Post by K5 on Apr 5, 2007 10:46:55 GMT -5
This was taken from the June 2007 issue of Petersen's 4Wheel & Off-Road.
Sometimes rumors you find on the internet are just that, rumors. Sometimes, though, chatter on a message board proves to be true. We picked up a message thread on a 4x4 forum that sounded legit enough to check out, and it turned out to be real.
Lion's Back, arguably Moab's most famous slickrock obstacle, has been closed to the public. According to Teresa Wyatt, administrator for the Moab Chamber of Commerce, the lease on the property that includes Lion's Back has been sold to a private owner, who may develop the land for housing. Wyatt did say that the adjacent Hell's Revenge Trail should be unaffected by the closure. Until now the land lease had been held by the School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), a Utah state agency that manages real estate trusts granted to Utah by the U.S. Government when it became a state. SITLA can and does sell these real estate trusts to private owners, and that's what happened to Lion's Back.
Said Wyatt, "The property lease has been sold, and the new leasers are probably going to close Lion's Back off due to liability issues." According to the message board posts we've been reading, that has already happened. Rocks have been pushed into place to block access to the trail.
The rumor mill also guessed that the land was going to be developed for condominiums. According to Wyatt, "I don't know about condos, but some type of new housing will be going in, and the property is being looked at for annexation into the city limits."
Now, some chuckleheads on the message boards are already inviting wheelers to run Lion's Back anyway, seeing the blockade as just another obstacle. Please, Please don't. Ignoring private property closures only makes the problem worse and gives us all a bad name. Yes, we'll miss Lion's Back, and it's a shame we don't have the right to drive on it anymore. But don't do anything stupid that could jeopardize the other trails we enjoy in Moab and elsewhere.
Sometimes rumors you find on the internet are just that, rumors. Sometimes, though, chatter on a message board proves to be true. We picked up a message thread on a 4x4 forum that sounded legit enough to check out, and it turned out to be real.
Lion's Back, arguably Moab's most famous slickrock obstacle, has been closed to the public. According to Teresa Wyatt, administrator for the Moab Chamber of Commerce, the lease on the property that includes Lion's Back has been sold to a private owner, who may develop the land for housing. Wyatt did say that the adjacent Hell's Revenge Trail should be unaffected by the closure. Until now the land lease had been held by the School & Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), a Utah state agency that manages real estate trusts granted to Utah by the U.S. Government when it became a state. SITLA can and does sell these real estate trusts to private owners, and that's what happened to Lion's Back.
Said Wyatt, "The property lease has been sold, and the new leasers are probably going to close Lion's Back off due to liability issues." According to the message board posts we've been reading, that has already happened. Rocks have been pushed into place to block access to the trail.
The rumor mill also guessed that the land was going to be developed for condominiums. According to Wyatt, "I don't know about condos, but some type of new housing will be going in, and the property is being looked at for annexation into the city limits."
Now, some chuckleheads on the message boards are already inviting wheelers to run Lion's Back anyway, seeing the blockade as just another obstacle. Please, Please don't. Ignoring private property closures only makes the problem worse and gives us all a bad name. Yes, we'll miss Lion's Back, and it's a shame we don't have the right to drive on it anymore. But don't do anything stupid that could jeopardize the other trails we enjoy in Moab and elsewhere.