Hikers, Bikers Battle for Higher Ground

George Michaelis was riding a mountain bike during the crash that killed him. Aside from that, little about his death immediately connected it to the bitter battle hikers and cyclists have waged over the trails of the Santa Monica Mountains.

After all, when the 59-year-old financier collided with another cyclist in a steep ravine on March 9, he wasn’t pedaling on a narrow dirt path, but on a paved road at the edge of this urban state park, near his Pacific Palisades home.

But those facts did not prevent organized hikers from using Michaelis’ death in their campaign to keep mountain bikes off the trails. They gathered details from police, paramedics and the coroner’s office, then spun their argument for state officials: If a mature cyclist like Michaelis could be killed in a location like that, imagine the carnage that would result if “young gonzos” were permitted on single-track switchbacks.

“It’s totally relevant,” insisted Mary Ann Webster, a member of the Sierra Club’s Santa Monica Mountains task force. “The accident happened not because there was something wrong with the road, but it happened because of speed.”

The attempt to politicize a personal tragedy demonstrates the degree to which the war of words over the Santa Monicas has escalated since the state parks department revised its rules last summer to open more trails to mountain bikes. A decade after the knobby-wheeled bikes nosed their way into the urban wilderness, leaving a national craze and a windstorm of controversy in their dust, hikers sense they are literally and figuratively losing ground.

Based on anecdotal evidence from park rangers, it appears that mountain bikers now outnumber hikers on weekends. In Point Mugu State Park alone, there were 13 mountain bike accidents last year requiring some form of medical treatment--more than at any other park in the state system. But safety isn’t the main issue that divides the two camps. Rather, it is whether they can coexist without sacrificing the serenity that draws people to the mountains in the first place.

Tensions are so severe that some longtime hiking activists have grown weary of the fight and become alienated from the cause of protecting the wild lands. Jo Kitz, a member of the California Native Plant Society, described the atmosphere at many public meetings where the factions debate land-use plans as “virulent.”

“I’ve stopped going to a lot of them because, quite frankly, I can’t take the hostility. It’s vicious,” Kitz said with a sigh.

Bicyclists are nonetheless preparing for a protracted conflict, cheered by their increasing access to areas that previously were off-limits.

“From a bicycling perspective, things are a lot better, in that the National Park Service and state parks have reopened trails that were initially closed to us,” said Jim Hasenhauer, a Cal State Northridge speech communications professor who is president of the International Mountain Bicycling Assn. “The downside is this intensified the backlash. Many of the anti-bike people see this as their last stand.”

Until last year, state policy seemed to favor hikers. Since 1989, bikes were permitted only on fire roads in state parks unless a local parks superintendent decreed otherwise. Although cyclists lobbied to have selected trails opened, few were; there are more than 100 miles of state-owned trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, but only a half-dozen trails that have gone “multiuse.”

The updated edict turned that equation on its head, however, requiring local superintendents to evaluate all trails and demonstrate why they should not be opened, said Dan Preece, Angeles District superintendent for the state parks system. “I interpreted it to mean I have to have some specific reasons to exclude someone before I will,” Preece said.

Preece responded to the revised policy by opening a steep, 5-mile section of the Backbone Trail in Will Rogers State Park to bicycles in January. “Part of the decision was based on my assumption that on the steep and narrow trails, people do go slower. On roads, paved roads, which have always been open, is where we have most of our accidents,” he said.

The trail opening was a clear victory for Hasenhauer’s group and the Van Nuys-based Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Assn. (CORBA), which made getting bikes on the 70-mile Backbone Trail a top priority. The cyclists have long argued that taxpayer money should not be used to build trails that are not open to everyone, and infuriated equestrian groups by maintaining that horses don’t belong on any trails where bikes are not also permitted.

But in addition to making demands, the cycling groups worked hard to improve the image of mountain bikers. CORBA formed a volunteer mountain bike unit to help overworked rangers patrol the parks and dispense water, first aid and directions to visitors. And the group conducts classes in trail etiquette and proper trail-building techniques.

