Hikers and Bikers

In Letters and Emails Section

The article Chapter Activists Working to Keep City Parks Hiker-Friendly and Mountain-Bike Free generated impassioned responses. We appreciate everyone reading and taking the time to respond, and we take your concerns seriously. Please read on for letters in response to Carol's article. When we saw the response to Ms. Henning's piece, we asked Conservation Committee Chair Judy Anderson to weigh in and provide more context for the issue. Please see her response at right.

-Ed.

I found this article particularly disturbing. The article was entirely biased against bikers and expressed no vision for sharing the outdoors with others. I am a Sierra Club life member and enjoy backpacking, hiking, and mountain biking. I rarely find this kind of animosity on the trail when I meet hikers while riding my bike. I ride in the Santa Monicas at least once a week, and have found that hikers and bikers have learned to coexist. I do not disagree that there is a potential for issues to arise between slow moving hikers and fast moving bikers. My experience is that the people that share these trails have learned how to accommodate each other and still enjoy their time outdoors. Lighten up and learn to enjoy diversity in the mountains.

Bob Zwissler
Sierra Club Life Member

As a hiker and a mountain biker, I am disturbed by the tone and bias of the article, which advocates a mountain bike free policy. To ban any one group's use of a public resource seems wrong to me. I have never seen any of the problems she mentions, not that they don't happen, but I believe it is much more the exception then the rule. Most mountain bikers I know practice a code of conduct on the trail, and have done more than their share of trail maintenance, much more than the hikers I've met. To totally ban a user group without proof of a truly credible threat or case by case study is unjust. It is also unfair to base decisions solely on the loudest or largest group involved. I doubt the DRAP study demonstrated much interest in wildflower naming either. Just as environmental groups are sneaking the MPLA closures in on the public, other user groups are trying to secure their right to public access. I fear I may be supporting the wrong group.

Kevin Swenson
Long Beach, California