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National Park Service - Yes To Guns, Maybe To Bicycles
By spokesman | January 4, 2009
Two recent articles in the Washington Post concerning nationals parks caught my attention. The first article discussed a new policy that allows people to carry concealed, loaded weapons in most national parks and wildlife refuges. It is a new policy that has been implemented in the last days of the Bush administration and is already the subject of a lawsuit. The second article discussed a new proposed rule to make it easier for mountain bikers and other cyclists to traverse the back-country of national parks. This proposed rule is opposed by many environmental groups and trail users such as hikers. The debate on both of these issues will continue for a long time.
However at the current time, you are more likely to be in compliance with National Park Service policy if you are found with a 357 Magnum than with a Trek.
All kidding aside, many national parks and the surrounding areas are great for bicyclists. I live in the Washington DC area and regularly bike on the C&O Canal and in Rock Creek Park (where many of the roads are closed to auto traffic on the weekends). I have also done trips in Death Valley and near Bryce, Zion and the Grand Canyon. Use the custom search engine on this site to find trips that include these parks and other popular destination such as Glacier National Park and Yellowstone.
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Topics: Bikes and Politics |
January 5th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
One small note on the concealed weapons thing - they’re only allowed in the national parks in accordance with state law. I’m not sure which states/parks that impacts, but it is something that has been misstated in a number of the articles I’ve seen. Not that I am in favor of concealed-carry in parks mind you.
As for bikes, I do hope that the rule change goes through and hope that the cyclist (especially MTB) community puts forth effort to demonstrate that we can be good members of the park-going community too. I think most of the opponents of bikes in parks have images of off-trail riders destroying the wilderness and we need to do everything possible to counter that.