BLM closes 1/3 of Moab OHV trails to OHVs and e-bikes

[alias_rice]

So perfect that it deserves another quote.

The parallels between SXSs and mopeds are just so obvious. Even the cultural differences between the new motorized users (mopeders) and OGs (dirtbikers) are similar.

Meh, not really. SxS’s are so much noisier, faster and more destructive than a Jeep or moto. E-bikes are no louder or more destructive than a normal bike. Just slightly more powerful. SxS’s annoy basically everyone, mopeds annoy mountain bikers.

[evdog]

Meh, not really. SxS’s are so much noisier, faster and more destructive than a Jeep or moto. E-bikes are no louder or more destructive than a normal bike. Just slightly more powerful. SxS’s annoy basically everyone, mopeds annoy mountain bikers.

Mopeds allow lazy riders who would never otherwise put in the effort to get out there on backcountry trails that were previously hard to access. So those trails are seeing a ton more traffic and wear and tear. And you now you have dumbasses out there sanitizing those trails. They have the assist to get up the hill but the assist does not include improved technical skills. I'm seeing this in a lot of areas I ride.

[ghosthop]

Meh, not really. SxS’s are so much noisier, faster and more destructive than a Jeep or moto. E-bikes are no louder or more destructive than a normal bike. Just slightly more powerful. SxS’s annoy basically everyone, mopeds annoy mountain bikers.

ebike::mtb
sxs::4x4

are pretty equivalent. I get the argument that there are plenty of ebike riders who help the community and respectful of trails but that does not make up for the large contingent that are essentially on electric motorcycles with a bb and crank welded on the bottom of the frame. Those people get on trails they have no business being on and have zero respect for anything that came before them or worked for two wheel access. I am glad to see BLM is not fucking around with motorized designation.

A forty pound bike with a torque-y motor and clueless rider is absolutely destroying trails in a way that a 28 lbs trail bike is not.

[evdog]

I suppose it is pretty hard to justify banning side by sides in places where both 4x4s and dirt bikes are legal.

I mean, you could do it, but it would require a lot of bending over backwards and senseless arguments. It would be like saying the lake is open to jet skis and >20’ powerboats, but an 18 footer is simply not allowed in the water.

At least when you are talking about e-bikes you can say “non-motorized, your moped has a motor, so you can’t ride it here”…

Dunno about that. I just bikepacked a big loop in SW Utah that included a variety of restricted OHV trails. Some were 50" inch or less (ATV/moto), some were 60" max, some 72". There were metal and wood barriers in places to prevent anything larger from getting through. I see 50/60" and motorized singletrack restrictions on the OP's map so the Moab plan already includes some of this.

[joetron]

SxS manufacturers are already building machines that are =<50”. They know it’s a threat to their access.


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[Jax]

The opportunity is ripe for e-bikers to coalesce in similar fashion to other land-access groups to increase education, ethics awareness and advocacy. Same goes for SxSs but that's probably a stretch.

[muted reborn]

SxS manufacturers are already building machines that are =<50”. They know it’s a threat to their access.


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how are they going to get their drivers waist under 50” wide though?

[Buster Highmen]

Related:

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[XXX-er]

ebike::mtb
sxs::4x4

are pretty equivalent. I get the argument that there are plenty of ebike riders who help the community and respectful of trails but that does not make up for the large contingent that are essentially on electric motorcycles with a bb and crank welded on the bottom of the frame. Those people get on trails they have no business being on and have zero respect for anything that came before them or worked for two wheel access. I am glad to see BLM is not fucking around with motorized designation.

A forty pound bike with a torque-y motor and clueless rider is absolutely destroying trails in a way that a 28 lbs trail bike is not.

you got zero idea what a class 1 e-bike is but it doesnt matter anymore

[frorider]

Some of you appear unaware that the USFS and BLM separately reached a legal determination that e-bikes / emtbs are a special subset within the broader Motorized Vehicle category. https://www.blm.gov/policy/im-2023-051

So Yes, it makes sense that this broad action in Moab would, at first cut, include all motorized vehicles. As someone mentioned, when the dust settles they might go through a separate process to reopen certain trails to emtbs.

And yes, those of you making the general comparison of SxS’s to emtbs are essentially correct….as someone in the middle of this topic I see the validity of the comparison but also the limitations of it. All kinds of mtb associations are finding braided trails as newbies on emtbs come up with ways to avoid mildly technical sections. The ‘low barrier to entry’ complaints about SxS’s I’ve been hearing forever from my dirtbiking friends seem to be reaching a tipping point.

[rideit]

Related:

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Damn, I wish this would happen in Moab. (Vote for no sxs access, or really any loud vehicle, two stroke, four stroke, diesel, etc)
Milt’s is a parade of obnoxious idiots every afternoon.

