Bismarck Tribune

By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN

A plan by the Forest Service to build a multiuse trial from Medora south to the Burning Coal Vein Campground near Amidon has generated a record number of comments.

The Forest Service plans to extend the popular Maah Daah Hey Trail another 45 miles starting next year and proposes action on a trail that would exclude mountain biking from about two-thirds of it.

The majority of the 1,400 or so comments - the most for any Forest Service project on the Little Missouri National Grasslands - came from International Mountain Biking Association members all over the country.

Theirs and other public comments followed the release of an environmental assessment on the trail project. A final decision could be made next month, with a 45-day appeal period to follow.

Bikers want the Forest Service to build the trail on its preferred route, but allow mountain bikes to use all of it.

The agency's draft environmental assessment looks at three trail alternatives. Its preferred or "proposed action" trail "H" goes through an area designated as suitable for wilderness. Mountain biking would have to stop there, about 17 miles south of Medora, while horse riders and hikers could continue all the way to the Burning Coal Vein Campground.

If the area is ever formally designated as wilderness, something that requires congressional approval, it's possible mountain bikes wouldn't be allowed in it.

Ron Jablonski, supervisor of the Forest Service's Medora District of the Little Missouri National Grasslands, said the preferred trail is the most scenic of the three alternate routes. Keeping bikes out of the wilderness suitable area could prevent having to exclude them later if its ever formally designated wilderness, he said.

Ron Luethe is the Bismarck representative for IMBA.

He said the mountain bikers aren't against the wilderness designation, but he says the Forest Service is not obligated to keep mountain bikes out of an area that's only a wilderness suitable at this point.

Luethe said there is no law that prevents the agency from allowing bikes in the area now.

Suitable for wilderness is a designation created for the Little Missouri National Grasslands in the new grasslands management plan.

There are three such areas designated that way and the one the proposed trail would pass through is 13,000 acres of the Kendley Plateau.

Jeff Adams, Forest Service project manager, said he'll look at all the comments and summarize them for Jablonski, who will issue a decision notice on the trail location.

Anyone who commented on the environmental assessment can appeal Jablonski's decision.

Luethe said IMBA, or members, would challenge a decision that prohibits mountain biking on the extended Maah Daah Hey Trail II.

The original trail is 96 miles from Medora to the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

The Forest Service plans to construct the extended trail in three stages, starting at the south end in the spring and working north to Medora.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)