Rutabaga Ride at Morrison’s Lair O’ the Bear Park just celebrated its first birthday in late May.

Generally, birthdays are celebrated with cake and presents, but for this infant-trail, its present to mountain bikers was another round of vandalism as it heads into year two.

Since opening on May 25, 2023, the trail’s exit fence has been vandalized four different times within a year, according to Chris Barker with Jefferson County Open Space, and it has mountain bikers wondering “What The…?” and asking “Is it really that hard to follow signs stating ‘Bikes Only, One Way?'” for this downhill bike-only flow trail.

It’s located west of Morrison off Highway 74 (Bear Creek Road).

The most recent incident occurred on May 21 (since fixed again), with a section of fence being cut away on lookers right of the exit gate, creating an easy and fast escape onto the multi-use Bear Creek Trail just above the river bed.

The issue with not having mountain bikers stop and exit the trail via the gate, as Barker pointed out, is that “other users like hikers, equestrians and pet walkers all use Bear Creek trail, and having a mountain biker exited quickly onto the trail poses a risk.”

A simple, but effective, H-brace holds the gate in place with a set of smooth tension wires running across the grassy section base to form the remaining fence. However, the fence is easy to vandalize because of its simplicity unfortunately.

Why can’t people just leave the fence system alone? Do you really want to be hiking up a downhill-only trail knowing you disobeyed the sign, let alone subject to a screaming 29er buzzing down at you at 30 mph? And wouldn’t it just make sense to leave the fence and stop at the exit gate? Strava doesn’t care if you shave off one or two seconds near the end, only your ego does.

Regardless, the constant repair work is taking time away from JeffCo Open Space crews and, as Barker also said, “could lead to (Rutabaga having) more possible closures in the future.”

Every time the act of vandalism happens Barker approximated a 1/2 day’s worth of work with a small crew is needed, taking away their time to work on scheduled projects in other parks and trail systems in Jefferson County.

The other issue for Rutabaga is that hikers are not respecting the purpose of the trail, with regular posts on Denver area social media outlets lighting up last year and surely ready to return this summer complaining about hikers on the trail.

So what’s the solution? Well, the internet has its theories: like installing a trail camera or game camera to survey the gate. But eventually it will come down to respect of the trail’s purpose and further education and promotion by users and organizations like COMBA (Colorado Mountain Bike Association).

“Social media posts from groups like COMBA sending blanket news to the masses certainly helps,” Barker said. “That kind of news creates a situation of ‘to do the right thing’ when it comes to keeping the trail in working order without issue.”

Rutabaga had its first-year check up on Tuesday, with crews inspecting the weathering affects after its first season of being ridden and snowed on.

“The walk through with COMBA consisted of checking to see how it held up,” Barker said. “We won’t be really changing anything on the trail, just looking for any repairs after the first season it needs since built.”

Barker also said the walk through was a learning opportunity for the trails teams.

Originally proposed in 2018 by COMBA, Rutabaga’s intent as to separate hikers from bikers — creating a better experience for both user groups.

You would think the FlowRide Concepts-built trail, along with the 265 COMBA-volunteer-hours, would show users that the time worth building the trail is time worth keeping it G2G (Good two Go).

Will more hikers and bikers pay attention to the rules allowing for this trail to be utilized the way it was designed? Perhaps, hopefully, more than likely, but Rutabaga’s growing pains should endure in the mean time.