As some of you know, I took off for santa fe this weekend to do a little riding over in that neck of the woods. While I was gone, a very intriguing comment got left by “Michelle” on my most recent post.

I sat down to respond to it, and as my response grew, i thought I might make it a little more visible, because it’s a really interesting discussion point.

I hope everyone knows that I read every comment to this blog, and appreciate all the discussion that gets spurred from them. Keep it up, it keeps me motivated to post more.

Michelle – If you’re reading this, I hope you don’t mind that I reproduced your comment here, along with my response. I thought your comment was very well written and deserved some attention.

Michelle’s Comment

The Forest Service would put more effort into the local trail system if they had more funding and man power. They have to use grant money to pay for trail maintenance and construction and the Arizona Trail provides grant money.

When the Forest Service builds trails they follow established guidelines which includes NEPA, archeology studies, flora and fauna studies, Game and Fish, local property owners, tribal concerns, and the list goes on. So it takes a while to get to the actual trail building, but you can see the results of what they can do when you ride the Aspen Corner to 418 segment of the AZ trail and Little Bear (funded by equestrians).

Also, in the past, as in when there was funding available to work on local trails, the locals fought the Forest Service saying they were neutering the trails and making them too easy. This happened when Rocky Ridge and Lower Oldham were due for maintenance.

Another problem is trying to keep up with all of the social trails, free ride trails and other illegal trails popping up all over the forest. The trail crew will try to naturalize a section which takes time away from routine maintenance. The next day their work is destroyed. Local riders have actually blogged about how they like these social trails and complain when they are naturalized.

The volunteer days are a small step in keeping the trails in good shape, but the locals need to listen and learn more from the Forest Service who have the experience and skills to build fantastic trails like the AZ Trail. Super Motor is an examples of a trail that could have been superb if the Forest Service could have built the trail to their specs. Instead, with local input, the trail turned it into an unusable trail that a only few free riders and skilled trial riders use. The terrain was there to make some challenging yet rider friendly routes through some spectacular topography. What a missed opportunity!

I can totally understand that the forest service is hard up for manpower and for funding to build trails. As most government agencies, they’re always a bit short on resources and I sympathize with their plight. I, too, wish that we could have more official trails that were built in a sensible and sustainable way.

The issue of social trails is a very difficult one that most riders here in flagstaff struggle with every day. I will admit, I ride many of the social trails, and enjoy many of them. However, I understand where the forest service has issues with these trails, their construction, and their routing. I’m sure many of them run through areas that would not pass muster due to varying impact issues. This is a very real problem and a difficult one to get around.

I often wonder if there is some way to make the data more accessible showing current archeological sites, protected wildlife habitats, religious sites and other ‘restricted areas’. If this information was more prominently and publicly available, might less of these social trails pop up in undesirable areas? I don’t know, but I do believe that transparency of information and communication between the forest service and users is key to working through the quagmire of trail access issues.

I understand the frustration of navigating through these various land issues, as it absolutely blew my mind how many of the system trails run through areas that have usage restrictions due to these land designations. We ride on them on a daily basis, but when it comes to trying to use some of them for a race or other event, the maze of restrictions becomes mind numbing.

As a side note, if anyone reading this raced the MBAA final last year (2009) and noted the couple sections of little elden and schultz which had to be re-routed to the road (and then promptly back) you have experienced this patchwork of land restrictions. It truly is a wonder that any trails get built under forest service sanction with this mess of a land usage battle that covers every acre of forest service land (and you thought is was as simple as ‘wilderness or not’ didn’t you?)

I will state, however, that I disagree with you on the ‘missed opportunity’ of Upper Moto (which is what I’m assuming you refer to as “Super Motor”). I frequented the old ‘upper moto’ before it was re-routed (when it was still a ‘social trail’), and although it was more difficult in sections than the new trail, it was a horribly built trail, which made it a pretty miserable trail to ride (or hike, or ride a horse on). The trail went straight down a fall line, which led to terrible erosion problems and a mind-numbing amount of different lines which fanned out in every direction. It was ugly, unsustainable, and not the funnest to ride.

However, through the efforts of local and regional groups, the trail has been re-routed into something that is truly fun AND sustainable. It’s 1000% more sustainable now that the trail doesn’t follow fall lines and utilizes surfaces less prone to wash out and erosion. The trail now has very distinct ‘lines’ through the technical sections, keeping people from widening the trial by bushwacking ‘alternative routes’. And finally, it is built in such a way that hikers can enjoy the trail and cyclists can challenge themselves on a technical piece of singletrack.

I would disagree that it is a trail is an “unusable trail that a only few free riders and skilled trial riders use”. I believe this statement discounts people who qualify themselves as ‘technically skilled’ on a mountain bike as not being trail users. In fact, I would argue that these people are usually the ones who are out there 3, 4, 5 or even 7 days a week utilizing these trails. Being somebody who spends a vast majority of my days in town on these very trails, I can tell you that a large majority of the people I see riding them are the ones who enjoy a well-built, techincal trail like Upper Moto (or upper sunset, or upper brookbank….).

I would actually like to see more trails like upper moto built, because I believe the reason that a large number of the more technical ‘freeride’ social trails are built is due to the lack of official system trails that fill that niche. There are examples all over the country of the land management agencies working together with local cyclists to create a trail system that is sustainable and technically challenging and interesting. It IS possible, and I would love to see it done more here. Cyclists are a huge trail user group (probably one of the biggest, in terms of sheer mileage), and a very ambitious one when it comes to challenging themselves on technical terrain.

I have absolutely no data to back it up (although I would love to see a study done), but I wonder if the areas which have more technical “sanctioned” trails have less of a problem with social trails? It would certainly be an interesting data set, don’t you think?

I agree with your statement that “locals need to listen and learn more from the Forest Service who have the experience and skills to build fantastic trails”. However, I would also respond with the statement of “the forest service needs to listen and learn from the trail users what style of trail the system is lacking, in order to meet the needs of its users”.

There are many people out there who are avid users of the trails, and they come from all different skill levels. I do enjoy the Arizona trail from Snowbowl to 418, and I (did) enjoy Little Bear. But, I will also say that if Little Bear and that section of the AZT are the most technical trails the Forest Service is willing to sanction and build, there is no doubt in my mind that social trails will keep popping up which fill that unmet need. A great many cyclists (ESPECIALLY in this town) are skilled to the point that Little Bear and the AZT would be considered a warm-up from a technical standpoint. It’s not a wonder that more “social” technical trails crop up, when the technical level of the AZT is the status quo of a typical forest service sanctioned trail.

As I mentioned before, I am a strong supporter of trails being built in a sustainable fashion and in accordance with the land usage restrictions of the forest service. But, in the end, the forest service is a taxpayer funded organization, and the effectiveness of the trails within their jurisdiction is measured by the usage of those trails. If trails are being built outside of their prescribed system trails, maybe that is a sign that the current needs of the users are not being met by the sanctioned trails.

I would like to close by also saying that I agree with you that the trail days are a good start towards helping with this trail maintenance and construction issue. I understand that we probably can’t all donate a huge sum of money to the forest service for trail building, but we CAN donate the manpower (which, as you mentioned, is one of the two things preventing the forest service from doing more maintenance). I feel as though users of the trails should be out there doing what they can to make them our own, and if that means putting our sweat into their construction, then we should all be out there doing it.