Hard-Pedaling It : Backcountry Bikes Are the Rage, but They Make Other Trail Users Mad

Richard Cunningham was an avid motorcycle racer before the back-to-nature movement came along and set him off on what he now calls a “wholesome oatmeal-whole wheat transmutation.”

So, instead of roaring around a dusty, exhaust-filled track, Cunningham found himself crouched over the handlebars of a sleek European racing bicycle, gliding silently and cleanly over asphalt streets.

Then came the call of the wild, and before long Cunningham was riding his 10-speed on the dirt fire roads that crisscross the Santa Ana Mountains.

A handful of other cyclists soon joined him on Orange County’s backcountry trails. Monte Ward was one: From the back rooms of his Costa Mesa bike shop he rescued some aging Schwinn balloon-tire cruisers--rusting paper-route relics--and with a group of friends took to trails around Upper Newport Bay, the Santa Ana Mountains and the coastal bluffs in what is now Crystal Cove State Park.

Ward and his cohorts were inspired in part by the now-legendary exploits of a group of Northern California riders who were hurtling down the steep hills of Marin County in the late 1970s. Pioneers such as Tom Ritchie and Gary Fisher started by grafting heavy-duty brakes and multiple gears onto old single-speed “clunkers.” (Ten-speed road bikes, with their frail, lightweight frames and skinny tires, weren’t able to stand up to the rigors of riding off-road.)

Before long, Fisher and Ritchie were building custom bikes specifically for riding off-road. By 1980, the first off-road bicycle races were being organized, and in Placentia, Cunningham began building his custom Mantis mountain bikes.

A new sport had been born.

Today, the fat-tire revolution is in full swing. Most bicycle makers now carry an off-road line, and according to industry estimates, mountain bikes now compose about half of all bicycle sales.

The bikes are not cheap. With the entry of large bicycle companies--especially Japanese companies--into the field, prices for quality off-road bicycles now start at about $350 and rise quickly into the $1,000 range. Custom bikes can cost even more--Cunningham’s elite Mantis bicycles run from $1,300 to $2,200, and he builds only about 110 each year.

The bikes are not found only on the trail. With their wide, stable tires and upright seats, they have become a popular around-town bike; in fact, most mountain bikes are never taken off the road, according to the National Off-Road Bicycle Assn.

But it is in the backcountry that mountain bikes are most at home. The fat, treaded tires are made to grip corners through dirt and mud; the aluminum or alloy frames are built to take a bumpy ride but are light enough for the bikes to be carried easily. With 18 speeds, all but the steepest hills can be climbed, and the flat, upright handlebars allow better visibility and more control on fast descents. By their looks, they are still the spiritual descendants of the old cruisers, but the technology of mountain bikes is quickly catching up to the best of the road bicycles.

In Orange County, mountain bikes are a common sight on many backcountry trails. Chino Hills State Park in the northeastern corner of the county, largely undeveloped and lined with miles of fire roads and single-track trails, is a popular spot. The canyons of the Santa Ana Mountains--Silverado, Black Star, Modjeska, Trabuco--are prime off-road biking locations, as are areas off Ortega Highway, including Caspers Regional Wilderness Park.

The backcountry of Crystal Cove State Park, on the coast between Laguna Beach and Corona del Mar, can probably stake a claim as the county’s favorite destination for mountain bikers. Its 3,000 acres contain 17 miles of trails, and the hilly terrain ranges in elevation from sea level to 2,000 feet.

According to John O’Rourke, the park’s ranger in charge of resource protection, between 800 and 2,000 mountain bikers use the park each week. He attributes Crystal Cove’s popularity to its accessibility to urban areas, the cool ocean breezes and a recent burst of publicity in local bicycling publications. “It’s a good place for beginning and intermediate riders,” said O’Rourke, who recently took up the sport himself.

With its increasing popularity, the sport is no longer the private domain of a few hardy--and sometimes eccentric--pioneers. Mountain bike enthusiasts now cut across a range of ages and interest levels, but with all the hill climbing, a basic level of physical fitness is still requisite.

“You have to be in really good shape,” Cunningham said. “I ride three times a week seriously, and I consider that basic maintenance to just be able to do the sport.” The physical demands help keep a cap on the number of off-road riders, Ward said. “It’s not an easy activity . . . so there’s a certain regulating factor at work there.”

Asking mountain bikers why they like the sport is likely to elicit a variety of answers. For Cunningham, off-road biking offered a welcome alternative to the increasingly fashion-conscious world of road riding.

“When (mountain) bikes came out, road bikes were like epic sports cars,” he said. “To ride your road bike, you couldn’t just throw on a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and go. You had to have the sports shoes, the pedals to match, the Lycra (outfit) that matched the color of your bike.

“You could ride (mountain) bicycles in Levis and flannel shirts, like the Northern California guys . . . or you could ride in Lycra, or something in between. There wasn’t any uniform. That’s what the main draw was--just total fun.”

Doug Martin, an avid mountain biker and manager of a Fountain Valley bicycle shop, likes the abandon of off-road riding. “Heck, it’s being a kid again,” he said. “You see a puddle ahead, and instead of going around it you go through it. When you’re done, you hose your bike off, you hose yourself off, and you plan next week’s trip.”

Costa Mesa resident Margaret Day is one of the sport’s top competitive riders. After finishing well as an amateur in a number of races, she decided to enter last year’s world championships in Mammoth as a professional. She came in second in all three women’s categories--uphill, downhill and cross-country--and the Raleigh bike company offered her a sponsorship on the spot. She is now training for her first full season as a pro.

