Trail closed to bikes

To guard against the erosion of this natural condition, Section 4(c) of the act stated:

. . . there shall be no temporary road, no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motor boats, no landing aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure . . . within such area.

Today, Section 4(c) of the Wilderness Act remains unchanged.

Bikes: Mechanical Transport with a Living Power Source

Now, it is true that in 1964 mountain bikes had not yet been invented, and it is true also that mountain bikes are not motorized. However, they clearly are a "form of mechanical transport" and as such are excluded. For a time there was confusion on this issue, primarily as a result of the Forest Service regulations set forth in 1965 concerning how the Wilderness Act provisions would be implemented for those lands under Department of Agriculture jurisdiction. (Got that?)

The Forest Service, in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) section 293.6(a), defined "mechanical transport" as:

. . . any contrivance which travels over ground . . . on wheels . . . and is propelled by a non-living power source . . . contained or carried . . . on the device.

	State Your Case This is a divisive topic. What do you think about trail conflict (hikers versus bikers)? Do you think that bikes hurt our national forests?

Hope for Change?

Some cyclists still today hope for a revision of the Wilderness Act prohibition, arguing that if ATBs (All-Terrain Bicycles) had been around in 1964, their use would have been allowed. Ed Bloedel, of the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C., is perhaps representative of the opposite position and gives his reasons why:

"It's the cumulative effect of things like this that really hurt our national wilderness system. Once you begin making little exceptions here and there you begin to lose what you're trying to provide in the first place — a chunk of primitive America, of something that is essentially the same as our forefathers found it."

It took eight years of wrangling for Congress to pass the Wilderness Act, and any change to allow the use of mountain bikes would bring about a firestorm of protest and intense lobbying efforts by individuals and environmental organizations. Sally Reid, a Sierra Club officer, says,"If you think bicycles can get into the Wilderness Act, you just don't know how the United States feels about it, about that Act. Nobody is going to monkey with that. There would be an uproar if anyone tried to open up wilderness areas to vehicles."

Today, therefore, and for the foreseeable future, mountain bikes are not permitted in:

wilderness areas
national parks (except on roads and those off-road paths specifically marked"bike path" — thankfully more and more parks are opening a few "paths" to us)
national monuments (except on roads open to the public)
most state parks and monuments (except on roads, and those paths specifically marked"bike path")
an increasing number of urban and county parks, especially in California (except on roads, and those paths specifically marked"bike path")