Legal trails?

If it's okay with you guys I would prefer to visualize mountainbiker24 as a bike hating curmudgeon who harbors deep disdain for the outdoors, fun, and the MTB community. Thank you.

Hello ya salty old fist shaker you!
To answer your question, I enjoy single-track here in the mountains and while its legal to e-bike on forest land it's an issue of noise. Around here wattage requirements get quite high for hub motors, motors pushing an excess of 3 kilowatts all too, and surprisingly often. Therefore if you don't want 30 pounds of hub motor on the wheel and 20lbs of battery on your back you are going to want to go mid-drive and granny gear your way around.

Some mid drives come as high rpm/big reduction types and they are whiney and obnoxious little buggers; hard to share a nice peaceful hiking trail with other patrons. It's totally legal to e-bike on forest land but I recommend you either do it with a quiet mid-drive on the shared trails or stick to motorcycle/quad only trails if you do it on a noisy bike.

parajared said:

Some mid drives come as high rpm/big reduction types and they are whiney and obnoxious little buggers; hard to share a nice peaceful hiking trail with other patrons. It's totally legal to e-bike on forest land but I recommend you either do it with a quiet mid-drive on the shared trails or stick to motorcycle/quad only trails if you do it on a noisy bike.

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My experiences is that mountain bikers are a generally noisy group. They frequently ride in pairs and groups and they frequently yammer as their knobby tires grind away at the trail they are riding. In the still morning desert air I can usually hear their conversations plainly from hundreds of yards away. So I don't see how a bit of noisy motor would hurt things much. It might make conversation more difficult - which would be a plus for me and they might come and go faster - which would also be a plus. I guess nice and peaceful are in the ears of the beholder. :^)

2old said:

This individual is interested in stirring up crap, nothing else. Best to stop feeding his frenzy, letting the thread die and getting back to positive concerns.

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Hey 2old - You are right on that one.
It was baiting. No geographic area was the primary clue that caught my attention instantly. Plus the title and the content of the first post. Fishing and probably a tree huggin' hippie but who really knows anyways right. Just ride your electric bike and be happy. Dont worry be happy.

markz said:

2old said:

This individual is interested in stirring up crap, nothing else. Best to stop feeding his frenzy, letting the thread die and getting back to positive concerns.

Click to expand...

Hey 2old - You are right on that one.
It was baiting. No geographic area was the primary clue that caught my attention instantly. Plus the title and the content of the first post. Fishing and probably a tree huggin' hippie but who really knows anyways right. Just ride your electric bike and be happy. Dont worry be happy.

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markz, I wasn't smart enough to get the drift initially and responded to the trolling; glad you caught it the first time.

My experiences is that mountain bikers are a generally noisy group. They frequently ride in pairs and groups and they frequently yammer as their knobby tires grind away at the trail they are riding. In the still morning desert air I can usually hear their conversations plainly from hundreds of yards away. So I don't see how a bit of noisy motor would hurt things much. It might make conversation more difficult - which would be a plus for me and they might come and go faster - which would also be a plus. I guess nice and peaceful are in the ears of the beholder. :^)

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I guess I was specifically thinking of my GNG chain-driven mid-drive and my adventures down Prescott's trail system. I couldn't help but feel a bit... obnoxious with that thing. I have since moved on to a mid-mounted hub which has improved the whole affair significantly.

I'm not sure the noises we hear while riding are heard as loudly by others who are relatively stationary and not on bikes.

Of course, when in doubt I think erring on the side of being quieter is better. But I'd probably have have someone else give me their opinion on what they hear when I ride by before knocking myself out.

Assuming the OP is a troll, many others will read this and still want the same info. Not hard to dope out where I ride, but here is the gist of it.

Since day one on an e bike, in 2008, I've ridden on trails more or less illegally depending on what the sign says. All city multi use trails are posted no motors period. Yet I've stopped and chatted with bicycle cops on these trails, and had no mention of my bike being motorized. On the blm trails, they are posted no motor vehicles, yet again, I have never had a bad encounter with the local MTB riders. On the blm trail, my lower power trail e bike is still a motor vehicle in my state. It would not be a motor vehicle in other states.

HOW THE HECK DO I DO THIS? Really quite simple, I don't ride like a dick, and with a long white ponytail, don't fit the jackass teenage e bike rider profile at all. I do ride higher powered bikes at times, but NEVER haul ass on the multi use trail, or use enough power to tear up the MTB trail. So am I a poacher? Yes, I am, but I dont endanger anybody or cause excess wear on the mtb trails. And so I am tolerated, even welcomed.

