The Howard boys of Rapid City - Austin, 13, and Matthew, 11 - are on the record for more "single-track" dirt-bike trails in a new off-roading trail system for Black Hills National Forest.

"We live on Nemo very close to Schroeder Road, and that is where we ride most of the time, and I don't see a single single-track there," Austin wrote in a letter to the U.S. Forest Service earlier this month.

Matthew opened his letter, "I'm writing because I want freedom; freedom to ride wherever we want."

Austin, Matthew and their parents, Taffy and Mark Howard, are among many trail-bike riders who believe they were shortchanged in the first draft of an off-roading trail system for the Black Hills.

The Forest Service, following a mandate from Washington, is in the process of a total revision of off-roading rules for Black Hills National Forest.

Current rules for the Black Hills allow off-road vehicles to go anywhere they are not specifically prohibited. The new rules, which likely will go into effect in 2009, will restrict off-roading to designated trails.

The total miles of unpaved roads and trails in the Black Hills that are available for all forms of off-roading will be reduced from nearly 10,000 to slightly less than 4,000 miles.

Many of those 4,000 miles are open to any street-legal vehicles. Other specialty trails will be open to vehicles less than 50 inches wide, which includes all-terrain vehicles. A handful of trails will be reserved for big "rock crawlers" - four-wheelers modified to climb boulders.

Dirt bikers, however, prefer tight single-track trails that wind through trees. They'd rather not compete with cars and trucks on Forest Service roads, and the two-track ruts of ATVs can be hazardous for trail bikes.

The problem, as they see it, is that the first version of the new off-roading trail system includes only 79 miles trails dedicated to single-track motorcycling.

"We'd like to see 300 miles, at least," Patty Howard said.

She and her husband have ridden trail bikes with their sons since the boys were 5 or 6 years old. "We hike and camp, too," she said, but motorcycles are a major family activity. In fact, they ride one trail off Nemo Road, near Schroder Road, so often they've nicknamed it "the Howard Family Trail."

Their family trail was on a map of 300 miles of single-track trails submitted to the Forest Service earlier this year by Gary Schmidt of Rapid City.

Schmidt, who has been trail riding in the Black Hills for more than 30 years, rode popular single tracks with a Global Positioning System receiver in his pack. He translated the GPS coordinates to a map, hoping the Forest Service would include the trails in its system.

Other single-trackers submitted trails in the southern Black Hills.

The trail map the Forest Service published last month rejected about 230 miles of the trails Schmidt submitted, and it offers almost no single-track trails in the Custer area.

Most single-track trails the Forest Service proposes are in the central Black Hills, from just north of Johnson Siding to south of Boulder Canyon.

Last week, Schmidt rode additional trails with Forest Service recreation specialist Bill Texel, including the "Howard Family Trail" off Schroeder Road."

"We're still working with the Forest Service," Schmidt said.

Texel said he hoped to ride more single-track trails. "We're considering them," he said.

Ross Brown of Rapid City, president of the Off-Road Riders Association, said four-wheeled ATVs probably got more trails than motorbikes in the first version of the trail system because the popularity of ATVs has exploded in recent years.

Brown hopes the Forest Service also will take into account the long history of single-track motorcycle riding in the Black Hills. "They were riding 20 or 30 years before ATVs were even invented," he said.

Schmidt, Brown, the Howard family and other members of the Off-Road Riders Association say they'll submit more written comments and more maps to the Forest Service by the Nov. 13 deadline for public comments.

Forest Service specialists will spend the winter analyzing those comments and creating three or four "alternatives" to the currently proposed trail system.

Black Hills National Forest Supervisor Craig Bobzien said he understood the objection that 79 miles of single-track trails was inadquate. "That was the clear in the feedback we got," he said. "I know we're going to have alternatives that are going to be more than 80 miles."

However, Bobzien added that some of the trails submitted by Schmidt and others were rejected because of "resource concerns" - that is, the trails crossed sensitive areas, posed risks for erosion or otherwise ran counter to the forest-management plan for the entire Black Hills.

Bobzien cited in particular trails in the Forte Meade watershed and in the area of Bogus Jim Creek.

The alternatives to the current proposal will be published next spring as a draft environmental impact statement. One of those alternatives will probably be labeled the preferred one, Bobzien said, but preferred doesn't mean final.

Next spring, there will be another public comment period and more public meetings.

After that final round of comments is completed, Bobzien will choose the final version of the trail system, which will be published as a final environmental impact statement.

The final trail system likely will be a blend of the alternatives and the current proposal, Bobzien said. It will not fulfill Matthew Howard's wish to "ride wherever we want," but it might offer more to him and his brother more single tracks than the current proposal.

Bobzien hopes to complete the final EIS - with rules and a trail map by next October. That means the new off-roading rules could take effect in early 2009.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com