This spring, while escaping the snow for a sunny weekend in Santa Cruz, I was trail running in Wilder Ranch when a mountain biker flagged me down.
“Do you know CPR?” he asked, clearly shaken.
About a mile up the trail, a 76-year-old electric mountain bike rider lay unconscious. His helmet was cracked, a hematoma swelled beneath it, and blood ran from his mouth. We took turns giving chest compressions for nearly 30 minutes until EMS arrived. Despite our efforts, he didn’t make it.
This is one of many preventable tragedies tied to e-bikes in the backcountry—machines that allow inexperienced riders to go faster and farther into remote terrain they are unfit to handle.
The e-bike boom has brought a surge of riders—often older—who lack basic trail competence. Many ride with headphones, descend without control, and fail to announce their group size, creating an unsafe environment for all trail users.
Tahoe offers plenty of legal e-bike trails: Corral, Sidewinder, Cold Creek, Kingsbury Stinger, and more. Yet on a recent ride up the Star Lake and Tahoe Rim Trails, I came across twelve e-bikers—all riding illegally—and only two human-powered riders. Not one e-biker claimed ignorance. They knew the rules and broke them anyway, confident in the lack of enforcement.
The cost isn’t just safety – it’s trail damage, erosion, and overcrowding. Heavier bikes and increased traffic are overwhelming community-maintained trails. And the backcountry experience—solitude, silence, and self-reliance—is being lost to buzzing motors and Bluetooth speakers.
Trail rules are meaningless without community accountability. If someone is breaking the rules on an e-bike, tell them. If they feel unwelcome, it’s because they are unwelcome on non-motorized trails.
Let’s protect the backcountry experience and keep it human-powered.
-Mark Seelos Mountain Biker and Trail Runner South Lake Tahoe