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Dirt Rag Articles
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Gnurps: Mountain Bike Environmentalist Pioneer
Photographer, writer, politician, environmental activist, mountain biker, Gary Sprung has woven his love of the outdoors with his passion for activism over the last 26 years. His laid back appearance—wild big hair, mismatched socks, and Hawaiian shirt—and crunchy nickname (Gnurps is "Sprung" spelled backwards) belie a political savvy and depth of knowledge that's keenly focused on legitimizing mountain bikers' environmentalist voice.
As an environmentalist turned mountain biker, Gary Sprung has worked to bring mountain bikers into the mainstream environmental movement. "Our planet faces ecological crisis," writes Gnurps on his website. "Our cities face gridlock. We must solve these problems, or face extinction ourselves." Whether its transportation issues or questions about land protection, cycling can play an important role. It is toward this end that Gary has dedicated his energies.
On September 29th, 2005, Gary was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame, an induction made even more poignant since he has left IMBA to pursue his software consulting business. Gary was IMBA's most long-term staff member.
During his emotional remarks at the Hall of Fame ceremony, Sprung summed up his basic beliefs: "The environmental movement has made—and is making—a huge mistake to push mountain bikers away. There are 40 million mountain bikers, and our sport is mostly about enjoying and appreciating beautiful, unspoiled, wild lands. Think about it, where would you rather ride: on roads through a polluted mining site or a timber clearcut; or on a sweet singletrack through roadless meadows and forest?"
Mountain bikers are poised to be the next generation of conservationists, and it's this ethos that has guided Sprung both on and off the bike.
Building Environmental Cred
Sprung developed his environmentalist bent in the suburbs of Chicago, witnessing the spoiling effects of sprawl on the natural beauty around him. As a young teenager, he got interested in photography and was deeply affected by the lush photos portrayed in the Sierra Club's Exhibit Format books and in the great works of Ansel Adams and Elliott Porter.
"These amazing, beautiful photos turned me into an environmentalist," says Sprung, "and at age 17, I took my first action as an environmentalist; I joined Zero Population Growth."
After taking some photography courses at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduating from Brown University in '76, he set his sights on the eastern slopes of the Rockies and moved to Colorado. The move rekindled his activism and he hooked up with other like-minded conservationists in Boulder to inventory open spaces on Forest Service land that had potential for Wilderness protection. He moved to Durango and adopted two potential Wilderness areas, hiking throughout the wildlands, filing reports to the Colorado Open Space Council, and spending a lot of time steeping himself in mountain culture.
He put down roots in Crested Butte in '79 because of the vibrant environmental community that was gathering to fight a large molybdenum mine from ravaging the area, as well as the spectacular cross-country skiing he could do right out his back door.
It was here that Gary built his environmental cred, and got deeply involved with local politics and activism. His biggest accomplishment was leading a 13-year effort to preserve Fossil Ridge, a 77,000-acre area of the Gunnison National Forest, from mining and timber harvesting. Finally designated as a Wilderness Area in 1993, Sprung's backyard—Oh Be Joyful valley—also received protection. It was a huge victory.
He served on the board of the High Country Citizen's Alliance in Crested Butte for 18 years, serving as its paid president for seven years. During his tenure, the HCCA fought to enhance local ecosystems and the quality of life in the Upper Gunnison River Basin: it fought for Wilderness, sustainable forestry, and sought solutions to improve land and water use in ways that promoted recreation and affordable living.
In 1995, Gnurps waged a successful door-to-door campaign to be elected to the Crested Butte Town Council. Running on issues of open space preservation, land use conservation and affordable housing, Gary served a four-year tenure as a public servant.
In the Saddle
"Mountain biking really taught me about having fun in nature," recollects Sprung. "I always found backpacking fun but biking was a LOT more fun!"
By the late '70s and early '80s, mountain biking was all over Crested Butte. People were atop fat tire cruisers and some were even retrofitting derailleurs on their clunkers to help with the hills. "I couldn't afford one of the multi-speed clunkers, so I got a one-speed—a nice balloon tire bike—and that's what I used for the first year." In late '81, Sprung was fortunate enough to have Joe Breeze hook him up with one of his chromoly mountain bikes for the Pearl Pass Tour, and the next year he bought the first Specialized Stumpjumper.
Then, in 1984, came the largest mountain bike closure in the history of the sport—bikes could no longer be ridden in Wilderness.
As an environmentalist, Sprung was nonplussed by the ludicrous proposition that bikes were bad for the environment. Sprung took up the call to fight for access and the environment, and he sought ways to spread the fat tire gospel.
In 1985 he became the first mountain bike environmental reporter, writing environmental and advocacy columns for the first full-color glossy: Rodale's Mountain Bike For the Adventure, started up by Hank Barlow. For nearly a decade, Gary made sure that the adventure of mountain biking included a respect for the land—"leave only waffle prints"—and stewardship of open spaces.
Through Mountain Bike for the Adventure, Sprung hooked up with Tim Blumenthal, who had been lured from VeloNews to edit the young magazine. Together, they did some mountain bike road trips to cover regional events, such as the Fat Tire Festival at Slatyfork, West Virginia.
