What would that accomplish?
It would level the playing field. Nothing is more disgusting to someone wheelin a modern rig than to see the difficult and fun trail they grew up with covered with gravel and hardened its obstacles broken down or removed. Many of us
built our rigs to fit the trail and when we come back with a real drivetrain on 36s or better to see that some work party "stockered" the whole thing with gravel,well, it hurts. We have precious few "Most Difficult" trails left in this state yet we stand by and do nothing about it. I believe it is because we are told within our user group that we must submit to their (FS) will. Here we are allowing, even making excuses for and justifying the FS's actions up there. Go back and look at how many people defended the boat ramp conversion on the entrance to the lower 311. " We had to do or they said they'd shut it down boo hoo." Let them shut it down. Let them try.
My point is that paving a trail like the 311 or 197 of it's obstacles and mud sections is dramatically taking away from well more than half of the ORV user groups. The fact that some user groups even go as far as to enable this kind of destruction is pathetic. If ratcheting down the difficulty of all our remaining decent trails is the norm then it needs to be across the board. Cutting a tree out of a tight corner on LR is no different and No Less Stupid than turning the beginning of the 311 trail into a boat ramp, or making 197 doable in a mini excavator.
Tell you what. Next year the FS will likely ask us for volunteer help to pave and destroy another major section of trail. When they do I'll go up there that day and take plenty of photos. We'll see who helps them turn a natural beautiful organic dirt based fun trail into a flat and featureless gravel road through the woods, then we'll go from there.
I'm all for fixing what is supposed to be an easy trail. Making what is supposed to be a hard trail (311, 197, Busywild, etc) into a stupid easy trail is treason as far as I'm concerned. It should not be tolerated.