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Peter Hensel
Supervisors, Planners Place Horse Hill In Jeopardy
Re-designating the Alto Bowl’s narrow Bob Middagh Trail for mixed use, to please the powerful mountain bike lobby, is surely Open Space District planning gone awry.
Horse Hill equestrians will abandon narrow single track given over to mountain biking. It would be simply too dangerous. And that easily could set in motion a domino effect leading to the loss of horses on Horse Hill.
Equestrians need the Middagh connector trail a lot more than mountain bikers do. The Middagh is adjacent to the Horse Hill Preserve. And it provides a link to the trails and fire roads of the nearby Camino Alto Preserve.
Horses need earth, not connecting roads, under their feet. In contrast to knobby tires, horses’ metal shoes slip on asphalt.
Policy SW 17 of the county’s Road and Trails Management Plan should rule the day in Open Space planners’ decision making regarding the Middagh. That policy clearly gives protection to trails adjacent to stables, acknowledging that equestrians need safe trails to ride. That’s essential for the stables to survive.
Why then do Marin’s Open Space planners appear to be throwing Policy SW 17 out the window? Spurred on by the Supervisors, planning wise, it’s as if our planning honchos are hurtling recklessly down a freeway with the company van’s window open and chucking key sections of the Road And Trails Management Plan out into the breeze.
That road has a name. It’s called “The Let’s Give The Mountain Bike Lobbyists All They Want Memorial Freeway”.
But we shouldn’t. Horse Hill’s survival is at stake.
County supervisors and Open Space planners, please…stop! Think. There’s a fine out there down the road for littering. Dial back this planning process gone awry. Do the required studies on whether traditional users---equestrians, hikers and dog walkers---will be displaced from the Middagh by adding mountain bikers to the mix.
Do it now. And let the results of the studies inform your decision making.
Without trails to ride, the Horse Hill equestrians soon will be gone.
We doubt if this Board of Supervisors would want loss of horses on Horse Hill to be part of its legacy. Loss of iconic Horse Hill would be a planning debacle that the majority of county voters would be unwilling to forgive.
Want to take action?
Write Marin Open Space District planners and the Marin County Supervisors:
MCOSD:
Csomers@marincounty.org
Crichardson@marincounty.org
MKorten@marincounty.org
BSanford@marincounty.org
Supervisors:
KSears@marincounty.org
KRice@marincounty.org
JArnold@marincounty.org
SKinsey@marincounty.org
Dconnolly@marincounty.org