As I reported was likely in the December, 2015 edition of The Keystone Hiker, the U.S. Forest Service is indeed moving forward with an effort to open hiking-only trails in the stunning untrammeled backcountry wilds of the proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area in the Allegheny National Forest — the largest federal inventoried roadless area in Pennsylvania — to mountain biking. Here are the agency’s recently-published “scoping” documents for the proposed project for your review:

This obtuse and hostile proposal would entail a process that the Forest Service themselves previously described as necessitating widening of the trails, and “extensive shoring up of sideslopes and hardening of the tread with additional surfacing material,” which would be “expensive and likely to change the character of” of these special wild trails.

Here is a link to documentation showing how the agency itself deemed mountain biking in Tracy Ridge to be an untenable idea back in 1994:

If Tracy Ridge was unsuitable for mountain biking in 1994, why then is it all of a sudden desirable in 2016? It isn’t – the agency’s advocacy for such now is arbitrary and capricious. They predetermined that they want to steamroll us and force mountain biking into Tracy Ridge, and are simply backward-engineering rationale as to why it is suddenly somehow “appropriate.”

The public has until August 15th to submit comment with your own thoughts on why this remarkably ill-advised project should not go forward. Please write to the Forest Service asking specifically, for example, that the ANF’s 2007 Land and Resource Management Plan (Forest Plan) should be amended to include the entire 9,700-acre proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness Area, as outlined in the Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal for Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest that the Keystone Trails Association has endorsed, as a Wilderness Study Area (Management Area 5.2).

Also, due to the sheer magnitude of this proposal and the extreme deleterious effects it would have on Tracy Ridge and its hiking-only trails such as the North Country National Scenic Trail, please also demand in your letter that a full-blown “Environmental Impact Statement” be prepared to sufficiently analyze the proposal. (As opposed to the cursory “Environmental Assessment” that is advocated in the agency’s scoping letter.) It takes some nerve to claim with a straight face that only an EA is needed for this proposed impactful project, and not a full EIS!

Friends of Allegheny Wilderness is of course not opposed to mountain biking in the Allegheny National Forest. For example, we support the state-of-the-art 40-mile epic Jakes Rock’s mountain bike trail, now under construction, which will be specifically designed and engineered to accommodate the constant pounding of mountain bike use:

And there are literally thousands of miles of logging roads in the Allegheny that can easily accommodate this use. However, Tracy Ridge is simply not an appropriate location for this kind of activity.

Here are links to several documents providing more background and insight into this bad idea for radically altering the backcountry character of Tracy Ridge that you can use to draw ideas from for your letter to the Forest Service:

The scoping letter states that Tracy Ridge “is not designated as wilderness nor is the area a Forest Service wilderness study area.” While true, the statement by itself is also intentionally intellectually dishonest in that it could leave the reader with the impression that Tracy Ridge is not qualified for wilderness protection under the Wilderness Act of 1964. Everybody, including all staff at Allegheny National Forest and all staff in the U.S. Forest Service’s Regional office in Milwaukee, knows that Tracy Ridge is eminently qualified for inclusion in America’s National Wilderness Preservation System.

That is the only test that matters — is the area qualified for wilderness designation? If so, then ipso facto the agency’s sole responsibility is to advocate for such, as opposed to going around asking questions like “is there anybody who would like to do something different at Tracy Ridge besides have it designated as wilderness? What kind of developments would you like to see? Anybody? Anybody?”

Editorial: Radical Changes & Incompatible Development Advocated for Proposed Tracy Ridge Wilderness