Ottawa Citizen Article
Unhappy trails: Mountain bikers love their sport, but there's little joy
navigating the roadblocks thrown their way by critics and parks
officials in the National Capital region
The Ottawa CitizenSunday, October 9, 2005
Page: C6
Section: The Citizen's Weekly
Byline: Chris Cobb
Source: Citizen News Services
Scott Forsyth rides a mountain bike like he was born welded to it. He's a
fast and breathtakingly skilled technical rider. Which means he knows how
to skip rocks, jump tree roots, scale boulders and generally make haste
while tackling whatever obstacle nature puts in his way.
Forsyth is also a level-headed, nothing-left-to-prove sort of guy whose
sporting ambition after almost 20 years of rock hopping is to give mountain
biking the good name it deserves. Harnessing nature to create challenging
spaces for bikers to practise their sport in and around Ottawa would be
good, too. Which is all easier than it sounds. Not all obstacles in the
world of mountain biking can be negotiated with a deft and well-timed lift
of a front wheel.
Mountain biking didn't exist 30 years ago but throughout the western world
it has grown into a multi-disciplined sport backed by a multi-billion-dollar
equipment and accessory industry.
There are four categories of mountain biking:
Cross-country, or trail riding: Riders encounter rocks, tree roots, inclines
and declines, all of which demand varying degrees of technical skill. Bug-free
fall weeks are the ideal time for cross-country riding.
Downhill: Usually involves rider and bike taking a ski lift up -- and a rapid, bumpy
ride down -- a mountain.
Free riding: Falls somewhere between cross-country and downhill, and demands
leaps over natural or manmade structures. Free riding was developed at
Whistler, B.C., which is, for many, the world's mountain-biking Mecca.
Urban: The most marginal of the four employs city steel and concrete -- stairs,
walls, etc.
Mountain biking, especially the cross-country variety, has met resistance
almost everywhere it has emerged and the National Capital region is no
exception. In the hundreds of areas of North America where mountain bikers
now co-exist with other trail users and various local authorities, the path
to happiness has involved acceptance, negotiation and compromise, usually
in that order.
The main biking areas in this region are Gatineau Park, including the privately
leased Camp Fortune, and the 700-acre South March Highlands bought with
commendable foresight by the City of Ottawa in 2000. (The popular,
developer-owned Kanata Lakes trails are destined to disappear under new
houses, but until the bulldozers move in, still attract hundreds of grateful
mountain bikers each week.)
Gatineau Park, managed with conservation a priority by the National Capital
Commission, has reached official acceptance of mountain biking by including it
as a "legitimate activity" in its new master plan for the park. It may sound
like faint recognition but it offers the mountain biking community hope it can
work with the NCC to re-open some of the more challenging trails it has closed
to bikers.
Scott Forsyth, who last spring founded the Ottawa Mountain Bike Association
(OMBA) as a local advocacy and teaching group, says the rapid growth of
mountain biking has created a special set of problems.
"As the sport becomes more popular," he says, "the user conflicts, which
are real, become more apparent. I've hiked in the Gatineaus and had the
wits scared out of me by bikers going by too fast and too close. But now,
as the sport matures, riders have to become more responsible.
"I understand that part of the mandate of the Gatineau Park is preservation
and conservation and I agree that a lot of the trails are for winter use
only and mountain bikes shouldn't be on them. They are frozen in the winter
and usually wet in the summer and erosion occurs way faster when trails are
wet."
But Forsyth says it's time for bikers, hikers, local authorities and all other
interested groups to work out a solution. He disagrees that bikers cause more
damage than hikers, or horses.
"In fact," he says, "a case can be made that co-existence is probably the
healthiest situation."
Michel Dallaire, manager of Recreation Services at Gatineau Park, says the NCC's
official recognition of mountain biking offers an ideal foundation for negotiation.
"We are getting there," he says, "through better communication and better
understanding. We can cater to some of their needs but not all of them."
Dallaire refuses to say whether trails, closed to mountain bikers, will ever be
re-opened but suggests that compromise, however limited, is likely.
It's impossible for the NCC to control use of all its trails and to stop
mountain bikers from riding where they shouldn't. Forsyth and his OMBA
colleagues say the answer is to promote responsible riding and to work
with the reality that mountain biking is growing.
Dominique Larocque, whose summer Camp Fortune mountain-bike schools have
made her one of the best-known names on the local biking scene, says the
NCC is procrastinating and needs to allow closed trails around Fortune to
be "rehabilitated."
Former Canadian national mountain-bike team member, Larocque is area
representative of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA),
which promotes environmentally friendly trail-building for mountain biking
and offers programs to teach riders how to enjoy their sport while protecting
the environment around trails.
"We need to sit around a table and discuss a plan," she says. "Camp Fortune
has the potential to become a mini-Whistler and we can start with a prototype
on one of the closed trails." (Larocque says even the open trails are
deterring mountain bikers because the NCC insists on covering many of them
with gravel.)
At Kanata Highlands, Forsyth and his biking group have created a challenging
mountain-biking environment through volunteer trail-building. Part of their
"sustainability philosophy" is to keep the growing number of mountain bikers
away from restricted areas by providing dedicated trails. But Forsyth has tired
of the uncertainty and wants the work officially sanctioned.
"Local mountain bikers have maintained the trails and done some excellent
work," he says. "It isn't illegal but it isn't sanctioned either so we have
decided we want in legitimized and want to be in dialogue with the city.
We travel to places where mountain biking has been embraced and it's a
wonderful experience. That's our dream for South March Highlands --
officially sanctioned trails that our members will maintain."
OMBA has the support of Kanata area city councillor Peggy Feltmate.
"My son-in-law mountain bikes," she says, "and if I were younger I would too.
It's an exciting sport but we do have a potential for conflict from those who
might want a more passive activity. OMBA is doing something positive by
keeping bikers on specific paths. It's all positive and we need to recognize
that and get on with it."
Feltmate, a keen hiker, is pushing for the city to do a recreation and
environmental study of the Kanata Highlands area next year.
OMBA is holding a special ride in Kanata next Saturday morning to celebrate
the signing of its 100th member.
For more information check out: www.ottawamba.org.
For information on IMBA go to www.imba.com
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