A new section of the Continential Divide Trail south of Helena is not only breaking ground through the mountains high above Basin, but showcases a groundbreaking approach to cooperation among various user groups to reach agreement on how people and animals can share Montana's wilderness experience.

Most of a new two-mile segment of the Continental Divide Trail was constructed in the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest last weekend, after months of negotiations and planning by members of nine separate user groups plus federal agencies.

The groups came from several points of view: the Great Divide Cycling Team and Helena Bicycle Club representing mountain biking interests; the Helena Trail Riders and Back Country Horsemen of Montana from the equestrian side of the equation; and preservation groups like the Prickly Pear Land Trust and Montana Wilderness Association.

The result, after more trail work next year, will be a new 7.5-mile segment of the Divide Trail, which stretches from Mexico to Canada along the spine of the continent. It will also create a 14.5-mile loop that has mountain bikers salivating.

Some say it's practically impossible to get various user groups to cooperate on anything. Mountain bikers wreck trails by making deep ruts that increase erosion, critics claim, while others note that horses leave their own organic evidence of passage and get spooked or startled too easily. And the wilderness and conservation groups just want to shut everyone out of the woods altogether.

But representatives from all corners worked together to outline the route for the new trail, then labored side by side to get construction under way.

"The commonality we found through dialogue was a common interest in quiet mountain trails and wildlands conservation along the Continental Divide," said John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association. "As far as I know it's the first time it's ever occured, in Montana or elsewhere. The trail is smack in the middle of our agreement and interests, and one of the things we came up with to reach common ground."

Over the weekend, mountain bikers did a lot of the heavy work on the trail, while the equestrian groups set up a large camp and kept everyone well-fed. All told, more than 50 volunteers contributed.

"It was tremendously successful. I was completely psyched at how things turned out," said Eric Grove, owner of Great Divide Cyclery of Helena. "This was the culmination of a lot of hard work of trying to get people to agree on an approach for that area."

Grove said the two days of trail work featured wilderness advocates and moutain bike riders "working back to back, and those conversations were really important. Those folks are all good folks, and they agree more than disagree."

Dennis Milburn of the Last Chance Backcountry Horsemen of Montana said that determining a route for the trail in the first place meant cooperation among interest groups. The original segment of the Continental Divide Trail passes through a portion of the Helena National Forest that's proposed to become a wilderness area and thus off limits to mountain bikes.

The new route, though, skirts the proposed wilderness -- in some areas serving as the wilderness boundary -- and will be accessible by all groups.

He said bringing members of several interest groups together for the weekend helped foster understanding.

"You get together in a different context and you can build personal relationships," he said. "It's not just the leaders talking one-on-one."

The weekend's trail-building exercise was overseen by a pair of experts from the International Mountain Bicycling Association. Jason Wells and Anna Laxague travel the country, stopping each week in a different place to conduct trail-building workshops, ride with locals and promote safe and sustainable mountain biking practices.

Both said the cooperation among multiple interest groups makes the local project special.

"It's nice that the mountain bikers, the backcountry horsemen and the wilderness associations are all working together," Wells said. "In some parts of the country they don't always cooperate, and here they're opening doors. Hopefully it will translate to the rest of the country."

Reporter John Harrington: john.harrington@helenair.com or 447-4080