Even hikers concede those efforts have paid off and helped legitimize the cyclists’ goals.

“I have to give them credit; they have been very strong and tenacious,” said Agoura resident Daphne Elliott, vice president of the Santa Monica Trails Council.

Longtime activists like Webster and Elliott, however, view the presence of bicycles on wilderness trails with the horror of people who have witnessed vandals desecrating an ancestral graveyard. To a large extent, the battle has been drawn along generational lines. The Trails Council’s aging membership is composed largely of veteran hikers who built the existing trails and lobbied Congress to declare the Santa Monicas a national recreational area two decades ago.

“I have a dear friend who has given his whole life to working in the mountains, and he is afraid he will be knocked over the edge of a trail by a bicycle. He just stays home now,” said Lenora Kirby, the council’s president.

While mourning the encroachment of the two-wheeled “machines,” the hiking groups do not plan to yield an inch of terrain without a fight. They have organized a letter-writing campaign to persuade Preece to restrict the Backbone Trail to hikers and horseback riders again.

Their campaign has been hampered, however, by an absence of hard data supporting the position that bikes on trails are inherently dangerous or pose a greater nuisance than, say, horse manure. Statewide, there were 66 serious mountain bike accidents last year, but most were one-person incidents in which only the cyclists were hurt, Preece said. And until recently, visitor satisfaction surveys seemed to indicate that hiker-biker conflicts were easing, he said.

That is perhaps why the hikers made sure state officials took note of Michaelis’ death. In a move that infuriated the cyclists, Elliott wrote letters to newspaper opinion pages calling the fatal accident “the result of bicycles being allowed where it is not safe for them to be at all.”

When she and other participants met two weeks later, in a mediation process the National Park Service initiated last year to forge a compromise on the trail access issue, tensions boiled over.

“It was reprehensible, opportunistic and totally irrelevant to the issue of bicycles on trails,” said Hasenhauer, one of the cyclists who publicly lambasted Elliott at the meeting for trying to make an example of Michaelis’ death. Michaelis, who died of head injuries the day after the accident, was not wearing a safety helmet, he noted.

The biking groups insist that such hard-core opponents are part of a vocal minority, that most park users do not mind sharing the trails with cyclists. At the same time, both they and the hiking groups worry that the energy that committed nature enthusiasts have exerted fighting each other has diverted much-needed attention from the cause of preserving the mountains they cherish.

“The sad thing is we all love being outdoors and if we are ever going to convince government to help us acquire land and maintain it, we have to stick together,” said Trails Council President Kirby.

“Many of us have developed, I won’t say an affection for one another, but a respect for one another,” said Peter Heumann, a CORBA cofounder. “We just don’t agree on how the parks should be used, and that’s unfortunate because the passionate ones are the ones who will fight for additional funds.”

One idea that has surfaced in the mediation meetings is building separate, parallel trails for hikers and bikers. Such a solution might reduce animosity, but it would not be the best thing for the mountains, since every trail built leaves a scar on the natural landscape, activists admit.

Both sides agree on at least one thing: The dispute is not about to be settled any time soon. In response to the hundreds of letters of complaint he has received since opening the Backbone Trail segment to mountain bikes, Preece said he must reconsider his decision. The trail proved so popular with cyclists, he said, that it looks like the bikes are crowding out other forms of recreation as well as encroaching on trails where they are still banned.

“The backlash has been so great and the number of letters has been so large and the concern has been so sincere and widespread, I believe the second look we take is going to be far more critical,” he said.

Preece said he is exploring options other than reclosing the trail to bikes, such as limiting the number of people who can use it at one time. Meanwhile, his office plans to survey park visitors in about a month. A professional pollster will be hired because during past surveys, biking groups have accused hiking groups of stuffing the ballot box.