During the last week of May, local mountain bike trail builders, a TORCC coordinator, and four members of the Blue Mountain Motorcycle club sat down to talk about trail usage on Eagle. While BMMC has no affiliation with Eagle, these four riders are very familiar with the mountain, and even talked about the potential of starting up an Eagle Ridge moto club (even if just in name).

There are several trails on Eagle that were historically used by motorbike that we effectively took over for mountain bike usage, such as the Dentist, but in their current configuration, we all decided that there was no reason why they couldn’t remain multi-use. To facilitate this, we collectively agreed that education was the best plan going forward, and we’ve discussed putting in signage at trail heads saying whether the trail is MTB, Moto, or shared. We realize that there are potential risks to doing this, since none of the trails are legitimate, but working together will do less harm than working against each other. Currently, the shared trails that exist are: Dentist, Decapitator Bypass (that links up to Mossom/Manhandler), Mossom Creek and Sidewinder.  As well, we discussed how mountain bike trails could be built to make it less appealing to dirt bikers who insist on riding them.

Overall, the mood was constructive and positive, and we all realized that we are in this for the same reasons, and aren’t all that different, although we have very different requirements of trail usage.

We will post more developments as they happen.