scorched earth

mtn bike trail advocacy is a topic near and dear to my heart. my first go-round with it is pictured here. unfortunately, mtn biking in WI in general, and the raggedy band of "advocates" of the day in particular were on the receiving end.

there are around 50 state parks in WI, and near another 50 various forests, trails, woodlands and whathaveyou. in the early days of mtn biking ( indeed, since the inception of the parks ) the rule was simple regarding bikes in these parks: you could ride a bike wherever you wished, unless there was a sign saying not to. nice !!

well, no. in the early/mid 80's, the DNR put the word out that they were going to review, and possibly "clarify" that age-old rule. they kindly reached out to the mtn bike community, and asked us to collect data on which trails in which parks we thought were the best to ride, and which we would just as soon not ride. there weren't that many of us in those days - you almost knew everybody in the state who owned a mtn bike - we were just a bunch of mtn biking dirtbags, there was no WORBA or anything of the sort. but we called around, and got maps and stuff, and compiled our lists of trails and parks, and got them in to the DNR. we waited with anticipatation to see which trails we would "get" and exactly how the new rule was going to "clarify" what seemed to be an already straight-forward enuf rule . . . . . .

uhhhhh, yeah. in the end, the "clarification" of the rule was in a fact a 180 degree reversal, instead. overnite, the rule became you could not ride a mtn bike in a state park unless there was a sign saying you could ( and, coincidentally, no signs existed ). mtn bikes had been wiped out of state parks in one fell swoop. as a consolation, they did indicate that the specific trail list would be reviewed to see which trails would be reopened at some point, but in very nearly every case the order of reversal would be the exact opposite of the trails we had asked for. as an example, at that time NOBODY rode the muir trails at the kettles, it was a dump of a trail system and the parking lot on the other side of the road at the nordic trail was vastly preferred by all. so, not only did we get nuked off the face of the earth, but we were graciously allowed to first dig our own graves for ourselves by our freinds at the DNR.

things have moved on bit since then, and thankfully much better people than i are in the arena nowadays - witness muir !! i even managed to survive that mushroom cloud for another battle ( in which i was nuked again - could it be me ?? ), and insanely i might be yet again in the near future if things go OK. but, this was the first mtn bike policy history of the WI DNR, as it went down. it seems odd to me that nobody nowadays knows it.