[summit]

All kinds of mtb associations are finding braided trails as newbies on emtbs come up with ways to avoid mildly technical sections. The ‘low barrier to entry’ complaints about SxS’s I’ve been hearing forever

I mean that kindly, you don't know what you don't know. I'll try to clarify:

I am only an OK skilled offroader with 4x4s having used my own and then for SAR and also with ATVs. Then getting in a SxS takes my capabilities up two huge steps or more, like going from being a timid blue skier barely linking parallel turns to a shredding double blacks. It is like going from OK to near expert.

SxS are great for SAR because it is low barrier for entry.

The "low barrier to entry for SxS" is that without experience or time you can conquer advanced technical trails because it is like putting cheat codes on. You can just point through amazing tech at high speed with little thought and the just SxS goes. It is the vehicle design, clearance, advanced suspension, low center of gravity, and the car like control interface that are the true gamechangers, not to mention the power.

You can take a novice offroader, rent them a SxS, and they are going to be flying up technical trails that advanced jeepers would struggle on at 15% of the speed.

In biking terms going from a 4x4 (or ATV) to a SxS is the difference between a riding a 1990s 26er skinny tire hard tail vs a modern 29er DH bike everywhere... EXCEPT you ALSO have no requirement to worry about body position, body english, wheel placement, balance, bike weight, pedal efficiency, shifting, timing pedal strokes, or really bike handling period.

The difference between a mountain bike and a class 1 emtb is nothing like that... At all.

You don't suddenly gain any bike handling skills, at all.

In fact emtbs are harder to handle. I find that I work harder on the ebike in the same time period of riding: both because of handling and because of the additional ground covered. I get more vert sure, and I probably stay on my bike through a tech/steep section that I would have lost momentum in and had to walk. I'm also more likely to have trail tools and gear that I would have left behind on an analog ride. I also find myself able to get out for meaningful ride when time is short that I might have skipped on my analog.

How did I get an ebike when I said "as long as I'm annually continuing to beat my PRs both up and down, why would I go ebike?" I thought as many have posted, that ebikers are lazy! I heard for years from friends who had tried them that they were great and I was wrong, but still I hadn't bothered to ride an emtb on a real trail ride with real riders.

I softened on ebikes after watching ebikes perform on SAR and mtb race support (which I also do). Nobody is gonna shell out huge emtb $ just for that though!

What ultimately got me to shell out was when my friends who were elite pro climbers turned insane bikers, who are also trail builders, convinced me to do an emtb ride with them, and they'd even provide the emtb. Fine. OK. I'll try. These are folks I ride the hard stuff with in Whistler and at home. And when they took me out on an emtb ride, they crushed on the up with ebikes because we are all still pedaling hard and they pedal harder because they are elite athletes. Ebikes don't make people lazy it seems. Then we crushed down.

I use my emtb for SAR, race support, trail work, and personal rides. I also still find myself on my analog bikes the majority of personal rides

25%+ of US bike sales are emtb this year and it is growing. In Europe you see numbers like 80% in some countries. The biggest haters in the US are the people who haven't ridden one. Try it. You might be surprised.

[bodywhomper]

Is that % of sales $$ spent or number of bikes sold? (Sry for thread drift)

[summit]

Not sure... but I know in many places, including CO, ebikes (not full sus) are being subsidized by the government and this will also speed widespread adoption of emtb.

[Core Shot]

I don’t get the e-bike ban. It’s still a bike. Sure. It is a different pace than analog. And sometimes changes traffic.

Gassers and Sxs and motos. Noisy and fast.

I’d be shocked if they ticketed an e-bike.

[alias_rice]

ebike::mtb
sxs::4x4

are pretty equivalent. I get the argument that there are plenty of ebike riders who help the community and respectful of trails but that does not make up for the large contingent that are essentially on electric motorcycles with a bb and crank welded on the bottom of the frame. Those people get on trails they have no business being on and have zero respect for anything that came before them or worked for two wheel access. I am glad to see BLM is not fucking around with motorized designation.

A forty pound bike with a torque-y motor and clueless rider is absolutely destroying trails in a way that a 28 lbs trail bike is not.

[emoji23]. Have you ever ridden one? I own an analog bike, a moped and a moto. The moped and the moto both have 2 wheels, but that’s about where the comparisons end. E-bikes are nothing like a moto and the extra 15 lbs does absolutely no more damage to a trail, no matter how many times people say it does. I also keeping hearing about these mythical fatass lazy ebike riders accessing remote trails, riding for 2 hours and promptly getting lost and needing rescue, but have yet to see one in the wild.

Some of you are starting to remind me of the old videos of skiers demanding snowboarding be banned before those stoners destroy the sanctity of our ski hill.

