Dispatches: The Mountain Bikers Fighting New Trails

Published: Feb. 12, 2019, 10 p.m.

b'Since the sport\\u2019s early days in the seventies, mountain bikers have carved illicit trails on public and private land. Pioneering riders create winding singletrack in their favorite nearby hills, then carefully share the location with only a handful of friends. But in recent years, as the sport has grown bigger and bigger, government agencies and some adventurous entrepreneurs have sought to adopt pirate trails into official networks. This usually means better maintenance, maps and signage, trailhead parking\\u2014and a lot more riders. In New England, some feisty veterans are pushing back against the wave of modernization, saying it\\u2019s ruining their neck of the woods. Our friends at the Outside/In podcast report on a generational shift in the sport that\\u2019s got a lot of people fired up.'