It's that time of year again. The time where the hint of spring is in the air, the days are longer, and the singletrack beckons. You've been riding endless boring hours on the trainer, maybe jogging, maybe sneaking a bike path ride, or maybe taking some final turns at your favorite ski area, but you're really just patiently waiting for the reopening of your beloved trails.
Well, I'm asking you to patiently wait a little longer. The trails are simply not ready for the knobbies. The residual effects of a winter of plentiful Front Range snows are still evident. What I'm saying is the trails are still too muddy, too sensitive to be ridden on.
Mountain biking these trails can cause serious damage; creating deep ruts and widening the trails (anyone who's ridden the Enchanted Forest the last few years knows exactly what I'm talking about) If turning your favorite singletrack into something that resembles a four-wheel muddy freeway doesn't deter you, maybe losing access to your favorite trail will.
As the legions of mountain bikers grow, so do those who wish to kick us off the trails. When we ride on trails that are not ready, we provide our opponents with plentiful evidence that mountain biking is destructive and should be banned.
Some may think I'm being alarmist, but I speak from experience. I cut my teeth (sometimes literally) mountain biking the short but technical trails of the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia in the early 90s.
We were welcome at first, but as we grew in numbers, some of the hikers and equestrians began to tire of the hordes of two-wheeled invaders and started to campaign to get mountain bikes removed from the trails.
By the time I left for Colorado in 1998, half the trails in the park were closed to mountain bikers. Only the diligent efforts of local advocacy groups kept the entire network from being shut down to us
I realize that Colorado's Front Range has infinitely more to offer than my old stomping grounds. But that doesn't mean opposition doesn't exist. There have been several efforts to close some of the Jeffco trails to mountain bikes.
Thankfully that hasn't happened, but continued careless riding during muddy trail days could add fuel to their argument. I wish I could say that the people that ride during these periods just don't know any better, but that wouldn't be accurate. Actually several people that I otherwise respect as riders and consider friends will go out in groups and ride trails on muddy days when they know it's wrong.
In my old group of mountain biking friends we policed and educated the cyclists that came in from other areas. I'm not advocating that you become a "trail Nazi" But even if you can convince a few in your MTB circle of friends to wait until the trails can support the bikes that would be a start. We are fortunate in the Front Range that we can almost always find dry trail somewhere year round (this winter excepted)
So, if you can bring yourself to hop back on that trainer for just a little while longer, the trails will thank you for it, and so will your singletrack loving brethren.