Brian Martinez recently went out for a pedal near his home in Moab. He was on his mountain bike and saw a grandfather on an e-bike pedaling alongside his son and grandson.
“They had found that fleeting sweet spot where the grandkids were old enough to rip and grandpa could still hang,” says Martinez, a Grand County, Utah, commissioner who has long advocated for expanding trail access for e-bikes. “It is such a small nexus and if we can do anything here to extend that time, I’m all for that. We should work to expand those great experiences.
“As we think about ‘multiple use’ on our public lands, let’s recognize that we all share a love of place whether we are on a dirt bike or out hiking with our dogs. If we can come back to that commonality, that shared appreciation for our place, we can be better managers.”
A few weeks ago, the Bureau of Land Management in Moab opened more than 200 miles of singletrack to pedal-assisted e-bikes, marking the most significant expansion of e-bike access in the West. The BLM in Colorado is studying a similarly vast expansion for e-bikes, marking a milestone for now ubiquitous electric-powered mountain bikes.
“I think e-bikes were going to come either way,” Martinez says. “So it was more about how are they going to be rolled out and managed. Do we want to open a couple trails and see how it goes, or do we want to embrace e-bikes and say this is happening and let’s make it work? I like to think we should move away from a culture of restriction.”
The BLM’s Moab Field Office spent more than 18 months studying the expansion of Class 1 e-bikes — which are powered only when the rider is pedaling, top out at 20 mph and do not have a throttle like a motorbike — on its 1.8 million acres. Before March 1, the office allowed e-bikes on fewer than 18 miles of its 230 miles of nonmotorized singletrack across 12 mountain bike trail systems.
The BLM’s 72-page approval of expanded Class 1 e-bike access around Moab was published in September and outlined phased introduction of the pedal-assisted bikes with monitoring to make adjustments, should safety issues or trail impacts arise. The plan revolves around education and outreach with trail ambassadors and locals helping to champion a new trail etiquette for the powered pedalers.
“We are out there trying to come up with messages for folks to consider when they come out riding,” says Martinez, who expects signage to convey something along the lines of “yield often” so e-powered riders give way to pedalers. “There are no hard rules yet.”
Plan could open 220 miles of e-bike access
The BLM’s 567,000-acre Upper Colorado River Valley Field Office is collecting public comments on a plan to open more than 220 miles of singletrack mountain bike trails to Class 1 e-bikes. The district currently allows e-bikes on 18 miles of trails at the Grand Hogback trail system north of Rifle.
The BLM’s proposal would allow Class 1 bikes on the trails in several “special” and “extensive” recreation management areas including Hardscrabble in Eagle, New Castle and the The Crown, Red Hill and Thompson Creek trail systems around Carbondale. The plan also would expand e-bike access to trails around the Catamount Creek, Dry Rifle Creek, East Glenwood Canyon, Fisher Creek, Horse Mountain, Gypsum Red Hill, Sheep Creek and Windy Point BLM areas.
The expansion follows the BLM’s yearlong national study on e-bike access in 2020 that collected 24,000 comments and gave local field office managers final say on where the powered bikes could roll. The U.S. Forest Service in 2020 also delivered local land managers more say in opening nonmotorized trails to e-bikes while keeping the definition of an e-bike as “motorized.”
Nationally, e-bikes are divided into three classes that differentiate between pedal-assisted bikes that can’t go faster than 20 mph, or Class 1; bikes that are powered by a throttle, or Class 2; and pedal-assisted bikes that can go up to 28 mph, or Class 3, which are typically designed for commuting and travel on paved roads.
While e-bikes are largely allowed wherever motorized travel on public lands is permitted, the angst in 2020 revolved around those Class 1 rides on singletrack set aside for nonmotorized travel. The thorniest issue for bike advocates in 2020 was the potential that land managers would change trail designations from nonmotorized to motorized to accommodate e-bikes, instead of carving out specific permissions for pedal-assisted e-bikes on trails that do not allow motorized travel.
Every two years the nonprofit Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance surveys its members, who volunteer hundreds of hours every year building and maintaining singletrack in the Eagle River Valley. Questions about e-bikes and access on local trails remain “one of the polarizing issues” in the surveys, says the alliance’s executive director, Ernest Saeger.
Saeger says that while a vocal group has pushed for access, broad support for e-bikes on singletrack remains limited. More recent surveys reveal that while e-bikes appear to be more established in the system, the issue remains divisive.
The Vail Valley Mountain Trails Alliance in January told the town of Eagle it supported e-bikes on nonmotorized trails in the town’s open space areas, where they are currently banned.
“We recognize that whether we prefer it or not, e-bikes are here, they are not going away, and their use will continue to grow,” reads the alliance’s comments to the town. “Trying to ignore this reality is not a sustainable management approach.”
The alliance noted research showing Class 1 e-bikes not having an impact on trails and made sure the town recognized the difference between a pedal-assisted e-bike and the new generation e-motorbikes.
The alliance has not yet provided the BLM with official comments for the Colorado River Valley Field Office proposal but the alliance does generally support e-bikes as a way to introduce more people to the outdoors and cycling.
The BLM in 2025 surveyed visitors to the Hardscrabble trail network near Eagle and the Crown recreation area near Carbondale. The Hardscrabble respondents split between about 60 visitors wanting e-bikes banned and 52 in favor of allowing them. For the Crown trails, 209 respondents to the online and in-person surveys supported e-bikes and 165 did not.
Around Fruita, expansion “a nonissue”
The BLM in 2019 opened e-bike access in the popular 18 Road area outside Fruita and expanded e-bikes to 29 miles of trails to the North Fruita Desert in 2022. The moves came with impassioned arguments for and against.
“It was like when snowboards came out,” says George Gatseos, whose Over The Edge bike shop has anchored Fruita’s vibrant mountain bike scene for decades. “There were a lot of perceived negatives, with people saying it was lame that there were bikes with motors on our trails and other people saying it was lame to exclude them. It ended up being better for everyone and nothing really changed. Because, you know, a jerk is going to be a jerk no matter what kind of bike they are pedaling.”
Several years later, more people are riding e-bikes and getting outside and enjoying the singletrack around Fruita.
“It’s kind of a nonissue. It’s just another tool to have fun on,” says Gatseos, who sees older mountain bikers staying on the trail for years longer thanks to e-bikes and younger riders adding e-bikes to their pedaling quiver.
The e-bike revolution was well underway when Fruita embraced the powered bikes. Gatseos sees the land managers around Moab and the Colorado River Valley recognizing “there is no way we are going to stop them.”
Alan Czepinski, a recreation planner with the BLM’s Colorado River Valley Field Office, has been shepherding the e-bike access plan through public review, hosting meetings this month in Eagle and Silt.
He’s seen the attitudes around e-bikes shift toward management and away from opposition. He’s watched how e-bikes are fitting into the North Fruita Desert. He expects any messaging and education around the new trail riders will mirror campaigns used in Moab.
“Riders who ride in Moab will be riding out here in western Colorado,” Czepinski said. “And the ethics a rider learns out there will be brought here.”