YOUR AD HERE »

Letter: No bikes in our wilderness

Are you kidding? The Sustainable Trails Coalition wants to ruin our pristine but overcrowded U.S. Forest Service wilderness areas. Teddy Roosevelt would be turning over in his grave! Our beautiful Colorado high-country wilderness is a place where everyone can take a much-needed break from our fast-moving world by enjoying a walking hike or an enjoyable walking horseback ride. The principal word is “walking.” Peaceful walks in the wilderness are good for one’s soul. Can you imagine Snowmass Creek Trail being inundated with mountain bikes making daily trips to Snowmass Lake, up and back in one day? Our wilderness is the last bastion of moderately undisturbed, wild parts of our country. Our Forest Service forests are the only place where mountain bikes, motorized vehicles and chain saws cannot be used.

I applaud Mike Pritchard of the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association and the National Mountain Bike Association for not supporting this grab at our last protected wild places. After all, the Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association has extensive plans to develop a maze of trails across the 9,100 acres on the Crown, which is all the land just below Mount Sopris between Emma and Carbondale.

Isn’t this enough? The Roaring Fork Mountain Bike Association is also developing many new trails for bikes around Glenwood Springs. It seems to me that something should be left for hikers and equestrians to enjoy.



Holly McLain

Carbondale