As a resource for outdoor adventure, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything like it on the planet. Hikers, backpackers, mountain bikers, and climbers will find few restrictions in our national forests. Entrance fees are generally nominal or nonexistent. The literature on the area might not be as glossy or extensive, but that keeps the crowds away and lets you discover things on your own. Mountain bikers will find technical single-track that snakes its way through a diversity of terrain that includes desert, canyon, grassland, wetland, and mountain.
Climbers can still discover new routes up sheer-face granite walls.
And for hikers and backpackers seeking solitude, the forests offer refuge in vast wilderness areas that shelter wildlife from the modern world. The question we face in the twenty-first century is whether we can avoid a tragedy of the commons. The national forests have long served as a primary resource for timber. Today, that tradition is being reevaluated as forests around the world continue to dwindle at an alarming rate. Only time will tell whether government efforts like the Roadless Initiative can help preserve what little forest remains.