In '91, IMBA board members Jim Hasenauer and Michael Kelley hired Sprung to overhaul and produce their newsletter, previously called Land Access Alert, and Sprung turned it into a professional and respectable voice, re-christened as IMBA Trail News. Sprung was also IMBA's first webmaster, giving IMBA its first public face on the world wide web in 1998.
According to Hasenauer, Gary brought a lot to the table. "He has a deep, deep commitment to conservation, and Michael Kelley and I instantly bonded with him since we shared that. He also was actively engaged in the politics of land protection."
"In Colorado, he had worked with the Forest Service," says Hasenauer, "he had worked with the BLM, he had worked with the state of Colorado. And he had forged alliances with ranchers, the Chamber of Commerce townspeople and even with the motorized people. He had this really deep mountains west kind of experience. Unlike us, who lived in the urban fringe and rode to escape into nature, Gary lived right in the middle of it."
According to Blumenthal, "Gary has a keen political mind. He understands how politics works, and he brought that understanding to mountain bike advocacy."
Like the California founders of IMBA, Sprung understood that linking mountain biking with the environmental movement was philosophically and strategically key for mountain bike advocacy. While many of Gary's colleagues in the environmental community distanced themselves from mountain biking, Gary embraced cycling as part of the environmental solution.
Gary also had a leg up because of his thorough understanding of federal land policy. He's one of the first mountain bike advocates to fully understand how federal land regulations work and the different ways the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service approach land management, Wilderness and recreation. "He has one of the most complete pictures of federal land management of anyone," says Blumenthal.
Hasenauer agrees: "he understands the interfaces and intersections between land policy, water policy, air policy, forest policy, timber policy, the ADA and trail recreation policy. Gary intuitively recognizes the deep structure and the background of what's in play. On the basis of that, he's been great council and a great guide."
As IMBA's Communications Director and, later, as its Senior National Policy Advisor, Sprung was a savvy spokesman who could clearly articulate IMBA's position and stay on message, even during rough and tumble debates with the anti-bike enviros.
Despite his growing disdain for the closed-mindedness of the ultra-green, Sprung insisted that IMBA continue to dialogue with the intractable conservation folks, even when it meant painful and torturous debates with little hope of changing anyone's mind. "Gary has never been afraid of the hardest work that mountain bike advocates have to do," says Blumenthal. "While others might burn out and become discouraged about not being able to break through the bubble of traditional environmentalists, Gary perseveres."
Gnurps is resilient, patient, and passionate in his quest to mainstream mountain biking into the environmental movement.
Taking on Wilderness
Armed with his knowledge of land use policy and activism, Sprung has been one of IMBA's key point persons for dealing with the Wilderness issue and mountain biking. While always keeping land protection foremost, Sprung has written extensively on alternatives to Wilderness for IMBA that can provide the same measure of environmental protection and still allow for a broad array of low-impact recreation.
He articulated IMBA's position pushing for alternatives to Wilderness designations. He championed more moderate forms of land protection—improved National Conservation Areas and the Roadless Initiative—that would safeguard natural spaces from mining and logging, promote wildlife conservation and ecological integrity.
As IMBA's Wilderness go-to guy, Sprung worked with advocacy groups from around the country to help craft effective official comments and strategies to deal with proposed Wilderness plans. "In one way or another," says Sprung, "I've done something with regards to Wilderness in all 50 states, and was actively involved in about 25 states."
At his induction ceremony, Sprung commented that the "protection of our natural environment is much more important than bike access. But the Wilderness movement has unfortunately devolved, and today is often less about protecting nature and more about making hiking-only trails or making notches in belts."
Mainstreaming MTB Advocacy
Sprung urges mountain bikers and mountain bike groups to jump into the larger environmental fray to help develop more respect for cycling. He'd like to see the mountain bike community get more involved in supporting clean water and air, reforming outdated mining laws, and protecting endangered species. Mountain bikers have a role to play in minimizing sprawl and building smart communities that integrate bicycle use, public transit and healthy recreational opportunities.
But he's also a realist who knows that we need to get more political, secure more resources and be wary of some of the underhanded methods used by extreme enviros. The environmental movement is about 50 times the size of the mountain bike movement, asserts Sprung, and their resources and number of paid staffers dwarf anything mountain bikers can muster. They still regard us as a fly in the ointment.
Despite his left-of-center political leanings, he cautions us about what may happen with the return of the Democrats to the Oval Office. During the California Wilderness maelstrom this year, "we lucked out in having Republican House Resources Committee leadership that listened to us and probably didn't want to help the Democratic sponsors of the [California] bill. But let's not fool ourselves." Next time, we might not be so lucky, so we had better build our political capacity now.
Gnurps will always be an advocate, an environmentalist. But now that he's left IMBA, he's also left a void that's going to be difficult to fill. He may return as an advisor to help troubleshoot key issues, but in the meantime he'll be developing his software consulting business, riding his bike and focusing his energy on local environmental issues. This cowboy isn't walking off into the sunset.
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