Snow Kiting

Sail power should be allowed in Wilderness. Thousands of years of evolutionary human use.

Allowing sail powered craft in the Boundary Waters wilderness would fundementally alter the current visitor experience. Sail craft can carry much heavier loads.

Wheels have also been around for thousands of years. However carts and wagons aren't allowed with wilderness areas either. Whether human or animal drawn.

Does anybody know if wheelchairs are allowed in the wilderness? And what about people who have a hard time walking but can ride a bicycle? For those folks a bicycle would be kind of a wheelchair however they're most likely excluded from the Wilderness experience.

A friend of mine was joking and saying that maybe fishing reels should be excluded from the wilderness because they're mechanized.

Adaptive devices such as wheelchairs are exempted by the ADA for people with a disability. If you ride a bike within a wilderness area claiming it to be an adaptive device for a disability -- good luck fighting your ticket in court.

The Wilderness act doesn't ban "mechanical devices" rather "mechanised transport" so your friend was making a dumb joke.

For me it's absurd for the Wilderness Act to allow access for large groups of destructive horses and not allow access for bicycle Riders.

The wilderness act is a political creation. Horse use is allowed, because without the support of commercial horse packers and hunting guides the wilderness act would not have passed. In fact the act had been stuck in committee unril David Brower met with horse packers in Colorado and persuaded them that without passage of the act that their business would be wiped out within the decade by new mining a logging roads reaching areas where they guided clients. These horse packers in turn contacted their congressional representative, who happened to chair the committee that the bill was languishing in and got it moved out of committee for a floor vote.

So what about baby strollers? Are they allowed?

Nope. Wheelbarrows and hand carts are also not allowed. Interestingly travoise are permitted, even though a travoise causes a lot more erosion than a wheeled cart.

Horse and other parties are limited to set number of "heartbeats" 12 in the
alpine lakes, 18 in the Paysten, this prevents massive exscusions. Like for example the old Mountaineers "outings" and training sessions with over 100 participants.

The wilderness act is a political creation.  Horse use is allowed, because without the support of commercial horse packers and hunting guides the wilderness act would not have passed.   ...

And some of the original Wilderness actors were horsemen; I worked in the Bob Marshal Wilderness in the late '60s and it was primarily a horseback user Wilderness. Tremedous local (& limited) resentment because they couldn't use motorized dirt bikes which the proponents claimed did less damage than horses. Don't tell anyone, but we used chainsaws clearing trails before the 4th of July; afterwards we used crosscut saws and axes; we traveled on foot & horseback with mules to pack whatever we needed and to supply trail construction crews and fire lookouts.

I've rafted the Salmon and Snake Rivers, thru the Wilderness, and jet boats are permitted for the same reason you (Randy) stated--only way to get it approved. Flights into private inholdings were also allowed.

So it has been long enough to revisit the whole thing just like we revisiting voter rights, discrimination based on race & religion, environmental regulation, and all the other hard-fought battles of the mid 20th Century that sought a civil society.

FWIW if anyone has an actual interest in how the Wilderness Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act

www.wilderness.net/accessibility?print=yes

Definition - for the purposes of paragraph (1), the term wheelchair means a device designed solely for use by a mobility impaired person for locomotion, that is suitable for use in an indoor pedestrian area.

My eading of the text is that "wheelchairs" for people with a disability that requires a wheelchair for everyday use are permitted.  However land managers aren't required to make trails accessible, unlike other public facilities that are required to make improvements to remove barriers and improve access to facilities.

So I think the idea of using a bicycle to travel on wilderness trails when they are able to walk for ordinary activities, would be a tough case to make legally.