News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
With some 17 miles of new single-track mountain bike trails proposed for the area south of Sisters near Three Creek Road, horseback riders are concerned that they are being pushed of the trails and out of the woods.
That is more a perception than a reality, according to Jeff Sims of the U.S. Forest Service. Sims has been spearheading an effort to create more trails in the area with the support of the Sisters Trails Committee.
Mountain biking enthusiasts paid about $6,500 for an environmental study, and volunteers will construct the trails, which can accommodate the fast-moving, fat-tired bikes.
Equestrians don't want to share trails with cyclists jamming along at 30-plus miles per hour - often oblivious to the potential for spooking the horses. Cyclists don't want to ride on trails that have been churned to inches-deep dust by horses hooves.
Sims said that the perception of a conflict flared up when equestrians started seeing bicycle-only signs on the Peterson Loop Trail that runs south from Sisters. In fact, that trail, constructed in 1989, has always been a bikes-only path, but it wasn't signed until the trails committee got a grant and started putting up signs in 2005.
"People had been riding on some of these trails, and then they started seeing signs that said no horses, and they thought: 'Well, they closed my trail,'" Sims said.
Now the addition of new bike-only trails has raised the stakes.
"I think the concern is that there are no officially designated horse trails in a rather extensive area where there are a myriad of bike trails," said horseback rider Bob Fuller.
Once the rumor mill has been tamped down and people start talking, the apparent conflict recedes. A working group including both cyclists and equestrians got together a couple of months ago to determine where the bikes and horses may conflict on the new trails - at choke points and stream crossings and the like. The volunteers who will construct the trails will move things around to mitigate those conflicts.
One common mis-perception is that horses are excluded from the entire area of the new trails. That is not the case. Horses can cross the trails and ride anywhere in the area except on the trail itself.
Horseback riders can go through the same kind of process that the cyclists did and pay for an environmental study and build designated horse trails or multi-use trails, which would also accommodate hikers.
The riders feel that trails are necessary. Some 70 percent of backcountry riders stick to trails and don't want to cut cross-country.
"If they don't have a trail, we'll be out there looking for them," said local rider and horse breeder Susan Neumann.
Sims said he is still waiting for information on areas of conflict.
The riders are getting together to provide that information - and to start the ball rolling on creating a trail system of their own.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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