Lots of our rides in this area would be cancelled if we had
to stay off multi-use trails to have rides. At the American River Ride, there
were many other users on the trails, fortunately,
bicyclists are only on the wide trails, not the single track. There was still
at least one accident when a horse was spooked by a bike while we were going
thru the paved biking area. Unfortunately the hose slipped on the pavement and
the rider was injured.
There were runners, walkers, hikers (a group of 30 boy
scouts), recreational riders, all sharing the trail
that day. There would be no ride if we could not share. The bike race trail
courses are very highly marked with lots of tape blocking the unused sections
of trail, so not likely that anyone would stray out onto their race course. Not
so with the endurance rides though, so we do always need to be on the lookout
for anyone or anything else on the trail. I sure hope it never comes to not
allowing the rides because there’s no way that the
trails could be closed to public use for the day. There are far too many
access points and no way to close the area.
Kathy
Personally, if I were a park ranger of a park that had lots
of pleasure
trail hikers and
riders, I wouldn't allow an endurance ride to be held
there (I wouldn't
allow a bike race to be held there either), unless it
were such a big
park that the two sets of users were unlikely to be
constantly
encountering each other (e.g. I could, in essence, close some
of the trails to the
general public without generating complaint).
