It’s not easy being popular. Beleaguered by the deluge of weekend warriors, piqued by road-clogging packs of cyclists, and armed with anecdotes about equestrians terrorized by mountain bikes, Woodside residents seem to be experiencing a severe case of “bicycle fatigue.”
The long-simmering strife between cyclists and equestrians is reaching a boiling point that’s likely to erupt this week into a full-fledged battle over a plan to open Huddart Park to mountain bikers.
Currently trails in the 900-acre Huddart Park are open to hikers and horses, with bicycles allowed only on the park’s paved roads.
That could change if the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors approves the latest incarnation of a master plan outlining the future development and uses of Huddart and Wunderlich parks, the two county parks in the town of Woodside.
The draft master plan includes various alternatives for a mountain bike trail through Huddart. County staff recently added the Squealer Gulch route from Greer Road to Skyline Boulevard.
While local mountain biking organizations are enthusiastically backing the plan, Woodside’s horse community is mounting up for a show of opposition at the county’s Parks and Recreation Commission meeting on Wednesday, March 22. Once the commission makes its recommendation, the matter will eventually go to the supervisors for final approval.
Council says ‘no’
Woodside’s Town Council voted March 14 to officially oppose any mountain bike access to Huddart Park. “I don’t think that mountain biking in its present form today is any more appropriate to Huddart Park than motorcycles,” Councilwoman Carroll Ann Hodges said.Equestrians say they already have problems with mountain bikers illegally using Huddart Park’s trails. Sanctioning mountain bike use in any part of the park, even along a proposed trail that is separated from the rest of the park, is asking for trouble, they say. The combination of steep, narrow trails, skittish horses and mountain bikes hurtling downhill at high speeds can end badly for the horse’s rider.
The Woodside-based Mounted Patrol of San Mateo County has weighed in as well, running ads in local newspapers opposing the Huddart Park plan for safety reasons. According to the patrol, the combination of hikers, horseback riders and mountain bikers is “a recipe for disaster.”
And residents of Greer Road are horrified by the prospect of their narrow dead-end street becoming a staging area for “thousands” of people drawn to a regional mountain-biking attraction.
“It would destroy our life on Greer Road,” former Woodside council member Robert Susk told the Town Council at last week’s meeting. Mr. Susk said he is one of the 12 out of 13 property owners on Greer Road who are strongly opposed to the proposal.
“This is not a horse versus bikes issue,” Mr. Susk said.
In fact, it seems to be shaping up as an “everyone versus bikes” issue.
Permit denied
At the same Woodside council meeting, the council denied the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School a permit for a charity bike ride through the town in May. It would have been one of two such rides scheduled for the same day, and the town had only one of its two-per-month event permits left.While council members could have made an exception to the rule, and they acknowledged that organized fundraising rides are seldom problematic, they said the town just could not handle hundreds more cyclists on top of the crowds of bike riders that already flock to Woodside every weekend.
“The hotel is full,” said Councilman Paul Goeld, who said that the event permit should go to the American Diabetes Association’s Tour de Cure, because organizers turned in their application first.
At the council meeting in Independence Hall, residents complained about aggressive “pack riders” who run stop signs, block the road and spook horses. With the hall crowded with people wearing “Equestrian Trail User” stickers, it was not a particularly friendly place for cyclists.
“Everyone hates you when you’re on a bike,” said Woodside resident Vicki Coe.
Although Woodside prides itself for its horsy lifestyle — with its trail system, hitching posts and stables — the town does have an active bicycle committee and plenty of resident bike riders. However, it’s the nonresident bicyclists that town officials seem to be having a problem dealing with.
“We’ve become a destination for bike riders and we haven’t addressed it yet,” said Councilman Dave Tanner. “We need to address it as soon as we can. Right now we don’t have the infrastructure.”
Most of Woodside’s key thoroughfares — Highway 84 and Whiskey Hill, Kings Mountain, Sand Hill and Canada roads — are extremely popular with bike riders ranging from weekend warriors to competitive athletes who enjoy the challenging terrain as well as the lovely scenery. For Woodside residents who have paid a premium to live within the town’s woodsy, bucolic boundaries, the cyclists are often seen as a frustrating imposition on their laid-back, horse-friendly community.
Equestrians are already alarmed by the erosion of the trail system and the dwindling number of horses and stables in town. Many of them see bicycles as one more threat to their ability to ride safely around Woodside.
“Cyclists park their cars along Tripp Road in the horse trail, so you’re forced to ride in the road,” said Susan Lang. “Then the cyclists come along and tell you to get out of the road. Equestrians have no place else to go.”
The access debate
There’s a lot of debate over which group is more blessed with trail access. Bicycle groups say they come up short, while equestrians say that horses may be allowed on multiuse trails, such as the ones at nearby open space preserves, but those trails are essentially bike-only by default because equestrians don’t feel safe.“(Mountain bikers) already have El Corte de Madera to themselves because hikers and equestrians have given it up,” said Rebekah Witter, a member of WHOA, the Woodside-area Horse Owners Association.
Online postings at mountain bike sites give directions to the best illegal trails, with warnings such as, “Watch out for screaming old ladies on horseback,” Ms. Witter said.
Josh Moore is the president of ROMP — Responsible Organized Mountain Pedalers — a group that encourages members to practice good trail etiquette and posts educational articles on safely interacting with horseback riders. He said it’s only fair that the county park system finally provide a trail for mountain bikers.
