To echo sentiments upthread, the throttle is a thing, but the dipshit twisting it is another thing entirely. I grew up on dirt bikes, got into mountain biking because it seemed like a way to access trails that were becoming increasingly walled off to dirt bikes (and with good reason), and I am by no means a saint when it comes to questionable behaviors where wheels are involved, with or without motors.
For my part, there are never really "rights", but there certainly are privileges. And there are entitlements; implied, perceived, or vehemently expressed. The big problem with dirt bikes is that they can be ridden with skill and consideration and leave barely any more of a mark than a mountain bike, but the number of riders who lack skill and consideration is usually a fair bit higher than the number of riders who exhibit those traits. If it's just one or two asshats, their damage can generally be constrained within the bigger picture. As those numbers increase, though, shit can get ugly real fast.
But then again, the same exact thing can be said about mountain bikers, access, trail damage, and sense of entitlement. It just takes a much larger number of users.
Case study: In Downieville, almost all the trails are moto legal. And mountain bike legal, hiker legal, horse legal, gold prospector legal, mule train legal, etc... When I was living up there 20 years ago, the "Downieville downhill" - a roughly 16 mile, 5000'ish descent - saw something like 54,000 users a summer. Almost all of those users were mountain bikers, and they definitely left their mark. The dirt bikers up there were generally few in number and high in skill, mostly because the trails are sketchy as fuck and cases of whiskey throttle usually result in getting head butted by red firs or long, arduous extractions of lost bikes from very inaccessible creek beds.
But there was also a group of dirt bikers who would congregate every year and camp up by Packer Lake. They were called the Outdoor Sportsmans Group or something like that, and they weren't really dirt bikers, not the same way that the "serious" dirt bikers local to the region were. The OSG were not, generally speaking, very skilled riders. Those 30 or so riders would every year take it upon themselves to ride UP the Downieville downhill from town at some point. Usually on a weekend, when the shuttle vans were disgorging hundreds of mountain bikers for the ride down. Fully legal, and these people were absolutely within their "rights" to do what they did, but man, what a shit show. They would get angry at the constant stream of downhill mountain bike traffic, and at the same time would completely destroy switchback after switchback as their lack of skill met their excessive throttle hands while also trying to muscle their way up a continuous moving wheeled downhill flowing obstacle course. The mountain bikers would come into the shop at the end of their rides seething with rage, and describing heated encounters with sweaty obese rednecks on clapped out old XR600s. The OSG would usually stop in on their way out of town to complain about what assholes the mountain bikers were and how they wouldn't get out of the way on the narrow trails they were trying to ride up.
The local dirt bikers took pains to distance themselves from the OSG, and were actively involved in the maintenance of the trails up there, even though they left nowhere near as much of a mark on the landscape as the tens of thousands of mountain bikers (the rest of the year, at least). Nevertheless, the annual visit of the OSG would leave enough of an impression on the other trail users they encountered that the echoes would last for years as mountain bikers from the Bay Area would vocally and emphatically express how great it would be if dirt bikes were banned up there. Which, to my ears, was painful to hear, since I lived there, was riding both mountain bikes and dirt bikes on the trails up there, and felt like it was paradise.
March 13, 2024, 8:11 a.m. - Mike Ferrentino
To echo sentiments upthread, the throttle is a thing, but the dipshit twisting it is another thing entirely. I grew up on dirt bikes, got into mountain biking because it seemed like a way to access trails that were becoming increasingly walled off to dirt bikes (and with good reason), and I am by no means a saint when it comes to questionable behaviors where wheels are involved, with or without motors. For my part, there are never really "rights", but there certainly are privileges. And there are entitlements; implied, perceived, or vehemently expressed. The big problem with dirt bikes is that they can be ridden with skill and consideration and leave barely any more of a mark than a mountain bike, but the number of riders who lack skill and consideration is usually a fair bit higher than the number of riders who exhibit those traits. If it's just one or two asshats, their damage can generally be constrained within the bigger picture. As those numbers increase, though, shit can get ugly real fast. But then again, the same exact thing can be said about mountain bikers, access, trail damage, and sense of entitlement. It just takes a much larger number of users. Case study: In Downieville, almost all the trails are moto legal. And mountain bike legal, hiker legal, horse legal, gold prospector legal, mule train legal, etc... When I was living up there 20 years ago, the "Downieville downhill" - a roughly 16 mile, 5000'ish descent - saw something like 54,000 users a summer. Almost all of those users were mountain bikers, and they definitely left their mark. The dirt bikers up there were generally few in number and high in skill, mostly because the trails are sketchy as fuck and cases of whiskey throttle usually result in getting head butted by red firs or long, arduous extractions of lost bikes from very inaccessible creek beds. But there was also a group of dirt bikers who would congregate every year and camp up by Packer Lake. They were called the Outdoor Sportsmans Group or something like that, and they weren't really dirt bikers, not the same way that the "serious" dirt bikers local to the region were. The OSG were not, generally speaking, very skilled riders. Those 30 or so riders would every year take it upon themselves to ride UP the Downieville downhill from town at some point. Usually on a weekend, when the shuttle vans were disgorging hundreds of mountain bikers for the ride down. Fully legal, and these people were absolutely within their "rights" to do what they did, but man, what a shit show. They would get angry at the constant stream of downhill mountain bike traffic, and at the same time would completely destroy switchback after switchback as their lack of skill met their excessive throttle hands while also trying to muscle their way up a continuous moving wheeled downhill flowing obstacle course. The mountain bikers would come into the shop at the end of their rides seething with rage, and describing heated encounters with sweaty obese rednecks on clapped out old XR600s. The OSG would usually stop in on their way out of town to complain about what assholes the mountain bikers were and how they wouldn't get out of the way on the narrow trails they were trying to ride up. The local dirt bikers took pains to distance themselves from the OSG, and were actively involved in the maintenance of the trails up there, even though they left nowhere near as much of a mark on the landscape as the tens of thousands of mountain bikers (the rest of the year, at least). Nevertheless, the annual visit of the OSG would leave enough of an impression on the other trail users they encountered that the echoes would last for years as mountain bikers from the Bay Area would vocally and emphatically express how great it would be if dirt bikes were banned up there. Which, to my ears, was painful to hear, since I lived there, was riding both mountain bikes and dirt bikes on the trails up there, and felt like it was paradise.