[smmokan]

I mean that kindly, you don't know what you don't know. I'll try to clarify:

I am only an OK skilled offroader with 4x4s having used my own and then for SAR and also with ATVs. Then getting in a SxS takes my capabilities up two huge steps or more, like going from being a timid blue skier barely linking parallel turns to a shredding double blacks. It is like going from OK to near expert.

SxS are great for SAR because it is low barrier for entry.

The "low barrier to entry for SxS" is that without experience or time you can conquer advanced technical trails because it is like putting cheat codes on. You can just point through amazing tech at high speed with little thought and the just SxS goes. It is the vehicle design, clearance, advanced suspension, low center of gravity, and the car like control interface that are the true gamechangers, not to mention the power.

You can take a novice offroader, rent them a SxS, and they are going to be flying up technical trails that advanced jeepers would struggle on at 15% of the speed.

In biking terms going from a 4x4 (or ATV) to a SxS is the difference between a riding a 1990s 26er skinny tire hard tail vs a modern 29er DH bike everywhere... EXCEPT you ALSO have no requirement to worry about body position, body english, wheel placement, balance, bike weight, pedal efficiency, shifting, timing pedal strokes, or really bike handling period.

The difference between a mountain bike and a class 1 emtb is nothing like that... At all.

You don't suddenly gain any bike handling skills, at all.

In fact emtbs are harder to handle. I find that I work harder on the ebike in the same time period of riding: both because of handling and because of the additional ground covered. I get more vert sure, and I probably stay on my bike through a tech/steep section that I would have lost momentum in and had to walk. I'm also more likely to have trail tools and gear that I would have left behind on an analog ride. I also find myself able to get out for meaningful ride when time is short that I might have skipped on my analog.

How did I get an ebike when I said "as long as I'm annually continuing to beat my PRs both up and down, why would I go ebike?" I thought as many have posted, that ebikers are lazy! I heard for years from friends who had tried them that they were great and I was wrong, but still I hadn't bothered to ride an emtb on a real trail ride with real riders.

I softened on ebikes after watching ebikes perform on SAR and mtb race support (which I also do). Nobody is gonna shell out huge emtb $ just for that though!

What ultimately got me to shell out was when my friends who were elite pro climbers turned insane bikers, who are also trail builders, convinced me to do an emtb ride with them, and they'd even provide the emtb. Fine. OK. I'll try. These are folks I ride the hard stuff with in Whistler and at home. And when they took me out on an emtb ride, they crushed on the up with ebikes because we are all still pedaling hard and they pedal harder because they are elite athletes. Ebikes don't make people lazy it seems. Then we crushed down.

I use my emtb for SAR, race support, trail work, and personal rides. I also still find myself on my analog bikes the majority of personal rides

25%+ of US bike sales are emtb this year and it is growing. In Europe you see numbers like 80% in some countries. The biggest haters in the US are the people who haven't ridden one. Try it. You might be surprised.

The second half of this reads like you cut and paste from a pro e-bike statement that IMBA wants you to send your Congressman.

Edit to add: AliasRice, as someone who spends lots of time on the trails in the middle of nowhere, I have seen quite a few people on e-bikes who needed help or had no business being where they were. I’ve seen plenty of those people on local trails in CO, too. But FWIW, I think it’s odd e-bikes we’re included in this specific ruling.

[ASmileyFace]

Related:

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Maybe this time the OHV friendly crowd in Silverton will take the hint... I doubt it though. I think they just like wasting our money forcing special elections.

It is about damn time that the OHV user group feels the squeeze. For every respectful OHV user there are half a dozen dipshits flying "Fuck you Feelings" flags running over tundra. tearing up roads and then complaining to me that Silverton banning them is like "racism." I've heard, "Moab's got it right," dozens of time in the last two years. Well even the land managements groups in that area are sick of your shit. If OHVs weren't allowed to roam the roads in Moab maybe I would have visited downtown more than three times in the past decade?

There is no more entitled outdoor user group than OHVers. It's been a golden age for access and technology for them for the past 5 years, and now they are reaping what they have sowed.

The fact that Ebikes are getting caught up in this closure, has more to do with how the BLM runs things than anything else. It sucks for those users, but your bike has a motor. Get over it and play by the rules.

[grinch]

Right...moped riders are going to get out there in Moab and maintain OHV trails. LOL. You're delusional.

Also delusional giving credit to mopeds for building trails. Builders build trails, not mopeds. Builders were out there building trails before mopeds existed, and they would still be out there digging if mopeds disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow. All mopeds do is make it easier for builders to get to the work site.

