“USFS and BLM won’t have any recreation dollars next year in the federal budget,” said Michael Kusiek, Executive Director of Wyoming Pathways. “For our organization, 90% of our projects were done through challenge cost shares of US Forest Service and BLM rec dollars, and so now we’re looking at $50,000 RTP grants.” Unfortunately, $50,000 grant increments don’t “go very far in trail building these days.”
As Kusiek highlighted, most of the trails built in Wyoming have been constructed with federal dollars. Wyoming Pathways alone has “brought about $2.5 million to landscapes across Wyoming” since its founding in 2017.
But now, the state is facing a serious challenge in funding new mountain bike trails.
It doesn’t help that Wyoming is extremely tax-averse, and that the state continues to cut taxes. Wyoming is one of just eight states that don’t levy income taxes, and sales tax is also very low at just 4%. In addition, “they just cut property tax in the legislature again, so most counties are looking at a 20 to 30% cut” to their budgets, according to Kusiek.
Wyoming has proposed charging bikers an annual trail access fee to fund trail maintenance and construction
There’s no such thing as free lunch. While perhaps Wyoming residents feel good about paying such low taxes, the demand for more trails across the state — and mountain bike trails in particular — is extremely high. According to Kusiek, over 90% of the requests for new trails come from mountain bikers. And those trails need to be funded somehow.
To address this funding challenge, Wyoming has proposed legislation that would impose an annual trail access fee on mountain bikers. This isn’t a new idea — the Wyoming State Legislature put forth similar legislation in 2017 and conducted stakeholder outreach in 2022. The latest draft bill was passed by the Legislature’s joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee on August 19, 2025. To become law, the draft bill will be voted on during the budget session, which is scheduled to start in late January 2026. The budget session usually lasts into March.
How expensive will these fees be?
The draft bill will require mountain bikers riding state trails to purchase a $10/year pass for residents or a $20/year pass for nonresidents, with fees not to exceed $5/day. Minors under the age of 18 will be able to ride for free. Mountain bikers found riding a state trail without the required license or sticker will be slapped with an $85 fine.
Funds from the proposed fees are exclusively earmarked for trails
The 2017 version of the bill failed because the funds to be collected weren’t exclusively earmarked for trail maintenance or development. This was also a significant talking point against mountain bike trail fees that the BLM planned to assess in Colorado. This issue has been fixed in the current version of the Wyoming bill, with all funds allocated to mountain bike trails. According to the draft bill:
The funds shall be expended only for:
(i) Maintenance, construction, signage and enforcement of non-motorized trails;
(ii) Educational programs related to non-motorized trail use and safety;
(iii) Infrastructure supporting trail use, including trailheads, parking areas and restrooms;
(iv) Projects located within state parks, historic sites, recreation areas or on public trails located within five (5) miles of a boundary that connect to a park, site or area.
This language shows that the primary purpose of these fees is to fund mountain bike trail maintenance and construction. As we’ve covered many times on Singletracks, it’s difficult to keep trails maintained, and it often requires creating a funding stream to pay professionals to complete the needed maintenance.
Despite the language stating that funds must be spent on trails “within five miles of a boundary that connect to a park, site, or area,” it is unclear how that could possibly apply to riders who pay a one-time annual fee instead of a day-use fee at a State Park. In the case of annual fees, it seems likely that the funds could be spent anywhere “on state park lands,” according to Kusiek, who has testified in support of the bill. “There might be [new] systems that are built with this money,” he added.
Which trails will riders have to pay to access?
It’s not immediately clear from the proposed bill which trails riders will have to pay to ride if the law passes, and even Kusiek couldn’t give me a straight answer. Originally, the state wanted to include Forest Service trails in the bill, similar to how motorized trails are managed in the state.
“The state trails organization, which is part of the Outdoor Rec office, has a very robust motorized system, and, in fact, so robust, and it’s so popular here, that the snowmobilers last year asked for an increase in the amount of their sticker costs so they can get more amenities,” said Kusiek. “We’re hoping to build something like that. And the reason that there’s so many more amenities is that public or federal lands in Wyoming, we can enroll those trails into the state trails program, and now state dollars can go to those lands.”
