May 15: driving to Lubbock.

May has been another busy month for the Trail Docs!

On Monday May 5 we drove the trusty Subaru up to Tyler to spend a week working at the state park.  Incidentally, we’ve already hit the halfway mark on our allotted mileage; that means we’ve put about 10,000 miles on the car in a little over 4½ months.  We get around!

We met and worked with a lot of wonderful folks in Tyler.  Roger Singleton is a member of the Tyler Bicycle Club who has been very active in doing trail work in the park for several years.  He made sure we were well taken care of while we were in town, and invited us to give a brief presentation to the bike club that had its monthly meeting that week.  We also spent a few nights at the lovely home of Doug and Patrice Vermillion and their kids—thanks for the spare room folks!!

Andy Goldbloom was in town for a couple days and we got to meet with him and the park staff to develop a plan to address some erosion problems in the trail system.  Tyler is a beautiful park with about 10 miles of single track through pine forests, and there is also a lake on site and lots of nice facilities to keep outdoor enthusiasts busy.  Some of the trails are in need of re-routing due to their excessive steepness and erosion problems, which have exposed the root systems of trees next to the trail.  Before getting to work we had a productive meeting with the park superintendent Bill Smart and the natural and cultural resources specialists Jeff Sparks and Todd McMakin.  Jeff loaned us his GPS unit and we got to map Loop A of the system as well as plan and flag some re-routes. We even got the park super and one of his rangers out there to dig one of the re-routes with us!  There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we hope to get back out there about once every quarter or so.

After our nice visit in Tyler we headed back to Warda for a little R&R and to catch up on some appointments, chores, etc.  Then we pointed the Subie back north and were on our way to Lubbock.  We met with various local cycling people over the week we were in Lubbock.  Some of the Lubbock Bike Club members have been maintaining the inner city parks while others have been focusing on the Buffalo Springs Lakes area.  Both have a surprising amount of elevation change considering the surrounding areas. 

We also met with some rogue trail builders in an effort to convince them of a need to legitimize what they are doing.  It seems that a while back they we’re given permission by someone at the city to use an abandoned area of city property, but no one can come up with who or what the agreement specifics are.  We offered our assistance as mediators if needed, and are looking forward to helping in any way we can.

Most of the West Texas mountain bikers were on hand the 17^th for the Children's Advocacy Center 600 Minute Mountain Bike Race.  The course was hot and dusty, but everyone persevered to raise over $4,000 for the kids.  The local Subaru dealership was a sponsor of the race, so our Baja was set up with an Outback and a WRX.  We got a lot of attention from participants.

Sunday night our hosts, Jurgen Heise and Judy Austin, led us to an informal gathering at a local pub to meet some of the road riders we had yet to encounter.  We enjoyed our stay in Lubbock and look forward to going back for our second trail school on June 7^-8.

Monday morning we left and made a windy trip north to Canyon, TX and Palo Duro Canyon.  For those of you who haven’t been to the area, the canyon is beautiful and well worth the drive.  The area inside looks like Utah, with a little more green and the riding has been characterized by IMBA as some of the best in Texas.  Dr. Paul Nolan led us on a tour of his usual 22-mile loop in the park, and we actually rode some trail he had never been on as well.  It appears there are over 30 miles of accessible single track in the park, with more being developed by rangers and volunteers.

Mike Lloyd, resource manager for the park, was our guide while we were on location and he showed us an old CCC trail that has recently been rediscovered.  The plan is to reclaim the trail and use it as a historic and natural interpretive trail.  While the trail will be for hiking only, it will give the users an interesting insight into what building the park in the 1930’s must have been like, while rewarding them with some breathtaking views.

We found most of the trails in the park to be very good with some minor tune ups needed here and there.  Most of the trail work is done by a hardy few, as we have found in most parks, and they often don’t have time to get to all of the projects they would like.

We are currently back in Bell County, working with the city of Nolanville on Texas’ first ever Mountain Bike Skills Trail, which will be an interpretive learning tool for riders of all abilities, and may one day expand into a stunt park as well.

Trail Tip: We are in the process of trying to standardize some trail markings in Texas.  We travel to a lot of places that use color to mark trail, either as the trail name, or as a difficulty rating.  Most often we see Green being easy, Red being hard.  We are trying to get the managers of the trails away from using just a color code for markings, and incorporating either a shape or trail name into the mix.  Ryan is colorblind, so every time we come up to a split on a red/green marked trail, he has no idea which way to go.