners, birders and
hikers.
Battles have become so bad, at least three organizations recently
formed in an effort to bring peace to the outback.
Saturday mornings are
the worst period. Groups of hikers step aside or stand their ground while
mountain bikers zoom by on narrow trails in Whiting Ranch Wilderness
Park.
Above the land side of Crystal Cove State Park, known as “El Moro,”
hundreds of people descend spacious fire roads, yet often leave little or no
room for mountain bikers.
In Chino Hills State Park, bewildered families
with young children try to sort out what it means when a cyclist shouts, “On
your left.”
In 2008, county parks had 10.7 million visitors. Last year’s
record saw 13.8 million people.
Outdoor enthusiasts go so far as to cut
illegal trails. Some paths wind through protected habitat or private land. But
it’s complicated. These trails often connect official trails to one another,
allowing longer excursions that avoid dangerous road traffic.
If this
sounds like mountain bikers are the only ones to blame, they aren’t. Every group
has a few bad apples.
Several weeks ago, a mountain biker on Borrego
Trail in Whiting Ranch slowed to pass a hiker. The man on foot could have made
room, but didn’t. The cyclist pedaled in brush, lost his balance and tipped into
the hiker.
Both went down.
Making matters trickier is that the
illegal yet long-used trails are being closed by developers and government
agencies.
TRAIL ETIQUETTE
With OC Parks reporting a total 682
miles of trails – 167 miles devoted to riding and hiking – trail wars seem to
make no sense.
But large chunks of Orange County’s natural world are
nestled in urban areas and have become increasingly popular. As county
Supervisor Todd Spitzer, who oversees canyon areas, points out, “People are much
more aware of the need to exercise, and they take getting outdoors more
seriously.”
In the 1990s, it was rare to see groups of mountain bikers
and hikers on local trails. That remains true in remote wilderness areas, miles
from trailheads. But on shorter trails with easy access, there are traffic
jams.
Trail runners thread their way between hikers. Mountain bikers
frequently grumble about other mountain bikers who stop and block
paths.
Terry Hanly helps with the Anaheim Hills Hiking Club. She and her
husband, Tim, usually hike in Santiago Oaks Regional Park and say there has been
a marked increase in the past year in the number of visitors, especially
mountain bikers.
Many mountain bikers slow down, ring a bell and offer a
“thank you” when the Hanlys step aside to create more room. But there have been
times when Hanly had to leap off the trail to avoid a mountain biker out of
control.
“They have the attitude,” Tim Hanly says, “that they own the
road and that hikers are a nuisance.”
With support ranging from Audubon
of California to the Sierra Club, Safe Trails Coalition was born in Newport
Beach four years ago. One of its goals is “to address and change unauthorized
and unsafe trail activities that threaten public safety and damages our
parklands.”
The coalition, as part of its mission, hopes to curb “trail
misuse and abuse such as use of the parks at night, illegal trail cutting,
creation of paintball courses.”
“Hikers, bikers and equestrians, runners,
birders, students, families, dog walkers, have potentially conflicting needs,”
says Melanie Schlotterbeck, coalition coordinator. Of the coalition’s work, she
says, “Education is the most important piece, like how to pass safely by
somebody’s horse.”
The rules are clear: Everybody yields to equestrians;
mountain bikers yield to everyone else.
ILLEGAL TRAILS
On a
recent backpacking trip through Chino Hills State Park, Schlotterbeck reports,
she discovered seven illegal trails.
“There’s a huge amount of
biodiversity in Orange County,” Schlotterbeck says. “When people create their
own trails, there’s a lack of knowledge, respect and understanding. It’s not
good placement; there are erosion issues.”
A month ago, I unknowingly
tried to mountain bike one of those illegal trails. I rode from the Ladera Ranch
fire station off Antonio Parkway up the Ladera Ridge Trail. I started to turn
left at the top but ran into a locked steel gate.
Several mountain bikers
joked that the route had been closed so developers could save the wilderness by
building homes. But just as the reasons for building trails are complicated, so
is balancing recreation, development and protecting the environment.
An
OC Parks news release explains that OC Parks and the Rancho Mission Viejo Co.
agreed to close the route because of environmental damage. The closure turned
into a cause célebre.
Chris Messina lives in Ladera Ranch, is a mountain
biker and decided to try to unlock the gate not with force but diplomacy. His
work signals possible compromises for dozens of illegal trails.
More than
70 mountain bikers and hikers gathered last month for the first meeting of
Messina’s South OC Trail Coalition. “Recently we’ve seen several areas of trail
closed in and around the Ladera Ranch,” he wrote on the group’s Facebook site,
“Las Flores, Rancho Santa Margarita, Wagon Wheel and Coto de Caza.
“In an
effort to understand why the trails have been closed,” Messina wrote, “the
community needs to learn the history.”
A few days ago, Messina said his
coalition is making progress, and he is hopeful the gate will be unlocked in the
months to come. “The tone of the conversation with the county is positive and if
I had to summarize, I’d say they are looking for ways to help.”
“When
people cut new trails,” OC Parks Public Information Officer Marisa O’Neil told
me, “it makes it more difficult for us to keep existing trails open, or to add
trails. It sets the whole process two steps back.”
O’Neil added,
“Increased trail use means a healthier population but it also means that as land
managers, we have to take a close look at how the trails are being used and by
whom.”
To help resolve these issues, OC Parks two months ago created a
Trails Subcommittee. July 8 is the deadline to step up.”