Why?

On my recent ANF tour I slipped around a gate near the old Springhill pit. The sign just said "closed to motorized vehicles" and since my bicycle didn't have any motor except my legs I rationalized that it was ok for me to proceed. If you were riding dirt bikes in this area 10 or more years ago you know about Springhill pit. I bet I spent hundreds of Saturday and Sunday mornings out there. You could always find somebody there to ride with and we pretty much had our pick of trails to link together along with trail names that you'd only know if you'd been around awhile. When newbies would buy a bike at a local shop they'd be given directions to the pit and maybe a phone number to TTR.

I didn't think about it at the time but that system kept the number of riders to a minimum. You see if you didn't know the trails all you could do was ride around the pit and that kept the rif raf off of the good stuff. All the trails had names like, Chuck's section, the hare scrambles loop, and LL Wallace. If you left the pit without knowing where they led you'd be seriously lost in a matter of minutes. It's not that we were snobs (well maybe I was) we welcomed everybody who showed up but in hindsight this might have been a mistake. We should have kept the group exclusive but we had no idea where this was all heading until the first of the machines from hell started showing up; 4 WHEELERS!

Anybody could buy one, throw it in a truck or on a trailer, trundle out to the pit, unload it, start it, and ride. It took almost no skill or balance and would go anywhere, and they did. Donuts in the parking area, bogging in all the creeks, and flat tracking around the ponds. Those damn things did more damage in a year than we had done in 20!

Well it didn't take long for the USFS to start clamping down on all forms of motorized recreation and rightly so. Dirt bikes just got thrown in with the 4 wheelers and it progressed to the point it is today which in my opinion it's really not worth riding out there.

In the end we lost access to the pit and all the trails around it. After years of no riding you almost have to look hard to see trail. The pictures here are of the parking area and a main trail leaving it. I rode my bicycle over a path I had traveled many years before, it's kind of sad knowing Rupe won't ever get to ride these trails. The only lesson I can see in all this is if you've got something good adding more people and making it easier won't necessarily make it better. The mountain bike crew might do well to remember that.