I frequent these staging areas often. Here’s
my opinion…many of the riders out of the Auburn Overlook are endurance
riders. Some are local others from far away. I’ve talked to people there
who’ve driven up from Santa Rosa, Marin, East Bay, etc. Unfortunately,
there are no sign posted requesting people clean up the poop, so most don’t.
I don’t really think that area looks bad, but it could look better, especially
if people would quit scraping out old hay, poop, shavings
out of their trailer! Yes, I’ve seen piles many, many times, that there
is no other way it would be there…shameful! Hidden Falls area is small, I doubt many
endurance riders train there, mostly local pleasure riders, they have a sign to
please remove poop and I did (I went there twice, once to see it for myself,
once to show a neighbor), but I ended up with about 5 lbs of rock in my trailer
because it (the rock) is too big to fall thru the pick’s tines. Sterling Point is used heavily by local
pleasure riders and endurance riders. I think I’ve seen many more
pleasure riders there. There is a sign to please remove your poop, I’ve
seen about 20% that actually do that. But there are also many, many local
riders who don’t stage there but ride thru and guess what, their horse
poops on the way thru because they smell the other horses. No one goes around
picking up the lot and it is a big one.
IMHO, one of the big problems is staging
areas not being “signed” requesting clean-up so people don’t.
One of the areas I ride frequently, Driver’s Flat, never gets poop picked
up, however, you can rarely find anything closely resembling a pile to step in
as there is so much wildlife that is attracted to it, that it’s gone the
next day. I think someone mentioned that fact about the Tevis trail, that they’d
ridden or walked it after the Tevis ride and was surprised that there was
hardly a pile to be found even though the week before 200 horses were on the
trail. Wildlife takes care of it.
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!
