Hope for happier trails

The West Slope isn’t just a geographical location, it’s a culture, shared values of community and respect – where we lend a hand and acknowledge one another’s time/space/presence. In our rural communities, this attitude of community and mutual respect is paramount, and the term “shared use” is the backbone of our U.S. public lands – shared use of the lands themselves and shared use of the trails on those lands. 

In our region, we are privy to seemingly endless trails, trails that are near and dear to our hearts, trails that we all share as different user groups: horse folks, hikers, dog adventurers, hunters, birders, mountain bikers, mushroom hunters, trail runners, photographers, etc. With shared use comes great responsibility, the responsibility to check your ego and entitlement at the trailhead.

Recently, I was hiking with my pups just north of Durango on Engineer Pass Trail. I witnessed an elderly woman hiker, about 80 years old, fall on boulders as she rushed to move off the trail for mountain bikers barreling toward her with no signs of yielding. I counted nearly 35 mountain bikers on the trail that day, and only two of those stopped and pulled off the trail for me and the dogs hiking.

Normally an overly considerate trail-goer, I held my ground in front of the rest of those bikes, and me and the pups almost got run over multiple times, got screamed at and had some other quite awkward encounters. I kept coming back to the woman I saw fall earlier and how moving off the trail isn’t very easy for a lot of our population, nor should they be expected to.

I’ve spent my career researching and working with multi-use trails on federal public land all over the West. So, like any good scientist, while still on the trail today, I polled a few groups of local hikers on their experiences with mountain bike yield protocols. They said that around Durango, cyclists don’t pull off the trail for them, that they, as hikers, are expected to step off the trail for the mountain bikes: “They are always really nice about it, they say ‘thank you’ as they race through, but they never give us the right -of-way. If you don’t move, they race right at you, run you off the trail, and it’s really scary!” 

What is happening here? Why in the world would mountain bikers – who are supposed to yield to ALL other trail users in shared use – think and act this way? I was blown away. Mountain biking was my first trail love, I ride as much as I hike or run or meander with my hounds on the trails. I raced professionally for 10 years, spending 30 hours a week riding trails. I can’t fathom not stepping off the trail for others passing through on hoof, foot or braap.

All I can think is that our communal education strategies for teaching one another respect and common courtesy of shared use have gotten bulldozed by entitlement and a lack of learning trail etiquette. Perhaps this is due to lack of good signage or perhaps it is cultural learning of bad and unsafe habits from pedal friends. The shared use yield basics are: everyone yields to horses; bikers yield to everyone; and within those yields, downhill traffic yields to uphill traffic. It is a simple and effective system that keeps everyone safe and considerate. 

Trail yielding doesn’t just allow you to acknowledge another human (and animals) on the trail that you are sharing, it also protects our shared-use access. The trails exist because we all are using the trails. No one group would have access without all of us. The trail yield rules are not just for us humans either, they help keep the singletrack single! 

I truly love our Western Slope attitude of community and respect because it means watching out for one another. On this day, what I saw was not our local values of kindness and respect. What I saw was one user group on our shared-use trails that feels more entitled than others to dominate the trails because they move faster. 

Let’s leave the entitlement at the trailhead folks, and yield and keep that community care spirit alive over here!

In hopes of happier trails,

– Solana Kline, Dolores