theshanergy

Facebook largely killed the forum era. In fact even when I was originally building vioffroad it was coming on the tail of older groups like island4x4 which had been much bigger back in the day, but were already on the way out due to the social media effect. I personally dislike fb so I'll keep this site around regardless of how many use it. It's also good for archival purposes or googling certain trails and areas. I do miss the good old days of forums/IRC etc, but I don't think they're coming back. People seemingly prefer to be plugged in to the corporate machine.

Most of the land here is privately owned and unfortunately the forestry companies who own it are quite resistant to public access. You can google or search on here for the E & N Railway land grab and read more about how it came to be this way. The short version though is that private companies were handed all of our land for nothing, and now actively work to keep us out and maximize corporate profits at the expensive of our (once) beautiful backcountry. The best option at the moment is to roam as free as you can, and stay out of their way.