Banned in the USA: Part 1. Mar 18, You must login to Pinkbike. Don't have an account? Sign up. There is no environmental merit to banning bikes. Many opponents of bikes in Wilderness acknowledge this. Bikes, they argue instead, simply don't belong. This is less an environmental thing and more a social thing. Hikers and horseback riders don't like mountain bikers.
It's as simple as that. There are, after all, several million more mountain bikers in the United States than back in Though still outnumbered by hikers, the demographics are shifting.
This shift in policy has accelerated the rate at which mountain bikers in the United States are getting kicked to the curb. Ten years ago you could have shrugged off this whole Wilderness issue.
It's rare for members of Congress to stop throwing poo at one another, vote a new Wilderness into being and then get the presidential sign-of. You need look no further than Montana, where mountain bikers are on track to lose access to nearly miles of singletrack within a decade's time.
The loss of key backcountry singletrack routes outside of Sun Valley, Idaho, this past August, spread the pain further. At present, the Forest Service is considering Wilderness additions in North Carolina's famed Pisgah National Forest--there's hope that the Forest Service will consider an IMBA-backed plan that would preserve access to Pisgah's famed mountain bike trails, but nothing is guaranteed.
