Mudder chaos - Irresponsible off-roaders draw heat from with

[Ceg]

Mudder chaos -- Irresponsible off-roaders draw heat from within | Yakima Herald-Republic Online
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."

[AWDios]

It's nice to see someone mention off-road clubs that adhere to tread lightly.

[Binford]

Absolutely wonderful article! Just the type we never get to see west of the Cascades!

I was thrilled to read that one of those bone-heads who did something similar elsewhere got nearly 2 years in prison for this! Bravo!

But in addition to the very small minority of off-roaders who are immature enough to commit this type of destruction, part of the problem is this mentality displayed by McNamee in the article:

Originally Posted by Ceg

by Scott Sandsberry
Yakima Herald-Republic

....Six years before, [Ken] McNamee had assessed similar damage in the same meadow, created then -- as now -- by the tires of four-wheelers looking for a muddy thrill.... "This meadow was probably on the brink of recovery. It had grassed over and started its healing process."

So let me get this straight... After 6 years, that meadow was just on the "brink of recovery?" It had only "started its healing process?!" Perhaps it's just the nature of nature on the dry side, but holy cow....it's all I can do to keep the native growth whacked back on my property in Port Orchard every year! If I'd let my driveway, covered, mind you, in 1-1/4" crushed rock, go unmolested by me for six years, I'd never find the bloody thing; there'd be so much grass, foxglove, alder saplings and blackberry vines growing out of it!

Okay, I'm new here and no one knows really where I'm coming from, so let me clarify: That meadow is not MY property, so I would NEVER consider doing anything that might damage it, if even temporarily. Even if it were my property, I would not be engaging in wanton destructive behavior. I have 5 acres that I try to maintain in mostly a natural state, thinning some of the crowded tree growth for firewood, cutting a few trails through some of it for my boys to ride their go-kart and for us to take walks on. Bottom line is, as with every one of you I'm sure, destructive behavior is just plain stupid. And on someone else's (or public) land, add to that, "criminal."

That said, we have to shake loose of this idea that a field that had been torn up 6 years before is somehow still "wounded" and "healing." That's just plain silly. And it is exactly this kind of absurd mentality that fuels the idea that trails should be closed to us.

Your Land Cruisers driving over remote roads can surely do harm too, if after 6 years a field can still be "healing." While we absolutely cannot be advocating doing anything harmful while driving on backwoods trails, we also have to insist upon realism when it comes to the regenerative nature of the wilderness.

That ought to be just about 2 cents' worth there, huh?