Yes.  It would have been awesome to see the FS try to close the 311.  Losing Brakeline Hill would have been a bummer.  We could have fought to regain trail mileage elsewhere in the park.  Maybe a certain bootleg trail some speak of could have been rendered legal in trade for the now road-like 311, much the way Elbe gained the once bootleg Sunrise trail.

As far as who or what wheeled Reiter I can only vouch for what I saw in the last two or three years I knew the place before it closed.  Once I had discovered Reiter I was sold.  Reiter was my #1 place for the two years leading up the the first closures.  I have no idea what happened in the decades before.

When the announcement was made about the closure of Izzy, BYS, SOL, etc, I took the rest of the week off and camped/wheeled for five days.  From that weekend on I missed only two weekends until it closed entirely!   We're talking six weekends in a row as an average here.  I worked the place hard and I made ALOT of friends out there during that time.  ALOT of friends who's opinions differed greatly from those of the internet. 

Sure, there were the occasional groups of "Evans style" Jeeps.  Most of the time they were under the powerlines, in the tree maze area or running Sac Up.  I was usually, um, elsewhere with like minded wheelers.

I made almost every RTW work party before it closed.  I still go to them when I can and have walked most of the trails on these maps in question.   Old Reiter by nature offers the kind of terrain a modern off road vehicle can be operated properly on.  Reiter has so much of what you cannot find in any other ORV area in Washington.  That's all there is to it.  I DO NOT see the geology in place on any of the trails I have hiked.  Not near enough naturally exposed rock.

When Reiter was closed wheelers from the moderately advanced to the extreme lost everything.  We were told we would have a park of at least similar caliber opened up in a year or two.  That has not happened.  Here we are now replacing the Out Mall with Evans like trails.  Yes, we can haul big rocks in but we should not have to.  Nature provided us with everything we needed. 

If we lose a world class ORV area to gain another Evans we have lost.   That's all I'm getting at.