Scott McClelland of Portland carries his bike up an incline near the intersection of Lacamas McEnry and Red Tape trails in Lacamas Regional Park. Clark County Parks has designated the Red Tape trail as a bikes-only route, the first of its kind in the Clark County park system. (Nathan Howard/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
For the first time in Clark County, mountain bikers will have a trail all their own.
A dirt trail in Lacamas Regional Park, unofficially known as Red Tape, is being closed to foot traffic and designated as a one-way, downhill mountain bike route.
Clark County Parks officials say reserving the 0.6-mile-long trail for bikes offers greater diversity for users of the popular park.
“We did a trail study in 2016 at Lacamas Park … and a lot of the feedback was it’d be nice to have something focused on mountain biking,” said Karen Llewellyn, volunteer program coordinator for Clark County Parks. “The idea isn’t to exclude people, it’s just adding one more component to the site that is a novelty to the area.”
Llewellyn said the trail is well-suited to the tastes of mountain bikers. And, the trail doesn’t see a lot of foot traffic compared with other routes in the park. Additionally, hikers and runners already enjoy foot-traffic-only access to the Camas Lily Field in the northern part of the park.
Not only is the roughly half-mile-long trail the only bikes-only trail among the more than 12 miles of trails in Lacamas Regional Park, but it’s also the only bike-exclusive trail in any county property. The trail runs through the fairly secluded eastern portion of the park. It’s a steep, twisty and rolling path that cuts through a lush landscape and crosses a few small streams. As with many trails in the park, it was user-created.
County officials also say putting parameters on the trail will make it safer for all visitors. In the next few weeks, county workers will post signs at the ends of the trail notifying people of the change. The county won’t do any kind of enforcement work; it’ll be on users to follow them.
The county chose the trail after working with multiple user groups, including the Lacamas Trails Advocacy Group, a volunteer group that maintains the trails in Lacamas Regional Park, and the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance.
Sean Vergillo leads the advocacy group and is also a member of the alliance. He said ideally there would be no need to segregate usership on park trails, but this isn’t an ideal world. To illustrate his point, Vergillo said he had to stop four times for people on foot on a ride down Red Tape last weekend.
As new developments have simultaneously cleared surrounding forests and erased old trails, they’ve also brought in more people who see the park as a chance to escape the subdivision.
“I really struggle with this, because I don’t like any regulations or limitations on user groups,” he said. “As much as I don’t like this idea, the concern is if someone does get hurt, they’re going to come after the mountain bikers.”
While most people are courteous regardless of how they’re going through the park, he said, the park is generally much busier than it was when the advocacy group started maintaining its trails eight years ago.
‘A really smart move’
When word got out about the county’s plans for Red Tape in June, the reactions were mixed on the advocacy group’s Facebook page. While some people were thrilled at the idea, numerous runners and hikers lamented the loss of the route.
David Stiles, vice president of the Southwest Washington chapter of the Evergreen Mountain Bike Alliance, described the designation as “a really smart move on the part of the county” for the safety of all users and giving bikes a place to ride freely.
The trail, by design, gets riders up to a high rate of speed, but the twists and turns give it narrow lines of sight. Red Tape, he said, reached a certain point where it wasn’t a practical trail to ride because of the “huge risks” of running into hikers; and riding down a steep hill at a slow rate of speed saps the fun out of the experience.
“Mountain bikers don’t like to take away from a hiker’s experience, but we also don’t like to suicide ourselves into the brush to not hit somebody,” he said.
He thinks creating a bikes-only trail will only draw more riders to the east side of the park where they’ll likely stay — away from the more pedestrian-friendly trails on west side.
As mountain biking has grown in popularity, a number of municipalities have dedicated space for them to ride exclusively. Sandy Ridge, in Sandy, Ore., offers more than 10 miles of bike-only trails. After more than a decade of work the city of Portland recently opened a small but growing bike park called Gateway Green.
Llewellyn said the county might look into creating something similar in the future. But for right now, bikers will have to settle for this one trail, in a park that likely won’t see any more designated to exclusive userships.
“We aren’t in the position right now to designate a whole property or area for mountain bikes only,” said Llewellyn. “It’s something we’d love to do in the future, but, for now, this is a good middle ground.”
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