Mountain Biking the Moonraker Recreation Trails from the Sander Lake Campground just got a little trickier.
Bernie Sander, along with his wife Pam, are the owners of the campground. The road is private property, they don’t have any financial help with its’ maintenance, and their message is fairly clear: enough is enough.
“The excessive traffic has gotten to be too much,” said Sander. “The road is getting beat up, all the vehicles are creating washboard and the maintenance is beyond what I can do.”
Bikers are, though, permitted to park at the bottom of McBeath Road and cycle to the Sander Lake trailhead.
Sander said that it was “okay” several years ago when vehicle traffic was kept to a minimum by a few local mountain bikers, but now the situation has gotten out of control.
A yellow sign reading “Private Road, Access to Sander Lake Campground only, for Moonraker Trails use Cedar Lake” is installed over the Sander Lake Campground at the bottom of the road. Sander believes that most people in town know about the new rules, but is considering installing a gate at the edge of the campground if necessary.
Rick Seward, President of the Golden Cycling Club, said the club understands that this conflict is a difficult situation and hoped the public can be patient as other alternatives are explored.
“We don’t want any further conflict to develop,” said Seward.
One alternative, explained Seward, is for the club to build a new access point. The potential access point is also on private land and would require working with the current landowner.
“In the meantime the new CBT mainline trail is a great way to access the Moonrakers,” said Seward. He explained that the Cedar lake trailhead has undergone a lot of work in the past several years and hopes that bikers use this access point as much as possible.
Seward has asked Tourism Golden to remove the Sander Lake trailhead from their marketing materials and maps.
“For local people, I think word of mouth will spread quickly,” said Seward.
Susan Abbott, Community Parks and Recreation Operator for the CSRD, emphasized that the steep road to Sander Lake isn’t actually a road.
“This is a driveway on private property and using it is at the permission of the owner,” said Abbott.
The CSRD, like the Golden Cycling club, is promoting the Cedar lake trailhead as the main access point for the Moonrakers.
Although bikers will have to use other access points to the Moonrakers this season, Abbott did say the CSRD is hoping to eventually have permission for publ