Now, if only we could get horse riders to stay of the mtb only singletrack....


Anyplace illegal to ride motors will be posted. But some places say no motor vehicles, other say no motorized vehicles. If it says no motor vehicles and your vehicle is defined by state law as a bike, you can ride it there. And you might get ticketed by a cop that doesn't under stand the law too. Local rules always, there is no such thing as a national law on where you can ride e bikes. Only national definitions of what can be sold, as a " Bike" .


Local rules and how they get enforced get a lot more strict, the higher the use of the trail. Don't go to Sedona, and try to ride your e bike on the trails, for one example.

I live on a San Diego county owned trail that allows e bikes and now Mammoth mountain just started allowing e bikes. So things are finally loosening up in California . Yes my bike goes well over the allowed 20 miles a hour but I ride respectful of others . I have even ridden my electric scooter but I know I could be ticketed . But at 40 mph capable hard to get caught . But also good way to crash with tiny 12” wheels off-road .

I found this website https://www.trailforks.com/, which states "Trailforks is your guide to more than 111,000 trails around the world. This free app includes a search function highlighting eMTB-legal trails. When you open the app, the map will appear. Click on the ⓘ in the upper left corner of the map. Swipe the menu to the left, where a filter called “Ebikes Allowed” will appear. Change that from “All” to “Yes”, and you’ll see all the legal eMTB trails in your area."

I have downloaded the app to my phone - seems to work well, at least for California

I found Trailforks a month ago from browsing mtbr forums on a post about my local area an hours drive away. I recently ran into a similar posting but about Vancouver Island and I really do want to get into riding trails out of town.

An old post, but worth submitting a reply then creating a new thread.

Trailforks looks like a very useful app/program as one would never really know other then asking around on forums from locals or those in the know.

With my drastic weight lose, and currently on a few day off diet binge and getting back on Keto and hitting it hard to rid excess glucose, I really want to find a full suspension bicycle to convert and ride with enough triangle space for lots of battery, but thats only when I come into some money which should be shortly as its been over a year now but time flies by quickly and I knew from the get go that I'd play the slow game to maximize opportunity for that situation. There are a few things on my bucket list, one is do more trail rides, another is do more hiking in the mountains and do it when its not busy which means I need a vehicle.

My current bicycle is a Trek Verve 1 (700 x 45) hybrid (I guess) with a frame size of XXL and I can stuff a ton of battery in there but its a rigid frame so only really good for in the city riding. A plus bike (2.8-3.2) might be in my future, but obviously I'd be buying used, not new.

With Trailforks, I would wonder how many trails they would be missing or if they are all just correlated to official trail guides or government websites.

This is the area I was looking at, but with all the emergencies going on with the flooding, highway closures, rationing it will have to wait. I've waited 2 years now as I wanted to head that way prior to covid to fish the salmon run.
https://www.trailforks.com/region/campbell-river/?activitytype=1&z=8.5&lat=49.97834&lon=-125.21453

PRW said:

I found this website https://www.trailforks.com/, which states "Trailforks is your guide to more than 111,000 trails around the world. This free app includes a search function highlighting eMTB-legal trails. When you open the app, the map will appear. Click on the ⓘ in the upper left corner of the map. Swipe the menu to the left, where a filter called “Ebikes Allowed” will appear. Change that from “All” to “Yes”, and you’ll see all the legal eMTB trails in your area."

I have downloaded the app to my phone - seems to work well, at least for California

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Yeah, trailforks would not show the 13 or so miles of trail I built on private land expected to go under the bulldozers soon in 2008/2009. I built those trails so I could ride my featherweight motorcycle with pedals, before Trump signed the law allowing e bikes to use blm and national monument/park trails. I would ride a 1000w e bike on the blm trails, but not the 3000w one, because it could damage the lovingly maintained mtb trails.

Still illegal, but only trespassing on the private land, secret trail. Not pissing off any other bike riders there, since the place was full of people dumping trash or shooting.

Oddly enough, the developer owner died in 09, and most of his land went into developer limbo for 12 years now. So the new road and houses never happened. A few bike riders and horse people discovered the trails, the city cleaned up most of the trash, and cops educated the shooters that it was inside the city limits now. 8) But the trails get under used, and get too sandy to ride by late fall. Every winter when we get a rain or snow, I go pack them down with a motorcycle.

Similarly, the most used mtb trail in Cloudcroft, shows on no national forest map, and has signage that just says trail/road closed to all motor vehicles.

Locals do this, build secret illegal trails, so they won't have to share with the out of state jerks.

markz said:

I found Trailforks a month ago

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Yeah cool app :thumb: Just downloaded