Your level of denial is impressive to not equate shorter access to more work getting done or more days of work because it makes the decision to go do the work easier . The emtb is responsible for more work getting done. Any trailbuilder using one will tell you that. They also make it easier to go up and down the new trail sectiins, as you go, to test ride it to see if the new section works or what changes need to be made.
None of them are lazy people. Time on the bike is time on the bike. Similar heart rate. You just go farther , or in this case get moee work done. More work done equals more trail developed because of emtb's/

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[Foggy_Goggles]

This thread has everything?

Can I like E Bikes but think they should be limited to motorized trails?

Is it OK to think that while human behavior is the main issue, new SxS enable shitbaggery unlike before?

Is it to complex to simultaneously dislike both the Federal Government's public lands management and the abuse that made it necessary?

The Town of Moab has become basically Daytona Beach of Utah. There is a certain user that comes to town, gets an AirBnB and motel and spends up to $750/day on a SxS and just treats in like an amusement park or video game.

Because many of the SxS are street legal in Moab, they just ride from town to these banned trails. Some users may be lost but what will happen is they will just trailer to different trails. You've already seen this with the camping bans around the river and Castle Valley. The zones outside the closure are starting to get trashed.

Moab is great but people act like its the only place in the desert. It will be interesting to see what happens.

[toast2266]

But FWIW, I think it’s odd e-bikes we’re included in this specific ruling.

It doesn't seem to me that this really changes anything for ebikes. As best I can tell, most of the stuff that was closed was rogue trails through the desert, which I'm guessing were sandy unrideable slogs, even on an ebike.

Including ebikes was probably just easier, since federal regulations still group them as a motorized vehicle. BLM would've had to jump through a bunch of hoops to carve them out of the exclusion, and it probably wasn't worth the effort considering ebikes aren't really affected by this closure anyways.

[Meadow Skipper]

This thread has everything?

Can I like E Bikes but think they should be limited to motorized trails?

Is it OK to think that while human behavior is the main issue, new SxS enable shitbaggery unlike before?

Is it too complex to simultaneously dislike both the Federal Government's public lands management and the abuse that made it necessary?

Well said.

[fastfred]

just when I thought tgr was getting boring this week
solid work here
I saw this map almost two years ago nothing new here
moab is played out and it sucks it's like breckenridge just a shitty tourist town over run by gapers plenty of much cooler places to go

on that note I'll be there next weekend renting a side by side letting my dog run wild getting shitty at the brewery blasting my music being stupid and letting a friend expense the whole thing while she looks for oil and gas opportunities before more land gets taken away from drillers in the name of saving the environment cause someday just like breck everyone will be riding on unicorns rainbows and recycled farts and we will be living in a carbon neutral land of over consumption and general dubachery where we give plenty of vocal support about how we care so much about the enviroment yet do nothing to stop our consumption

[MagnificentUnicorn]

This thread has everything?

Can I like E Bikes but think they should be limited to motorized trails?

Is it OK to think that while human behavior is the main issue, new SxS enable shitbaggery unlike before?

Is it to complex to simultaneously dislike both the Federal Government's public lands management and the abuse that made it necessary?

The Town of Moab has become basically Daytona Beach of Utah. There is a certain user that comes to town, gets an AirBnB and motel and spends up to $750/day on a SxS and just treats in like an amusement park or video game.

Because many of the SxS are street legal in Moab, they just ride from town to these banned trails. Some users may be lost but what will happen is they will just trailer to different trails. You've already seen this with the camping bans around the river and Castle Valley. The zones outside the closure are starting to get trashed.

Moab is great but people act like its the only place in the desert. It will be interesting to see what happens.

This is entirely too reasonable.

I’m a little surprised at the folks saying that riding an emtb is just as hard or harder than riding a mtb. Yet at the same time saying that emtbs allow them to ride farther, get more vert, ride faster and ride technical sections of trail that they couldn’t on an mtb. It’s cognitive dissonance, the reason they’re on a emtb is because it’s easier. I really don’t care if you want to ride one but own it. They’re easier, yes I’ve ridden an emtb. It’s silly and dishonest to argue otherwise.

That said I have zero problem with people using them on motorized trails of any kind, just stay off designated non motorized trails, if it’s signed “no motorized use” that includes e-bikes on BLM an FS trails.


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[singlesline]

Dunno about that. I just bikepacked a big loop in SW Utah that included a variety of restricted OHV trails. Some were 50" inch or less (ATV/moto), some were 60" max, some 72". There were metal and wood barriers in places to prevent anything larger from getting through. I see 50/60" and motorized singletrack restrictions on the OP's map so the Moab plan already includes some of this.

Yeah, but my point is those restrictions don't work on trails where you want to allow full size 4x4 jeeps/trucks and just want to keep the sxs riff raff out.

Sure, you could put up signs that say "vehicles must be <50" or more than 70"" but that's just going to annoy people and can't easily be enforced barriers.