“One of the things that alarms me the most about equestrians in Woodside is that they’re reacting based on fear. There’s not a lot of real factual data going on,” Mr. Moore said.
He said he suspects that the many anecdotes about equestrians injured by reckless mountain bikers are really just the same four or five incidents from the past 20 years.
He said he doesn’t see the kind of contentious horse-versus-bicycles atmosphere in other parts of the Bay Area.
“I wonder if perhaps it’s the equestrians in San Mateo County who are building this culture of fear and conflict and spreading it among themselves that makes this whole environment possible,” Mr. Moore said. “It’s not an issue in many other places, where mountain bikers and equestrians seem to get along.”
Alluring trails
Dave Holland, the county’s director of parks and recreation, said the thing that makes park trails so alluring to mountain bikers is exactly what makes them dangerous. Most mountain bikers prefer the kind of extremely narrow “single-track” trails that county parks have in abundance.“Everyone wants to ride single-track,” Mr. Moore said. “It’s much more interesting and requires more attention while you’re riding. You feel more involved in the nature experience.”
But while steep, winding trails make for lots of thrills, they are problematic because of their poor visibility.
“Huge user conflicts don’t exist in other places (in the Bay Area), and that’s based on good trail design,” Mr. Holland said. “The trails that exist now (at Huddart) aren’t like that, and the danger is very real.”
County staff say the Squealer Gulch route is the best way to give mountain bikers safe passage up to Skyline Boulevard while keeping the rest of Huddart Park trails closed to cyclists. Along most — but not all — of the proposed route, the trail is physically separated from the park by Kings Mountain Road, making dangerous interactions with equestrians and hikers less likely.
Woodside officials, however, have doubts that the county will be able to keep mountain bikes off of the rest of the trails. While neither Mr. Holland nor the county Sheriff’s Office could give statistics on the frequency of illegal trail use in Huddart Park, equestrian groups say there are enough tell-tale tire ruts to confirm that the trails are far from bicycle-free.
If Huddart Park trails aren’t bicycle-free now, when bikes are totally banned, what’s to stop the entire place from becoming overrun once mountain bikers get a foot in the door?
“If we even suggest it, they will come,” said Councilman Tanner.
“We don’t have enough staff,” Mr. Holland acknowledged. “That’s one of the concerns equestrians have, and rightfully so — that we have the staff to control it.”
But Mr. Holland points out that bicyclists can now ride up Kings Mountain Road and head into the park in many places, albeit illegally.
“There are complaints about opening the park up, but it’s already open to them,” Mr. Holland said. “I don’t think that argument holds up real well. The Squealer Gulch trail would further segregate them.”
After weighing a number of alternatives, county staff introduced the Squealer Gulch route at a public meeting on the master plan held January 31.
Not consulted
The unexpected introduction of the new route offended Woodside officials, who say they weren’t consulted and now are faced with a trail plan that has no indication of where parking, restrooms and other facilities would be located.“The county is putting the burden on Woodside for the infrastructure,” said Mike Raynor, who chairs Woodside’s Trails Committee.
“In all fairness, nothing’s approved at this point,” said Mr. Holland. “Even if the parks commission says it sounds good, the board (of supervisors) would have to say it sounds good, and then it would be approved only in concept. Then we’d have to look at the feasibility — it’s got a long process in front of it.”
If the Squealer Gulch proposal gets that far, the county would work with the town of Woodside on parking, restrooms, management, user control and other issues, he said.
“The numbers are there right now, and nobody’s managing it right now,” Mr. Holland said.
While the Squealer Gulch plan is not proving popular, there are some Woodside residents who said they would like to have some place nearby where they could ride bicycles with their kids. Mr. Raynor, who identifies himself as an equestrian and a mountain biker, said he would love to have somewhere to ride bicycles with his three daughters.
“I don’t want hordes of people riding through here either, but I’d like to take my two boys mountain biking,” said Millo Fenzi of the Woodside Bicycle Committee. “There’s no safe place for a child to ride a bike on the roads in Woodside.”
The county has an obligation to provide recreation opportunities to its residents, including bicyclists, Mr. Holland said.
“The bikers represent a large number of users, and they literally have nowhere within the county park system to use bikes, except on paved trails,” Mr. Holland said.
And, no matter how frustrated Woodside residents get, it seems unlikely that the numbers of bicyclists riding through town are going to decline anytime soon. The question is, can Woodside find a way to maintain its horsy heritage while still making room for two-wheelers? The town has hitching posts a-plenty, but little in the way of public restrooms or other bike-friendly facilities.
“Not providing facilities is not going to keep visitors from coming,” said Mr. Moore of ROMP.
He posed a rhetorical question to town officials: “Do you do whatever you can to make it inhospitable to cyclists, or do you do what you can (to accommodate them) and probably make your life a little more easy in the process?”
INFORMATION
• The San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Commission is holding a special public hearing on the draft master plan for Huddart and Wunderlich parks, which includes the controversial mountain bike trail through Huddart via the Greer Road entrance. The hearing is set for Wednesday, March 22, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the McKinley Institute of Technology, 400 Duane St. in Redwood City.• For information on the proposed bike route, go to eParks.net, and click on Draft Huddart-Wunderlich Master Plan; or call county planner Sam Herzberg at 363-1823.
