Locked gate now restricts access to land near airport
By Michael Burge
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
November 25, 2006
CARLSBAD – A group of mountain-bike riders who used a clandestine web
of trails for two decades is trying to save them, even as the paths
are being fenced off and bulldozed away.
CRISSY PASCUAL / Union-Tribune
Josh Lenahan (left) and Stefan Rest (right) stopped to talk to Michael
Hansen of San Marcos. The two are trying to save some mountain-bike
trails.
Called Flightline, for their proximity to McClellan-Palomar Airport,
the trails had been fashioned over time by riders who built bridges
and other features on brush-covered hills that, to them, were of
questionable ownership.
That ownership is no longer in question, as 300 acres recently was
transferred by the county to the nonprofit Center for Natural Lands
Management. The Fallbrook-based nonprofit administers the property
east of El Camino Real and north of Palomar Airport Road, preserving
it as natural habitat.
Much of the land was owned by the county, and when developers of the
nearby 195-acre Carlsbad Oaks North business park won approval for
their project in 2002, the land was set aside as permanent open space
with restricted use.
Hearing of the land switch, the mountain bikers began corresponding
with Markus Spiegelberg, the San Diego manager for the land management
center, about preserving the trails. Two weeks ago, the bikers found a
fence and a locked gate at the trailhead.
“This is him working with us,” Josh Lenahan, a trail rider from
Carlsbad, said sarcastically as he stood at the sealed trailhead on
Orion Way near the Carlsbad skate park.
“There have been hundreds of hours (put into) the trails here,” he
said, adding that people who built them tried to respect the natural
environment, and now their work has been obliterated.
Stefan Rest, a mountain biker upset by the trails' demise, has
dedicated a Web site, www.rideflightline.com., to saving them.
His online petition has more than 1,300 names, including some from
Canada and France, and even from Jersey, an island in the English
Channel.
He said there's nothing comparable in the county, even in the
backcountry.
Rest discouraged riders from using the trails while his group worked
with Spiegelberg to retain access, and posted signs warning people
they risked a fine and the loss of their bike if they rode in the
area.
He saw Spiegelberg's fence as a betrayal.
“We're upset that this guy told us to work with (him), get everybody
to stop riding, and all of a sudden we stop getting correspondence and
the chain link went up,” Rest said.
Spiegelberg said 100 acres east of the Carlsbad Safety Center near the
city's skate park is controlled by an agreement, called a conservation
easement, that bars biking, horseback riding and motorcycling.
That's why the fence went up.
Spiegelberg said he found some interesting features when he walked
through the property recently before taking it over.
“One (trail) was pretty intense. It had bridges and switchbacks and
lots of cleared vegetation,” he said, all potential violations of
state or federal law.
“I posted it and said you're on the land illegally, stop, and I got
5,000 e-mails.”
Mountain bikers weren't the only ones taking advantage of the natural
space. Employees of local businesses and business owners hiked, ran or
rode there on a regular basis. Spiegelberg also found encampments of
homeless people.
A wild-west attitude had prevailed that the land was open to anyone to
use.
“You get this history of use,” Spiegelberg said. “Nobody kicks them
off. A motorcycle would go through there, or a mountain biker.”
He said it would have been better if people who used the trails were
involved when the Carlsbad Oaks North project processed its
environmental impact report, so they could have been considered. But
because such people usually aren't organized, they learn about such a
process after decisions are made.
Rest and his group are learning that now.
“The uniqueness of this is it's in the middle of where we all live,”
Rest, a Carlsbad resident, said. “There aren't many places in the
county where you can pay $600,000 for your starter home and learn you
can't ride in your backyard.”
Spiegelberg has engaged the riders in e-mail conversations on their
Web site, calling it “a very friendly back and forth.” But for the
mountain bikers to use the land, they would have to work with the
county to rewrite the property agreement, he said.
“If they're going to come back in here and develop a trail, we'll
develop a trail that's sturdy and safe,” he said.
And he said he hopes everyone can get through this rough patch.
“A lot of people are really mad at us but essentially we're all on the
same page,” he said. “We're trying to find the last pieces of land and
manage it.”
That didn't help Michael Hansen, who was disappointed when he showed
up to ride last week and encountered that gate.
“I've been coaching for three or four years and riding since '88,”
said Hansen, 39, a semi-pro rider who works for American Airlines.
“That's the reason we moved to this area. Now we're losing this, too.”
Michael Burge: (760) 476-8230; [email hidden]
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I am working on creating wildlife habitat that is off-limits to
humans ("pure habitat"😉. Want to help? (I spent the previous 8
years fighting auto dependence and road construction.)
Please don't put a cell phone next to any part of your body that you are fond of!