Hollister Hills SVRA Needs More Parking
Editorial by Michael Hannas
Heading up the road to Hollister Hills the day after Thanksgiving, I was beginning to feel the excitement build up inside. Although I grew up riding these very hills every weekend, since moving to the North Bay a decade ago, I had only been back down to the wonderful Hollister Hills SVRA a handful of times. When I heard they had finally opened up some desperately-needed new single-track earlier this year, I made it a point to plan our Thanksgiving holiday around riding at Hollister the day after Turkey Day before heading back home. My girlfriend and I brought the bikes and gear down and had Thanksgiving dinner with our families and then went to bed early since we were getting up to go to Hollister the next day. After getting up and stopping for some coffee and breakfast, we were on our way to the hills.
We were both super pumped since we hadn’t been riding together in over a year; since my girlfriend took a new job last summer we have had different days off and hadn’t been able to do much at all together, especially go riding. Finally we had the bikes in the back of the truck and a day cleared together to go shoot some roost. Needless to say we were full of anticipation and excitement.
As we headed up the road, I noticed an abnormal number of trucks full of bikes coming back down the hill. It was late in the morning but still before 11AM; I just figured they must have got done early and were headed home before the leftover Turkey was all gone. Then I started noticing that most of the bikes in the back of the trucks and trailers were still clean, without a spec of dirt on them. Hmmm…well they do have high-pressure hoses at Hollister that do a pretty good job of getting the dirt off, but it is a little weird that almost all of the guys leaving had bothered to wash them off first…then as we get closer to the park I see trucks full of sparkling clean bikes pulled over on the opposite side of the road. I can tell by the looks on these guys faces that they aren’t happy. I guess they thought they could still get a campsite, I think to myself, as we continue to the park entrance. Then as we reach the gate I see the problem. The rangers are turning everyone around and there are signs posted that read Park Closed. As I pull up to the booth a nice ranger lady tells me that the park is closed because they do not have any more parking anywhere in the whole park. So much for the rumored demise of the motorcycle industry: off-road is alive and well in Northern California I’d say.
As I feel the steam building up inside after being so excited to go for a rip, I ask the ranger what we are supposed to do now that we have already driven all the way to the park. She replies that they will be reopening the park at 2:00 PM; we can leave and come back in three hours and then ride. I ask if we should begin to wait in line now to get in when they open it back up, since I have seen how many other people had already been turned away and could envision not everyone being able to make it back in if parking was such an issue. She replied that they did not have anywhere for us to wait and we would have to leave and just try to come back later.
Now after paying my green sticker fees on multiple vehicles for many years and mostly riding on the clapped-out, never maintained trails that we have up in Nor-Cal at Cow Mountain and Middle Creek, I was really looking forward to riding at a nice well-maintained State Vehicular Recreation Area for a change. I had planned my whole Thanksgiving weekend around being able to go ride at Hollister, on the same trails I learned to ride on as a kid. Finally I was there at the gate and I couldn’t get in to ride because they said they had no more parking. To say the least I was furious. I was willing to bet there were at least fifty different spots I could find in the park where I could park my truck safely without being in anyone’s way. Sure, there was probably no room for the fifteen or twenty over 20-foot-long toy haulers they turned away, but no room for a truck? I was so angry we just drove home; at that point I wasn’t going to wait three hours to give them any more of my money.
Obviously, Hollister needs to build some more parking spaces; there is plenty of room in the park for them. Perhaps if Hollister is unable to build more parking spaces for some reason, they should devise some other way to limit the size of vehicles that come into the park, or charge more for parking a huge rig so that people only bring a huge trailer if they need it. It is one thing if you and five buddies pile all your bikes into one toy hauler and camp out for the weekend- that is saving room in the campground and gas, which I’m all for. I’m referring to the mini dad with a 40-foot-long 5th wheel for two tiny KTM 50SX racers and one six-year-old kid. Do you really need to take the equivalent of five parking spots just to go riding for the day? What, are you worried your kid is going to quit riding if he can’t go in the trailer and play video games on the flat-screen between motos? If so, could you at least go to a huge parking lot and learn how to back up your monster rig before you try to learn on the fly in the packed campground?
Agree? Disagree? Let us know what you think: mike@2wheeltimes.com
