KevinsMap
Adventurer
The title of this thread does homage to a truly great movie, a watershed moment in 1971, and in the land-use history of our America. Is there any person on this forum, who has not seen it? Directed by Bruce Brown, in part produced by Steve McQueen - I watched it in first release, as a kid in Southern California, where large parts of it were filmed. Simply an excellent film, beautifully shot, it inspired an entire generation and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1972.
Watch it today, and you also see history... The end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end.
In the 60's, the desert and mountains were still very quiet places; our engines might be the only ones we would hear all day long. My family was already out there, in those places the movie showcased, in our station wagon, and then our K5 Blazer, with our Bultaco dirt bike. We also hiked, and backpacked, and explored the Ghost Towns, surfed up and down the Baja, and skied in the Sierra. We skied competitively, when resorts were primitive. But the most satisfying race of all? My family and I raced the San Gorgonio Ski Clubs annual event, even after SanG became fully protected Wilderness in 1964. Before and after, we hiked in, set the course by hand, claimed the heights of the slope on foot. It was a tough race.
San Gorgonio was the finest skiing-terrain mountain in Southern California, with the most snow, by a long shot (Mammoth is Central California). It was also an early victory for the Sierra Club, a grand compromise, who worked with the property and business owners of Big Bear, Wrightwood, and other mountain communities to close San Gorgonio (and not their own mountains and backcountry). The race had started before Wilderness Status, and went on for nearly a decade after. No one stopped us; we played by the rules. Eventually, it was just too easy to ski elsewhere. It was so hard to see the need for closing SanG. There was so much true Wilderness, right?
But the world had changed, and would change even faster very soon. On Any Sunday, showed us how. The desert, the mountains, the lonely beaches... they were not quiet, anymore.
We had company. And, very unfortunately, On Any Sunday shows lots of fully off-road riding - not dirt road, fully off-road - on virgin desert. It became cool. We had hardly ever done this; it had never occurred to us, since there were plenty of roads. It had been really unusual to see anyone doing that. Not anymore. The dirt-bikes started, me included. Teenagers are like that. That movie inspired the BMX movement nationally, too. And, from very early on, the bikes would avoid roads whenever possible. And dozens of Ghost Towns simply disappeared; people had "collected" everything bigger than a nail. Then they took the nails.
You could see the changes. You still can... and that is the purpose of this thread.
How did we get to this point, where there is sometimes a legitimate need to close all wheeled vehicle access to land that has been open forever? There are many who will deny this very premise, and say it is never necessary, that it is all a special interest fraud. This thread is meant to be a showcase, where the skeptics can visit the damage for themselves. It is also intended to highlight places where there are solutions short of full Wilderness Status: Wilderness with cherry stem access, Permit-based access, high-tech tools for monitoring access, and other solutions to protect our land, from ourselves. These places exist. Show them, please. These solutions exist. I hope this thread on this forum, will become a place to showcase these solutions.
My next post; an easily accessible destination in the SoCal Desert, well worth visiting, where nearly pristine wilderness, poorly managed BLM land, and outright large-scale devastation of the desert, come together in one place.
Watch it today, and you also see history... The end of the beginning, and the beginning of the end.
In the 60's, the desert and mountains were still very quiet places; our engines might be the only ones we would hear all day long. My family was already out there, in those places the movie showcased, in our station wagon, and then our K5 Blazer, with our Bultaco dirt bike. We also hiked, and backpacked, and explored the Ghost Towns, surfed up and down the Baja, and skied in the Sierra. We skied competitively, when resorts were primitive. But the most satisfying race of all? My family and I raced the San Gorgonio Ski Clubs annual event, even after SanG became fully protected Wilderness in 1964. Before and after, we hiked in, set the course by hand, claimed the heights of the slope on foot. It was a tough race.
San Gorgonio was the finest skiing-terrain mountain in Southern California, with the most snow, by a long shot (Mammoth is Central California). It was also an early victory for the Sierra Club, a grand compromise, who worked with the property and business owners of Big Bear, Wrightwood, and other mountain communities to close San Gorgonio (and not their own mountains and backcountry). The race had started before Wilderness Status, and went on for nearly a decade after. No one stopped us; we played by the rules. Eventually, it was just too easy to ski elsewhere. It was so hard to see the need for closing SanG. There was so much true Wilderness, right?
But the world had changed, and would change even faster very soon. On Any Sunday, showed us how. The desert, the mountains, the lonely beaches... they were not quiet, anymore.
We had company. And, very unfortunately, On Any Sunday shows lots of fully off-road riding - not dirt road, fully off-road - on virgin desert. It became cool. We had hardly ever done this; it had never occurred to us, since there were plenty of roads. It had been really unusual to see anyone doing that. Not anymore. The dirt-bikes started, me included. Teenagers are like that. That movie inspired the BMX movement nationally, too. And, from very early on, the bikes would avoid roads whenever possible. And dozens of Ghost Towns simply disappeared; people had "collected" everything bigger than a nail. Then they took the nails.
You could see the changes. You still can... and that is the purpose of this thread.
How did we get to this point, where there is sometimes a legitimate need to close all wheeled vehicle access to land that has been open forever? There are many who will deny this very premise, and say it is never necessary, that it is all a special interest fraud. This thread is meant to be a showcase, where the skeptics can visit the damage for themselves. It is also intended to highlight places where there are solutions short of full Wilderness Status: Wilderness with cherry stem access, Permit-based access, high-tech tools for monitoring access, and other solutions to protect our land, from ourselves. These places exist. Show them, please. These solutions exist. I hope this thread on this forum, will become a place to showcase these solutions.
My next post; an easily accessible destination in the SoCal Desert, well worth visiting, where nearly pristine wilderness, poorly managed BLM land, and outright large-scale devastation of the desert, come together in one place.
