Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

It's a complex issue.  Most of the trails in this (the Cool-Auburn area) are extremely heavily used by all types of equestrians, runners, hikers, cyclists and even rafters/kayakers.  I do trail patrol for one of the local BLM trail systems, and its a huge problem to educate, or retrain as Kathy says.  Frankly, many casual trail riders don't belong to organizations and chat lists and such; they just grab a horse and ride when and how they want.  Even reading signs seems beyond many :-(

 

To me, the wonderful thing about communicating with endurance riders is two-fold.  One, we are very receptive to thinking and learning, and two, we do not take trails for granted and are very protective of them.  Add to that our willingness to 'educate' other trail users when we see a trail being abused and you have a small army of trail deputies <bg>.   I believe that is why people turn to the endurance community so often - not because we are the biggest abusers, but we are big users and are out there a lot conditioning and we are teachable (well, most of us ;-p).

 

That said, I have seen *everyone* clean out their trailers at staging areas, pleasure riders to endurance riders, even with big signs posted every 20 feet.....

 

But I'd have to say our biggest problem right now are the cross country "short cuts."  These "new trails" are not sensitive to erosion issues and the BLM is getting ticked and blaming it on equestrians. It has resulted in some trail closures :-(

 

Dana Baldwin

#30836

 

PS  Most of the messages you see here *are* also going out to local riding groups.  But it's generally a case of "preaching to the choir" just like here.

sherman <sherman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

One of the big problems regarding our many trails and ?updates? is that there are so many people who don?t use computers and no well known sight to check. There is no single easy fast way for people to be informed about conditions or issues. That?s why I think signs are needed. Maybe even referring readers to a single website. I think only a small percentage of trail riders use the computer for trail information though, so I don?t know how much good it would do. People need to be retrained.

 

Kathy

 

 

I'm not from the Auburn area, but am curious....is it mainly endurance people that are using these staging areas that were left in such a mess?  Or are there other trail riders?  Not that it matters too much, but I've found that endurance riders are usually pretty meticulous about cleaning up after themselves, even when we just go to a local park for the day.  I think we--more than most other riders--appreciate having trails and know how easily they can be lost. 

 

If this is the case, are you posting this message to other trail riding sites?  If it IS mostly endurance riders, then...well....I'm really surprised!

 

Chip

 

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