AJ Trail Easements Return Without a Vote

VICTOR — The AJ Trail easements are on Victor's city council agenda Sept. 23, with the Bureau of Land Management and Idaho Fish and Game there to discuss them. The two easements would give hikers and mountain bikers a legal route from Cemetery Road, via the AJ Linnell Trail, onto the public land above town. Today, stepping from the trail onto that land is trespassing.

Updated, September 21; Without a vote, except one thing: The vote is on

The council asked to hear from both agencies in August, when it put off a decision. It will not vote on the easements Sept. 23 either, the city clerk said, because one member will be out of town and Council member Erica Linnell, whose late husband the trail is named for, is recusing herself. Teton Valley Trails and Pathways had told its supporters Sept. 11 that the council "will vote to accept (or deny)" them that night.

Volunteers built the AJ Trail in 2015, uphill from the end of Cemetery Road. A 2016 easement from Mountainside Village gave the city a right-of-way, but it ends where private and federal parcels touch only at their corners. Stepping across that corner onto the BLM and Forest Service land beyond "is considered trespass under Idaho law," the city's staff report says.

The BLM took comment on routes in the region in 2016 and on a draft plan in 2023, and signed its travel management plan May 31, 2024. The BLM received 1,427 comments during the 2023 comment period: 837 substantive and 590 non-substantive. The plan designated the routes reached from the AJ Trail for non-motorized use and e-bikes. The agency concluded the plan "will result in a reduction in motorized access to sensitive wildlife habitat," and its implementation guide says the designations "do not apply to routes extending on or across private lands."

Landowners David and Holly Bender and Yara Thomas signed easements Aug. 3 across small pieces of their property. City staff recommended the council accept them in August, along with an agreement making Teton Valley Trails and Pathways and Mountain Bike the Tetons responsible for maintaining the trail.

The council first took up the easements Aug. 12, with motions drafted for a vote. Of the 21 written comments filed for that meeting, 12 asked the council to hold off until the trail network got further environmental review, including Holly Bender, who granted one of the easements. A Cemetery Road resident wrote, "Once those easements are granted, much of the City's ability to influence the outcome will be gone." Four comments, three of them from Cemetery Road residents, objected to a parking lot or parking area at the end of the road.

Mayor Sue Muncaster proposed continuing the item and directing staff to work with the BLM and Fish and Game "to see what is the most appropriate way to get additional information." The council voted 3-0 to continue it without setting a new date, and Muncaster asked anyone who wanted to keep commenting to "use the online form or email the clerk directly."

Teton County commissioners approved a letter Sept. 14 supporting acceptance. Before the vote, Mountain Bike the Tetons Executive Director Chris Brule told them the easement decision "is not really an opportunity to offer public comment on what has been completed, that travel management plan for the BLM on federal lands, but it does offer a solution for the ongoing trespassing issue."

Brule also told the commissioners the BLM's route network above Victor includes "over 11 miles of closed routes," and he said that network reflected "the decisions that the BLM made, considering wildlife protection and segmented recreational use." He has since said those closures, along with trails the plan turned down, some of them already worn in without permission, are the trade-off for the routes it kept.

The easements are perpetual and open only to people on foot or on bicycles, with no e-bikes, horses, or hunting. The city may not build, approve, or designate a parking lot for trail users along the last 125 meters of Cemetery Road, where four of the August comments objected to one. Instead, it will post signs directing trail users to Sherman Park or other public lots. Parking on the street would stay legal, subject to the city's winter restrictions.

Brule told the commissioners the trail groups had contractors and machine rentals scheduled this summer to begin groundwork, work that has since been delayed, and that "once we obtain the easements and an MOU with the BLM, then groundwork can begin."

What to watch: what the BLM and Fish and Game tell the council Sept. 23, and when the AJ Trail easements come back for a vote. Parking on Cemetery Road stays the city's to regulate regardless.

AJ Trail Easements Return to Victor's Council Sept. 23, Without a Vote

Sources