Column: A Wing and a prayer

Randy Wilson

I knew I was at my destination as soon as I rolled down the Jeep window -- and not just because I had parked in a paddy of cow pies.

The high-pitched whine of a squadron of motorized dirt bikers popping wheelies up the side of the cinder pit merged with the lower hum of the four-wheel ATVers zooming over the flats at the sledding hill nearby.

Later, it was the pop-pop of the target shooters, whose arrival at the cinder pit sent the dirt bikers zooming off into the woods along a trail lined with trash and rutted two feet deep. They were headed toward drive-in campsites ringed by once-live aspens hacked down to knee-high stumps and latrine pits strewn with toilet paper.

Welcome, again, to Wing Mountain, where the potential benefits of a multi-use national forest run up the inevitable clash between motorized and nonmotorized recreation and a throwaway culture that regards nature itself as disposable.

I had last visited Wing Mountain and written about it three years ago after circumnavigating the mountain on my bicycle. The shady forest roads conveniently ring the mountain with little variation in elevation, and the four-mile trip usually includes up-close encounters with cattle at stock tanks, a wildfire burn area that in summer is alive with wildflowers and aspen seedlings, and the usual trash and noise at the cinder pits and along adjacent forest trails.

Since that last visit, the national forest has moved forward on plans that will change some of the uses -- and abuses -- at Wing Mountain. Staffing on the Coconino for recreational maintenance, cleanup and enforcement is still thin. But the sledding area, which became a mountain of trash by late winter, has been turned over to a commercial operator and looked much cleaner this summer. A new volunteer group, Friends of the Northern Arizona Forests, might eventually take on trash removal and trail maintenance and patrols.

More importantly, a new shooting range near Walnut Canyon may take some of the pressure off the Wing Mountain cinder pit. And a proposed off-road vehicle ban will shut down, at least on paper, the dirt bikers and ATVers unless they successfully petition for exceptions (they have carved a trail around the mountain upslope of the forest roads). Even the drive-in campers won't be able to get quite as far off the main roads and into what remain of Wing Mountain's aspen groves.

So change is in the air, although what's mostly in the air right now at Wing Mountain is a lot more noise than a hiker or cyclist usually expects to encounter in the national forest. The west side of the mountain is placid enough. But the east side has been taken over by the target shooters, motorized off-roaders and sprawling drive-up encampments, with attendant violations of litter and woodcutting laws and rules designed to prevent damage to vegetation on steep slopes.

I can't say that Wing Mountain has ever been pristine - it was once home to the sprawling A-1 Cattle Company and various timber-cutting and mining operations that helped to make Flagstaff what it is today.

But today's recreational users need not leave such a heavy footprint, and they shouldn't. National forest officials, however, appear to treat Wing Mountain as a sacrifice zone until the off-road rules take effect and the new shooting range opens.

Some occasional enforcement today, however, might help set the stage for more responsible forest use in the future. Without it, Wing Mountain will remain a recreational Wild West where anything goes -- and does.

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Source: http://www.azdailysun.com/lifestyles/recreation/article_ec898fd0-3a76-5774-a39b-a7e90a77ab2e.html

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