Rover's revenge

Maybe people have become too afraid of the bears, or distracted by new trails across town at Kincaid Park. Whatever the reason, Rover's Run is going back to the weeds and furry animals.

Some bad — even tragic — bear encounters in recent years led to closures and a shady reputation for what used to be one of Anchorage's most heavily used trails. Despite decades of heavy use with no major problems, Rover's Run became a bad neighborhood. Almost overnight, nobody wanted wanted to use it during summer when hungry bears are active and the adjacent creek is loaded with salmon.

Maybe it's for the best. Rover's had been overused. It was getting wide, and the mud holes seemed to get a little deeper each year. Now vegetation is creeping in from the sides and narrowing the trail. And on a nice day recently, there was nary a tire track to be found. Riding it was fun, partially because I had it to myself, and partially because it's starting to feel like a natural singletrack again.

As it narrows, mountain bikers might begin to rediscover it. But if they want to wait another year or two, that's OK with me.

Well, it's a start

Jules cruises down icy Rover's Run on Sunday
while wearing a jacket she thoughtfully
coordinated with the colors on my new blog format.

Get the fat bikes out. It took until November 1, but there’s finally some snow on the ground. It’s wet crud mixed with rain but it’s here, it’s white and it’s covering the icy ruts and tire tracks that made Rover’s so dicey on Sunday.

The first snowfall of the season always snarls the morning car commute, but I’m lucky enough to be on vacation this week, so I slept late, ate a big breakfast and hit the Hillside on my Pugsley today. I got so many first tracks that I had trouble finding the trail a few times, and ended up taking wrong turns and riding sections I hadn’t expected—and that was part of the fun.

The sun even came out, but that’s not necessarily a good thing this early in the season. With temps in the mid-30s, it didn’t take long for the “rain shower” to start as snowmelt dripped off trees.

With more snow in the forecast, let’s hope the temperatures drop and help the trails set up.

Let the fat tires roll.

Rovin' Rover's

The city is warning trail users—again—to avoid Rover’s Run because a remote camera captured images of a brown bear sow and her two-year-old triplets walking on the trail multiple times over the past week.

For about 30 years, people used Rover’s on a regular basis with no significant bear problems—just an occasional sighting. But since a bad summer two years ago, the municipality has treated Rover’s like a skid-row titty bar full of brawling biker gangs. Nevermind the fact that the bear responsible for a serious mauling was never seen or heard from again, and the most persistently troublesome bear was killed, bringing threatening bear encounters to a screeching halt before that notorious summer ended.

Between trail closures and frequent warnings, the city has terrified many runners and bike riders, thereby cutting human use of Rover’s Run during summer months to a small fraction of what it was prior to 2008. All along, critics of the city’s response have pointed out that if humans vacate the area, bears will feel free to move in, and become bolder about using the trail during daylight hours.

And now cameras are capturing daytime images of a virtual wagon train of brown bears cruising the trail as if they owned it. Coincidence? Maybe not.

Take another look at those three cubs in the picture. They’re two years old. For their entire lives, human use of Rover’s has been minimized. Now Mama’s teaching them they can cruise that area with impunity.

Think they’re going to go away?

Don’t bet on it.

Fools

I often call mountain bikers the coolest people on the planet. In most cases, I’m right.

That’s why I hate to be reminded that even the people in our sport can behave like selfish assholes.

A few weeks ago, city officials declared Rover’s Run closed until further notice. Not everyone agreed with the decision, but it was a reasonable one under the circumstances. Two people had been mauled by bears on that trail, with the incidents occurring only a short distance and a few weeks apart. The bear, or bears, were still out there, feeding on salmon from the stream next to the trail.

Biologists set up cameras to capture images of bears using the trail so that they could identify individual animals and learn their habits. Unfortunately, they also got to see something else: bicyclists poaching the closed trail.

It was no accident. These riders chose to do this. The trail was clearly marked and the closure was widely publicized. It was also public knowledge that cameras had been installed. These guys didn't just thumb their noses at the closure, they did it when the whole city was watching, and soon after the mountain-biking community had endured public criticism because the first mauling occurred during a bike race.

One person was photographed riding the trail on more than one occasion during the closure. This is a guy who bragged about riding an off-limits trail a few months ago, then responded to criticism by promising to be more careful. He said he believed in efforts to improve the image of mountain bikers, and vowed he would help that cause.

Apparently, he didn’t mean a word of it.

A lot of mountain bikers in Anchorage have worked hard in recent years to improve relations with land managers and other user groups. Symbolically, these trail poachers have taken a big, fat, steaming dump on those efforts. Because when the non-cycling public picks up the newspaper and reads that bike riders are ignoring the trail closure, they lump us all together.

They don’t read that this guy or that guy ignored the rules; they read that mountain bikers ignored the rules.

When I think of mountain bikers and cool people, these guys don’t fit the bill.

As far as I’m concerned they aren’t even real mountain bikers. They aren’t worthy of the trails.