A local mountain biking enthusiast hoping to establish a recreational trail system at Crane Mountain is upset after discovering that someone vandalized a jump feature on the nearby Beardance Trail outside of Woods Bay recently.
Regardless of the tampering, the ramps and two other separate features at Beardance were later deemed unsuitable by U.S. Forest Service standards anyhow and will be removed.
Ron Cron, the main proponent of a contentious trail system in Flathead National Forest near the northeast shore of Flathead Lake, was showing Forest Service officials three biking features on Aug. 29 when they discovered the tampering.
A planked off-ramp on a fallen log was pushed away, leaving a gaping hazard for anyone riding the feature, Cron said.
“Whoever vandalized it, they didn’t know it was going to be removed,” he said. “It seems like everybody wants to point a finger at me and say I broke the law. Apparently I’m not the only one now.”
In 2009 Cron admitted to building an illegal biking trail at Crane Mountain and was charged with a misdemeanor and cited $300. Since then Cron has held a fundraiser and drafted a proposal for a future trail system at Crane Mountain that would include features for mountain bikers such as the fallen-log jumps at Beardance.
“What we’re trying to do has never been done in (the Forest Service) Region 1, which is actually the largest region in the nation. There are no mountain bike ‘freeride’ trails in the system,” Cron said of his Crane Mountain trail system proposal. “Yeah, there’s going to be issues of trial and error.”
Cron said since the 2009 incident he has followed everything the Forest Service has said about biking features on national forest land.
Rich Kehr, the district ranger at the Swan Lake Ranger District, said mountain biking features at Beardance — and any other trail in Flathead National Forest for that matter — need to follow the guidelines of a trail management objective.
“(The features) didn’t meet with the objective of the trail,” Kehr said. “They cause riders to go off the main tread of the trail and form these side trails and parallel trails.”
Kehr said Cron has done maintenance on the trails to keep the impact down, but the features do not fit in terms of “public safety and appropriate management of the trails.”
“We try to have folks work together and manage the trails under national forest policy,” Kehr said. “There’s a lot of interest and we’re trying to just get everybody together and focused on meeting that objective.”
Although discouraged by the vandalism at Beardance, Cron said he will keep trying his best to compromise and follow the appropriate steps needed to allow mountain biking features on national forest lands.
“I’ve been discouraged many times but I keep popping back,” he said. “I’m not going to give up on this. I think it’s important. Biking is a good avenue for using the forest. I think we belong there and I’m not going to give up.”