36: Electric Mountain Bikes And Wilderness Access

  • 2 minute read
The founder and moderator of the iMTBtrails.com forum, Mikie Watson, and other members of his SoCal online community were displeased with our coverage of the inaugural eMTB race at the Sea Otter Classic in Issue #132 of the SCB magazine. We discuss the response of the magazine’s editorial director and the conversations that resulted.
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A photo from our event coverage of the electric mountain bike race at the 2016 Sea Otter Classic, the inaugural running of the event. Image by Victor Prestinary
Editorial coverage of the inaugural electric mountain bike race at the 2016 Sea Otter Classic triggers concern of wilderness trail loss by a local SoCal MTB club. Image by Victor Prestinary

We open the show with an event report for next week and some follow-up with news from Peter Sagan and that Bahrain guy. Justin waxes poetic on his new MTB hoops and Tim talks about cheering on the finish of the AIDS Ride this past weekend with recommendations for coffee near Griffith Park.

The main topic of discussion in this episode pertains to a forum post on imtbtrails.com, a SoCal-based website, regarding electric mountain bike use on wilderness trails. In particular, the founder and moderator of the forum, Mikie Watson, and other members were displeased with our coverage of the eMTB race at the Sea Otter Classic in Issue #132. Watson sent us an email describing his frustrations with this editorial choice and opened up the discussion to the users in his forum. Chris Reynolds, host of BICYCLIST.fm replied to Watson directly on this and Watson shared Reynolds’ response on his forum, also adding insights that hadn’t been considered in the discussion up to that point.

We consider his response and other media attention that has bubbled up in the past week regarding this contentious debate.

Sponsored By
Our sponsor for this week’s episode is the Big Bear Cycling Festival on July 30 – August 7th. Big Bear Cycling and the City of Big Bear Lake are proud to present the Big Bear Cycling Festival; a full week of rides and cycling related activities at 7000’ in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Big Bear Cycling Festival has planned a full schedule of fun for the whole week, including the famous Big Bear MTB Gran Fondo and Grizzly 100 presented by Big Bear Valley Vacations on Saturday, July 30th and the Tour de Big Bear Presented by REMAX on Saturday, August 6th.

Announced Events
Revolution Bike Fest
Quick n Dirty Summer Series #5
Climb to Kaiser
The Grand Tour
626 Golden Streets
Ontario 4 Corner Criterium

Show Links
Peter Sagan May Lead Team Astana
Spoke Bicycle Cafe
The Wheelhouse in DTLA
Moro Canyon Back Country Trails
IMTB.com “Discussion with Southern California Bicyclist”
Haibike eMTB at 2016 Sea Otter Classic
The Real Problem With Electric Mountain Bikes 

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