One really neat thing about mountain biking is that a well built trail system can sustain a ton of use without anybody's experience being ruined. Taking Galbraith as an example - you can have both the North Side and South Side completely parked out, yet once you get onto the trails, you rarely ever have to wait more than a minute to drop into a descent. And that minute doesn't diminish your experience, because the trail is still there, the berms and features are just as good.
Compare this to, say, surfing, and you realize that while we may all feel like there's a scarcity issue, there really needn't be. Paddle into any popular lineup, and the more people there are, the fewer rides you're getting. Given how hard it is to find good rideable waves, that explains a lot of the completely bonkers aggro BS that happens at popular surf spots in places all along the California coast, for example.
Moreover, you can't build more surf spots (well, unless you think of those multi-million dollar abominations like the artificial breaks being built in the freaking desert, but I digress...) - whereas Galbraith is about to get another what, 10-15 miles of trails this year. So in surfing, more people getting into it means more competition for scarce resources; in mountain biking, at least in the context of legally developed trail systems, it means more volunteers and more lobbying power and usually, after a while, more trails.
March 13, 2024, 3:22 p.m. - Andreas Macke
One really neat thing about mountain biking is that a well built trail system can sustain a ton of use without anybody's experience being ruined. Taking Galbraith as an example - you can have both the North Side and South Side completely parked out, yet once you get onto the trails, you rarely ever have to wait more than a minute to drop into a descent. And that minute doesn't diminish your experience, because the trail is still there, the berms and features are just as good. Compare this to, say, surfing, and you realize that while we may all feel like there's a scarcity issue, there really needn't be. Paddle into any popular lineup, and the more people there are, the fewer rides you're getting. Given how hard it is to find good rideable waves, that explains a lot of the completely bonkers aggro BS that happens at popular surf spots in places all along the California coast, for example. Moreover, you can't build more surf spots (well, unless you think of those multi-million dollar abominations like the artificial breaks being built in the freaking desert, but I digress...) - whereas Galbraith is about to get another what, 10-15 miles of trails this year. So in surfing, more people getting into it means more competition for scarce resources; in mountain biking, at least in the context of legally developed trail systems, it means more volunteers and more lobbying power and usually, after a while, more trails.