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Taft riders keeping 'secret' spot safe, clean

Bikers pick up trash in effort to prove they care for land they use

BY JAMES BURGER, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jburger@bakersfield.com | Saturday, Jun 2 2007 9:05 PM

Last Updated: Saturday, Jun 2 2007 9:08 PM

The first planks of rusted, corrugated metal crashed onto Tim Crabb's flat-bed trailer while the morning air in the foothills of the Temblor Range above Taft was still cool.

A rusted water cooler followed with a resonate thud.

Then a denuded couch.

And half-burned hunks of wood.

Forty years of trash came up out of a small gully, heaved free of its covering of dirt, rust and tangled wire by a small team of off-road bikers from the Taft Motorcycle Club.

These hills used to be a local secret.

Now the secret's out.

And the only way the locals can keep their riding area is to prove they can take care of it.

"I used to ride out here when I was a kid in the '60s, and it had trash in it then," Crabb said, nodding at the junk-choked gulch.

The heat of a spring day grew as the club worked.

More people showed up. A heavy-duty Bureau of Land Management truck collected heavier objects, such as an ancient Frigidaire refrigerator and a rusted-out washing machine.

By mid-morning the mini-trash dump was clean.

The off-road club had landed the first blow in the fight to keep the hills above Taft open to off-highway use.

Locals have been riding dirt bikes in these hills for decades. But it has been a well-kept secret, a locals-only treasure.

"This whole Taft area has never been a big mecca for OHV use," said BLM recreation planner Diane Simpson. "Some of these folks that are out here cleaning today have been riding out here for 40 or 50 years."

Now, word is getting around.

"With some of the outlying areas around the county that have been closed off for riding, word of mouth has gotten out that you can ride over by Taft," Crabb said. "So we get more and more riders over here. The more riders, the more pressure on a particular area."

The influx of new riders from Bakersfield and the Central Coast is making the Taft riders nervous.

They've watched Bakersfield's riding areas be consumed by development and closed off by opposition from environmentalists and land owners.

And they know the same thing could happen to them.

Darrell Melton, who runs the Honolulu Hills raceway in Taft, said the loss of the proposed Bakersfield off-highway park was bad for everyone in the county.

Bakersfield riders, he said, blaze more trails across the legal riding areas in the Temblor Range. If that kind of wild riding goes too far, Melton said, there will be consequences.

"I'd hate to see it get overused, because then BLM will start closing it off," he said.

Melton said oil companies and other private land owners have been tolerant of people riding off-highway vehicles on their property. But that, too, may end if riders abuse that tolerance.

"I don't want people illegally riding on other people's property," he said. "Eventually landowners are going to get fired up."

Local riders need to self-police their sport, Simpson said.

"What happens, if that doesn't happen, is the place gets denuded and horrible, and the use gets out of control," she said. "With the limited staff, limited resources we have, sometimes (BLM) will say, 'We need to close it. It's more than we can handle, and there's been so much damage we just need to close it off.' "

And that is why members of the Taft Motorcycle Club, their children and their dogs are out in the hills on a Saturday morning hauling junk out of a gully.

"We want to preserve our riding areas," Crabb said, "and the best way to do that is to keep things clean and respectful."