Re: Wolf Den Run
Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2019 4:23 pm
Went out there Saturday morning.
The address listed for the park came up on my GPS about a mile from the actual entrance. The entrance to the park isn't currently well marked, but there's the makings of what looks to be a very prominent sign just beginning to be constructed there. The parking area is a big sloped grassy field with a couple of portable toilets. The parking field is a bit bumpy and rutted in places, no problem for a truck/suv with any kind of clearance, but maybe a little bit interesting for a regular car.
It was super-hot, so we wanted to go as early as possible. They list their hours as starting at 9am for riding. I thought we'd get there a little before 9am and be unloaded and ready to go by 9am, but the entrance was barred by a pad-locked gate until a ranger came to open it a few minutes after 9am, so no point arriving earlier.
On Saturday morning, there were 3 rangers hanging around, chatting up the riders and asking for feedback. Around 10 riders were there. We were the only ones on bikes, everybody else was on SxS.
A ranger was handing out paper forms for people to fill out with contact information and leave on their dash. I think maybe this is intended as a sort of "if your car is still here at closing time, we'll figure you're lying in a ditch somewhere and go looking for you".
The rangers had posted signs warning of bears and snakes. We saw a bear along the side of the road not far from the entrance. I imagine that with the noise of dirt bike engines, bears are going to steer well clear of any riders. Never saw any snakes, though the grass was pretty thick and high.
There's a nice map of the trails available online, and they did a good job of putting up signs on every trail intersection that labels each trail. Somehow, despite a map and those signs, I was lost almost the entire time, and despite meaning to explore, I ended up doubling back on the same trails a few times. After whining about them needing a Maprika map, when I got home I looked and found that Maprika already had one!
As for the trails themselves, they're sort of like old, rocky dirt roads overgrown with grass. Hiding underneath the grass is rocks and logs and branches and a surprising amount of mud, given that conditions overall seemed pretty dry. With the grass, it's easy to miss a log crossing the trail on a diagonal, lying in wait to squirrel your tires around. Logs crossing the trail were small enough to be easily cleared by a full-size dirt bike (though a novice might still find them intimidating), but big enough to be an issue for my small-wheeled companion. We had to lift the little bike up and over one suspended log to get past. I imagine the grass will fade with some use of the trails, a little work with a chainsaw could make the trails more kid-friendly. Overall, it's pretty beginner-friendly.
Looks like they've currently only opened up a fraction of the land they have available, that this is going to get a lot bigger in the future.
The address listed for the park came up on my GPS about a mile from the actual entrance. The entrance to the park isn't currently well marked, but there's the makings of what looks to be a very prominent sign just beginning to be constructed there. The parking area is a big sloped grassy field with a couple of portable toilets. The parking field is a bit bumpy and rutted in places, no problem for a truck/suv with any kind of clearance, but maybe a little bit interesting for a regular car.
It was super-hot, so we wanted to go as early as possible. They list their hours as starting at 9am for riding. I thought we'd get there a little before 9am and be unloaded and ready to go by 9am, but the entrance was barred by a pad-locked gate until a ranger came to open it a few minutes after 9am, so no point arriving earlier.
On Saturday morning, there were 3 rangers hanging around, chatting up the riders and asking for feedback. Around 10 riders were there. We were the only ones on bikes, everybody else was on SxS.
A ranger was handing out paper forms for people to fill out with contact information and leave on their dash. I think maybe this is intended as a sort of "if your car is still here at closing time, we'll figure you're lying in a ditch somewhere and go looking for you".
The rangers had posted signs warning of bears and snakes. We saw a bear along the side of the road not far from the entrance. I imagine that with the noise of dirt bike engines, bears are going to steer well clear of any riders. Never saw any snakes, though the grass was pretty thick and high.
There's a nice map of the trails available online, and they did a good job of putting up signs on every trail intersection that labels each trail. Somehow, despite a map and those signs, I was lost almost the entire time, and despite meaning to explore, I ended up doubling back on the same trails a few times. After whining about them needing a Maprika map, when I got home I looked and found that Maprika already had one!
As for the trails themselves, they're sort of like old, rocky dirt roads overgrown with grass. Hiding underneath the grass is rocks and logs and branches and a surprising amount of mud, given that conditions overall seemed pretty dry. With the grass, it's easy to miss a log crossing the trail on a diagonal, lying in wait to squirrel your tires around. Logs crossing the trail were small enough to be easily cleared by a full-size dirt bike (though a novice might still find them intimidating), but big enough to be an issue for my small-wheeled companion. We had to lift the little bike up and over one suspended log to get past. I imagine the grass will fade with some use of the trails, a little work with a chainsaw could make the trails more kid-friendly. Overall, it's pretty beginner-friendly.
Looks like they've currently only opened up a fraction of the land they have available, that this is going to get a lot bigger in the future.