Mudder chaos - Irresponsible off-roaders draw heat from with

[Beep Beep]

http://www.yakima-herald.com/stories/4862

Mudder chaos -- Irresponsible off-roaders draw heat from within
by Scott Sandsberry
Yakima Herald-Republic


Editor's note: Four-wheelers referred to in this story as outlaws are unrelated to an organized club under the name of Outlaw 4X4 Inc.


TAMPICO -- The tone of disgust in Ken McNamee's voice painted as vivid a portrait as the ground beneath his feet -- a mud bog, riddled by deep tire ruts, that only two weeks earlier had been an idyllic meadow.

"Oh my gosh ... look how deep that one is," McNamee muttered as his gaze passed from one massive rut puddle to a pair of parallel, even deeper gashes filled with runoff.

For McNamee, Alpine District manager for the Department of Natural Resources, this was a sad moment of deja vu. Six years before, McNamee had assessed similar damage in the same meadow, created then -- as now -- by the tires of four-wheelers looking for a muddy thrill.

"It's even worse now, at least in this area," McNamee said, turning to DNR recreation manager Vanessa Seldal and four-wheel-drive enthusiast Wade Kabrich. "This meadow was probably on the brink of recovery. It had grassed over and started its healing process.

"And then it happened again."

Particularly upsetting was that this "mudding" escapade had taken place off the Middle Fork of the Ahtanum not far beyond a pair of unmissable signs declaring NO OFF ROAD DRIVING.

"Believe it or not," Kabrich said, "I've seen way worse than this. This could have been done in 10 minutes."

But Kabrich's presence on this damage-surveying mission was evidence that public land managers like McNamee have a very powerful ally in their battle against outlaw four-wheelers: other four-wheelers, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding and are growing increasingly quick to blow the whistle on their misbehaving brethren.

"They think no one's watching, and they can do anything they want," said Kabrich, who serves as the safety and education director for the Yakima-based All Wheelers Off Road Club. "It's the 3 percent that's the majority of the problem, but it just takes one to really screw it up. One guy can make a meadow look like it's been ran through 100 times by rigs.

"I think once the word gets out that there's people with cameras and a pencil and paper ready to write down license plates, I think it'll be a big change."

That word may get out quickly after Memorial Day weekend, when no fewer than three mudding incidents in the Cascade foothills west of Yakima stirred up a hornet's nest of angry four-wheelers, many of them members of responsible clubs in the Pacific Northwest Four Wheel Drive Association.

In two cases -- one on Bethel Ridge north of Highway 12, one at Sleepy Park Meadow southeast of Rimrock Lake -- the club four-wheelers reported the perpetrators to law enforcement, complete with eyewitness descriptions and license numbers. Those cases are still being investigated, and charges are likely, say enforcement officers.

In another, in the Milk Creek trail circuit east of the Little Naches, other four-wheelers took photographs of the three mudders -- none of which had license plates -- and posted them on a club's Internet site with the request, "Anyone know these rigs?" Club members' response in chasing down the mudders' identities was fast and furious, with the sort of fervor generally reserved for capturing child molesters.

Dave Walters, a member of a Tri-Cities four-wheeler club called the Peak Putters, found a photograph of one of the mudders -- grinning from the driver's seat with a beer can in his hand -- particularly galling.

"That type of mentality is something I have a whole big problem with," Walters said. "We want to hang the guy. I don't care who he knows or who he's friends with, I want him hung."

Walters was just blowing off steam, of course -- and said so moments later -- but his immediate response was indicative of the growing enmity of responsible off-roaders toward mudders. The latter damage not just the backcountry, but the reputation of the entire four-wheeling community.

"We just don't need it," Walters said. "It's like any other group: 95 percent are good, upstanding people, but the 5 percent get all the press and make the rest of us look bad."

One recent mudding incident near Wenatchee was really bad -- ripping open underground springs, crushing a culvert and generally wreaking havoc with drainage into an irrigation reservoir. But one thing that came out of that September 2007 event is still reverberating in the off-roading community: One of the Wenatchee mudders pled guilty to malicious mischief and was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

"That has gotten a lot of people's attention," said Blair Bickel, an enforcement officer with the Forest Service.

Unfortunately, though, the message is all too often a case of preaching to the choir.

The organized off-roading groups and clubs already understand that mudding damage could ultimately lead to diminished access in the form of trail closures. But those groups aren't the ones causing the problems; instead, they're invariably the ones who adhere to "tread lightly" practices and trail etiquette, who stay on the designated four-wheeler roads, who turn out in droves for clean-up-the-trail efforts -- like the 1,000-plus volunteers from six clubs who put in thousands of man-hours doing trail maintenance work in mid-May near Cle Elum, or the ones who annually clean up Jim Sprick Community Park in the Nile.

They're also the ones who, like Kabrich, are working with public land managers to eradicate the problems and educating their own club members on proper trail behavior.

"The biggest thing any group can do is educate their riders," Kabrich said. "A lot of people just don't know when they first start out. They buy a pickup and go out and they see this little mud puddle, they hammer the gas, they want to see how far the mud flings. And pretty quick, you've got a big, deep rut there.

"But when you get 100 people (in a four-wheeler club) telling you what you're doing is wrong -- hey, they're your friends, they're family. That carries some weight.

"It's a peer-pressure thing."

And what about the ones who won't listen? The ones who will still go out, see a dewy meadow and decide to rip it apart?

If peer pressure won't work, maybe fines -- or, as in the Wenatchee case, jail time -- might do the trick.

"They need to understand this: We are arming ourselves with cameras and pens and paper," Kabrich said.

"This renegade behavior is not going to be tolerated any more."

[Grumpy]

Damn, yer quick

[Beep Beep]

Dave,

I posted this on all the forums I visit often. I am sure some of the west siders won't like it.

Spead the word,
"We are arming ourselves with cameras and pens and paper.
"This renegade behavior is not going to be tolerated any more."

[Grumpy]

Yeah, there's been some calls to Scott already. He called me this morning...

[Beep Beep]

Yeah, there's been some calls to Scott already. He called me this morning...

Good or bad?

[Grumpy]

Somebody from the Oulaws called and started to foul mouth him. He hung up on 'em. Guess they called back and offered an apology...

[Beep Beep]

That don't look good for that club.
I could see some of our X-members doing crap like that.

[Grumpy]

Club not to blame for mudding
by Scott Sandsberry
Yakima Herald-Republic

YAKIMA -- Anybody who read last week's story on illegal mudders and took the reference to "outlaw four-wheelers" as referring to the Outlaw 4x4s of Yakima wasn't reading closely enough.

Outlaw 4x4s is an organized group and, say its leaders, they're part of the vast majority of off-roaders who try to do things right. In a couple of weeks, in fact, many of the Outlaw 4x4s members will be working with Forest Service crews to fix up the Pickle Prairie meadows near Rimrock. That's the kind of thing responsible trail riders do.

The "outlaw four-wheelers" in any discussion about mudding are the ones often referred to as the "3-percenters," the minority of riders doing the majority of the damage. They give a black eye to the four-wheeling community -- including the good guys -- and create a mess that the responsible guys end up having to repair.

If you see responsible riders along a trail designated for four-wheeling, give them a thumbs-up; the great outdoors is plenty big enough to be shared by all responsible user groups, be they hikers, horse riders, motorcyclists, mountain bikers, ATVers or four-wheelers. If you see any of those groups taking their own time on trail-maintenance work crews, give them a pat on the back and a thank-you.

And if you see knuckleheads tearing up a meadow, take down their license plates, get a description of their vehicles and notify law-enforcement authorities.

That's the kind of thing responsible trail users do.
_________________