The problem arrives at the campsite office, like a plot twist nobody saw coming. You’ve pedaled three hundred miles across the Catskills, your panniers heavy with gear accumulated over six days on backroads. Your group, six riders, is told politely but firmly: your group of 6 needs to be in just two tents.

This is where 718 Outdoors (previously known as 718 Cyclery) runs headfirst into the wall. They have spent nearly two decades pioneering self-supported bikepacking routes throughout New York State. They run everything from thirty-mile micro-tours launching from Williamsburg to epic eight-day loops through the Adirondacks. But the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation maintains a stubborn arithmetic from a different era: 6 individuals, 2 vehicles (with no limitation on truck size), and 2 tents at each campsite.

Right now 718 is advocating for ruling that allows the kind of low-footprint travel that cyclists embody. Six one-person tents occupy less ground area than two expedition-sized four-season domes, let alone the SUVs they drove in on. They generate less waste and much less noise. And yet, cyclists face administrative friction whenever they try to practice exactly the kind of sustainable recreation State Park rhetoric claims to encourage.

Our Eastern Queens Greenway group knows that urban greenways feed regional trails. Regional trails demand places to rest. Those places shouldn’t just operate on rules calibrated for a world where most visitors drive rather than pedal. Build the infrastructure connecting city streets to mountain passes, then enforce policies that effectively penalize the mode of transport the entire network assumes? There’s a dissonance humming beneath the surface. With rising oil prices and the new Empire State Trail, now is the time to encourage bike-camping, not hinder it.

Please take a second to sign 718’s petition. Even if you aren’t a bike-back packer, we all benefit from having fewer cars driving to campsites.

And if you want to do a bikepacking tour, with new friends or on your own, check out everything that 718 has to offer to make that easier.

Until the rules are updated, upstate nights end with whispered negotiations between outfitters and park rangers. Hopefully the ranger will do what is right and permissions get granted anyway. Often, riders simply accept limitations carved in stone. Either way, the message lands clear: progressives build greenways faster than bureaucracies update manuals. Red tape shouldn’t separate us from the great outdoors; lets put our voices together and get some better rules for bike-camping.