During the 2016 Fall Meeting of the Keystone Trails Association Council, it was decided that KTA would oppose the legislation that opened Wilderness Areas to mountain bicycles. The following letter was written and sent to Senators Casey and Toomey, following the meeting.

Mountain biking is an increasingly popular form of outdoor recreation that has a place on public lands. Many members of Keystone Trails Association use mountain bikes for exercise, and outdoor enjoyment. In some instances, mountain bike use can occur in a way that minimizes conflicts with other public lands users such as hikers and backpackers. However, in most cases we feel user conflicts and environmental impacts occur when bikes are used in the remote and undeveloped areas where we hike.

Hikers and backpackers, are concerned by recently introduced Senate legislation that would enable biking in federally designated wilderness. S. 3205, the Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Areas Act, sponsored by Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, would give local land managers discretion to permit bicycles in wilderness areas. Under the 1964 Wilderness Act, bikes and other forms of “mechanical transport” are explicitly banned in wilderness.

Throughout America, wilderness provides hikers with places to escape the crowds and chaos that dominate present-day society and experience the same sense of solitude, freedom and challenge that generations of hikers, campers and backpackers have sought out before us. Wilderness designations ensure that this opportunity continues to be earned through hard work rather than modern technologies. The whole idea (of the Wilderness Act) is to provide a small amount of places where that sort of development wasn’t going to reach. It provides a primitive, quiet outdoor experience many people such as Pennsylvania’s hiker’s desire.

KTA believes that wilderness designations work well as currently stipulated in the Wilderness Act. We are committed to defending traditional use within wilderness areas. We therefore oppose efforts to rewrite the Wilderness Act to allow mountain bike and mechanized use in wilderness areas. We also ask that you join a diverse and growing segment of public lands users, including our hikers, who oppose S.B. 3205.

KTA OPPOSES BIKES IN WILDERNESS AREAS