Riders will have to pay even more to ride in Wyoming State Parks
Kusiek did not anticipate that any trails on federal land would be enrolled in the program any time soon. Rather, the proposed fees will apply primarily to trails in and connected to Wyoming State Parks, such as the renowned Curt Gowdy State Park, which attracts hundreds of thousands of riders from across the West. Resident mountain bikers already pay $7 per day to access Wyoming State Parks, and nonresidents pay $12 per day. Annual passes cost $48 for residents and $96 for nonresidents, and camping is extra.
The proposed fees for mountain bikers will be levied on top of the State Park entry fees. In addition to the daily entry fees, riders will be required to pay either a daily fee of $5 or an annual fee of $10 for residents and $20 for nonresidents. And, as previously mentioned, minors can ride for free.
Note that the trail use fee is per person, whereas the entry fee is per vehicle. For example, if a group of four friends decides to pile into a truck and road trip from Colorado to Curt Gowdy, they could all enter the park together for $12, but each person would be assessed the trail fee of either $5/day or $20 for an annual pass.
“People who pay the vehicle entrance day-use fee of $7 still have to pay for camping, fishing, etc.” said Kusiek. “It would be the same with bicycles at designated parks and trails if the bill passes.”
While mountain bikers will have to pay up, hikers and equestrians won’t be charged any additional trail use fees once they enter the park.
A “non-motorized recreational trail fees” bill that only applies to mountain bikers
The official title of the draft bill passed in August 2025 is “State parks-non-motorized recreational trail fees.” However, within the bill, there’s substantial language focusing exclusively on bicycles. A comment added to the draft bill on page two reads:
The Committee may wish to clarify that the permit requirement applies only to bicycles and not to other non-motorized users such as equestrians or hikers. If the intent is to limit the permit to bicycles, the Committee may consider a more specific title and corresponding provisions in the bill. If broader application is intended, the bill would need to be revised accordingly.
I asked Kusiek about this topic specifically. As IMBA’s environmental studies over the years have shown, mountain bikers do only slightly more trail damage than hikers and dramatically less than horses. So why, then, don’t horses have to pay to access the trails?
“Well, I mean, there’s a bit of reality here in this state — this bill wouldn’t have any chance if you asked a horse to pay to go ride in the mountains. Wouldn’t have any chance if you said, ‘Hey, you’re going to take your kid out for a walk. You got to pay,'” said Kusiek.
While Kusiek was quick to note that over 90% of the requests for new trails come from mountain bikers, the seeming inequity in the series of proposed bills has rankled mountain bikers over the years. “I hate to be negative about it, but I just can’t see it working,” Brent Skorcz told Singletracks during a 2022 interview. “Why pinpoint mountain bikers, just picking on them, when we are the ones who probably take care of the stuff better than anybody?”
“We’re not the only people using these trails. We’re not the only people causing damage to these trails,” said Rio Rose, owner of the Bike Mill in Lander in a 2022 WyoFile article. “But we are about the only people doing work on them and pushing to get them put in.”
“And so seeing mountain bikers singled out as a user group, where we have to pay to play but nobody else does, rubs me the wrong way,” Rose continued. “I don’t think anybody in the mountain biking community is opposed to paying a fee to use trails. I think everybody in the mountain biking community clearly is opposed to being singled out as a user group.”
Will the draft bill pass in 2026? Only time will tell.
“Every way you recreate [in Wyoming], you’re buying a sticker or a pass,” said Kusiek. “Most of us who fish have been fishing since we were kids in the state. I’ve never been asked for my fishing license, but I buy one every year. You know, you put it on your ATV, you put it on your boat, you put it on your canoe, you put it on your snowmobile.”
“Most states don’t have this, I understand, but most states don’t have the revenue problem that we have in the state of Wyoming for funds for building out amenities. So we had to get creative,” Kusiek continued.
Kusiek is in favor of the new bike fees, and instead of viewing them as a punitive measure, he views them as a way for mountain bikers to support the trails that they ride. “We’re looking at $10 a year for a resident, and […] the intention is [for the money] to go into trail building and trail maintenance.”
Still, it’s clear that Wyoming mountain bikers don’t like being singled out. In 2022, the effort to move the legislation forward stalled due to significant pushback from the state’s riders for exactly this reason.
But if Wyoming mountain bikers want new, sustainable, high-quality trails built, they need to be funded somehow — and this is a very straightforward way to make it happen. “We had over 600,000 visitors to Curt Gowdy, [and] they estimate 60% of those were for the trails,” said Kusiek. “You know, it’s huge numbers of people coming here to ride.”
“$10 is like two power bars, you know?” Kusiek added with a laugh.
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