A former member of the USC swim team, Day takes her riding seriously. But her favorite aspects of the sport haven’t changed in the four years since she began riding for recreation: “It’s peaceful. . . . You’re away from the cars and the traffic. I can’t stand riding in the smog--it just drives me crazy.”

Most of the mountain bikers interviewed cited the pleasures of getting off Orange County’s increasingly congested streets and into the hills. Brian Galleher switched from riding road bikes to mountain bikes about two years ago. “I have a little more fun on the mountain bikes,” he said. “I guess it’s just being away from everything--the cars and just the general business of the city. I feel a little freer on the bike. I feel like a kid again.”

“I still ride my road bike,” said Pat Nolte, a Whittier schoolteacher who often rides in Chino Hills with a group led by Cunningham. “It’s nice to be on a fast, light bike once in a while, but it’s so great to get off the road.”

Mark Vandiver, a six-year mountain bike veteran and a frequent riding companion of Galleher, summed it up this way: “Sucking up exhaust fumes just isn’t that much fun.”

The movement of cyclists off the busy streets and into the backcountry hasn’t exactly been welcomed by traditional trail users--hikers and equestrians. The fear since mountain bikes first came on the scene is that fast-moving cyclists would collide with hikers or spook horses off the trail. Environmentalists also worry that the bikes damage trails.

Cyclists say the dangers posed by mountain bikers are more perceived than real, but so far their arguments have failed to sway detractors. Every month brings new reports of public trail systems being closed to mountain bikes, especially in California. One of the biggest local defeats for bikers came in August, when directors of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy voted to ban bicycles from trails on its lands from Griffith Park to Point Mugu.

Access to riding areas is “probably the most prominent issue in mountain biking today,” said Chris Ross, director of the Chandler, Ariz.-based National Off-Road Bicycle Assn. The association is the national sanctioning body for off-road bicycle racing, but it is also taking an increasing role in access issues.

“For the majority of the country, (access) is not that big a problem,” Ross said. “As usual, California is the trend-setter.”

Don Douglass, the group’s land-access director, said one of the organization’s objectives is to improve the image of mountain bikers as “kamikazes” careening down steep hillsides with little regard for other trail users. The first step for Douglass and others is reaching the riders who actually fit that description.

“Basically, we’re trying to (persuade) the few renegade riders that they’re spoiling it for themselves and everybody else,” Douglass said.

For Ross, it’s the old story of a few bad apples spoiling the whole bunch. “That’s the case with most things, but with mountain biking it’s especially true. We work really hard to get some good-will going, and a couple of kamikazes come barreling down a trail and set us back again.”

The off-road bicycling association is also encouraging riders to organize trail-building and patrol groups in an effort to mend fences with other trail users. Examples include the Concerned Off-Road Bicycle Assn., which is working to regain access to some trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, and Team Dirty Work in Riverside County.

In Crystal Cove, Monte Ward has organized 25 riders for a mounted patrol. Each volunteer agrees to make a four-hour patrol ride at least one weekend day each month. They answer questions for park visitors and report to the park staff on problems.

“The purpose of the patrol is to serve as the eyes and ears of the park (staff), since they’re spread out so thin,” Ward said. “It’s been good, positive public relations.”

“It kind of promotes a better feeling between the enforcement staff and the public,” Crystal Cove ranger John O’Rourke said. There have been some problems between bikers and other users, he reports, but overall relations have been smooth and there are no plans to curtail bicycle use in the park.

“I’d say that 98% of the public has been very cooperative,” O’Rourke said. “I think they realize that if something really bad happens--somebody hits a pedestrian or hits a horse--that’s it for the mountain bikes.”

In Chino Hills, Richard Cunningham is working to organize a group of riders to join the park’s equestrian mounted patrol. “Access has been like an ax over the entire movement’s head from the beginning,” Cunningham said, “so most of the people I know have organized in some way to help on trail-building programs or something like that.”

The purpose of such efforts, Cunningham said, is to “help balance the odds against us until the pendulum starts to swing the other way and there isn’t so much friction.”

There is some evidence that the pendulum is starting to swing the mountain bikers’ way. The Sierra Club has been one of the staunchest foes of mountain-bike use on public trail systems since 1985, when the bikes were lumped in with motorized off-road vehicles as part of the club’s national policy.

The club’s national board of directors is scheduled to vote on a new off-road vehicle policy in May, and there are indications that it may soften its stance toward mountain bikes. In January, the executive committee of the club’s Angeles Chapter, which covers Los Angeles and Orange counties, voted to recommend to the national directors a less rigid policy on mountain bike use on public lands (excluding wilderness areas, where the bikes are banned).

Tom Jeter, a member of the Angeles Chapter Conservation Committee and a mountain biker, pushed for the resolution through three months of often intense meetings and hearings. “It’s one of the most controversial single issues that I’ve seen within the Sierra Club,” Jeter said. “There’s a number of mountain bikers within the Sierra Club, and they have objected to the harsh tone of the mountain-bike policy.”

Jeter said he is encouraged by efforts by mountain bikers to organize and improve relations with other trail users. “What I’m trying to do is buy time for the mountain bikers to get it together,” he said. “They may or may not come through . . . (but) they haven’t proven to me to be incorrigible enemies of the environment.”