Carol, your message is priceless! Love your
last sentence. :-))
I wouldn't want a freeway, either, but I think a 3-4
foot wide trail without a guardrail would be safer than a 2-foot
wide eroding trail that drops off 1,000 feet... I still think Tevis is
enough of a challenge without dangerous trails. ...Someday, someone is
going to be killed on that trail and the WSTF may have more trouble on its
hands than it wants...
Two comments:
- Land managers are going more and more toward keeping trails
as
narrow as possible. The main reason is they don't
want a trail
wide enough for an ATV to get down. Signs don't
work, but
if the trail is physically just too narrow, the ATV's
will stay off.
The reason can be even more Machiavellian (depends
on your
land manager and the pressures he/she is facing, both
from other
user groups, but most particularly from his/her regional
management).
They *want* the trail officially classified as
"Primitive" with almost
no maintenance so that they can justify excluding
certain user groups,
such as pack stock (legaleze for equines and
llamas).
These trail classifications and standards, and they
way they are
being manipulated to serve political ends, is what the
Backcountry
Horseman of America is suing the US
Forest Service over.
The Cumberland Trail in Tennessee (a state project) is
being
deliberately and calculatingly constructed so as to be
impassible by
anything but a very fit hiker. They are even
putting in "cliff climbs"
to keep the mountain bikers out.
- I don't know the land managers on this stretch of trail nor the
political
situation WSTF is facing, but if they start getting
letters complaining
that the trail is *dangerous* and *somebody is going to
get killed*,
the USFS's simplest solution is to simply close the
trail to horse traffic.
