Hidden Spikes Cause Flat Tires at Buffalo Creek

spikeUPDATE: From Denver Post:

Mark Eller, the communications director for the Boulder-based International Mountain Bicycling Association, really wants to call these isolated incidents that involved crazy people, and certainly not a national trend.

“It happens enough now that I would say there is a worrisome aspect where people can see these as passive attacks on different user groups,” Eller said. “The factual way of looking at it is that this happens a few times a year now.”

Conflicts between mountain bikers and hikers are as old as knobby tires. Hikers can have a peaceful stroll disrupted by speeding cyclists. Bikers can have their joy tainted by an angry walker. People who have been on a trail 1,000 times can develop a sense of ownership of that public area and maybe grow angry with newcomers. The ire has always simmered on the singletrack. Now it’s increasingly common to see that anger turn into something violent.

“It’s concerning that it seems to be almost a copy-cat element here,” Eller said. “These things are publicized really well and you hope that makes it all go away but you never really shake it.”

Keith Clarke, who co-founded the Front Range Mountain Bike Patrol that has worked with the Forest Service to develop trails in Buffalo Creek said his team has seen flags removed from trail re-routes during building phases and the occasional graffiti on trailhead maps.

“But we’ve never seen anything like this before,” Clarke said. “We are obviously very concerned.”

Read the full article HERE


From SingleTracks.com

Booby trapped trails are hardly a new thing, but to those of us in mountain biker-friendly Colorado, worrying about being injured by man-made traps on the trails has seemed like an issue that only those in the UK, California, and Vancouver (among others) need worry about—all places far from home.

Until now.

On May 14th, 2016, local Colorado rider Tim Fishback got a flat tire during his mountain bike ride in the Buffalo Creek Trail System, but his sealant wouldn’t seal the hole. As he was looking around while fixing his tire, Fishback discovered a metal spike sticking out of the singletrack trail tread.

“We could see it poking out of the ground about an inch and a half, two inches,” said Fishback.

The metal spike was about three inches long and was embedded in roughly a 2×4” cement block.

trailIn addition to the two spikes discovered by Fishback, a third spike was discovered by another trail user that same day. All three of the spikes were discovered on the Little Scraggy Trail within the Buffalo Creek TrailSsystem. Little Scraggy is actually one of the newest trails at Buffalo Creek, and the entire planned route hasn’t even been completed yet.

“[It’s] really surprising being that it was built by mountain bikers, but not only open to mountain bikers, that somebody would do this,” said Fishback.

Fishback asserted that this was an intentional booby trap, set for mountain bikers: “It was not accidental. I’ve ridden there quite often, and never seen anything like it. Definitely someone put it there in the middle of the trail, specifically targeting bikers. It was effective—it was popping lots of tires. . .it was a well-thought-out device. This was premeditated.”

While perhaps the trap was aimed at mountain bikers, the spikes that were discovered could be extremely dangerous to any and all trail users. Fishback encouraged all trail users—whether biker, hiker, or equestrian—using Buffalo Creek to travel carefully…

Read the full story HERE.

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