The tricky stuff

We're here to make sure we keep the trails we ride, to add more as much as we can. Sometimes (or in Orange County a lot of the time) that can be a bit tricky.

Take the "eBike" issue. Due to some real tragic events, there's finally some movement on the classification part. Electric motorcycles are being called eMotos like they should be, they are NOT us (bikes). Then there's the motorized vehicle part, yep - got a throttle it's probably gonna still gotta go that way - they're eBikes (class 2/3). That leaves what some of our community uses, the Class 1 pedal assist mountain bike....and the question of whether it should it be treated different than any other mountain bike.

At the most recent OC Parks Commission meeting Staff agendized a proposal to invest money and time in the long standing mandate to analyze the viability of the Class 1 mountain bike against the prevailing conservation easements in our parks. Some riders assembled in resistance to this recommendation. Listen to the replay at 1.01.45 to understand what that would have done (Commissioner Gabbard "don't approve and there is no opportunity to ever use these bikes on our trails legally"). Tricky stuff, right? Fortunately the commission adopted a motion to cautiously proceed on this study method. Now it's time for us to help staff fill in the blanks from other similar reports so we can move forward. Why? Because leaving this question unanswered has risk of implication for all MTB riders.

Then there's Dog Park/San Clemente Single Tracks, yep we haven't said much because this is a case where a noisy public has a pretty good odds of making a hard situation worse. We all know that this is Federal dirt and the USMC issued a PSA declaring if off limits. That's tough when you've got over five decades of outdoor recreation leveraging that space for their physical and mental health well being...and we respect that. So we engage, carefully. Nobody wants to round a turn one day and see this guy parked there.

Best we can tell, a deal was made in 2024 and fell apart in late 2025, these are complicated deals. State Parks leasing from Federal in the form of the military with special considerations all over the place. We know our place and so we asked for help back in February/March timeframe to present a solution to maintain our access, it's representation in Washington DC talking to the politicos in Sacramento, the leadership of the legacy land management, the various long acronym groups on the land owner side, even the city's and proximate land owners. Again, tricky stuff, and we're very glad we have good folks representing our interests US Congress on down - they're working on it.

And this brings up a third facet of "tricky stuff", that's when individuals complicate these processes for their own agendas. Orange County Mountain Bike Association is a non-profit corporation, a formal organization. We are your solitary sanctioned representation for advocacy in this region, the only IMBA and CAMTB chapters. Moreover, we are YOU - the key word in our too common sounding name is Association, we are the collective of all the awesome trail orgs, ride groups and just plain cool peeps that ride MTB in this region. We're here to bring this community together, to make sure we get the credit for the love we give to our trails, and to therefore have the right to ask when it matters most (see above). It's an oft used phrase but still very applicable, we are better together! The staff of OCMTBA, the groups working on projects as one, the individuals making the trail better. We try to make sure we focus on what matters, to protect and expand your trail access, and to do it in the best way possible - sometimes it's tricky stuff, thank you to every one of you that entrusts us to get it right in this and future eras.