Pinnacle Mountain State Park Updates

While at Devil's Den State Park today, I ran into Joe Jacobs of Arkansas Outside and he told me about some newish mountain biking trails at Pinnacle Mountain State Park.  I hope to visit them soon and will post maps here when I do, but the map below shows where the trailheads are.  The Rabbit Ridge Trail is a fairly short and easy trail for beginners, while I'm told the Jack Fork Trail is more technical and much longer at ~7 miles.  Both are located along Pinnacle Mountain State Park Rd. on the way to the Visitors Center.  The Quarry Trail and the Ouachita Trail have trailheads nearby.  A detailed map of the trails can be viewed here.

Devil's Den Updates

Today I was out at Devil's Den State Park as part of a IMBA Trail Building Course.  After learning some good trail design/building tips, we got in some real world practice rerouting the trail from the Visitors Center down to Devils Den Trail near the creek.  Now that the new section of trail is complete, get out there and enjoy it and the rest of the great trails in the park!  If you want to learn some trail building tips check out my Building Trails page or IMBA's online resources and books.

Two Rivers Park Updates

On my quick trip to Little Rock this weekend, I visited Two Rivers Park which, with the recent completion of the new bridge, has become very, very, popular.  If you don't know, Two Rivers Park is a large city/county park in West Little Rock bounded by the Arkansas River and the Little Maumelle.  In addition to being a great place to paddle, hike, bike, bird, and ride horses, the park also has a massive community garden where you can rent plots.

The park has miles of paved and unpaved trails that travel through a variety of habitats.  The Garden of Trees in the southern half of the park will one day be a formally landscaped setting where "rooms" of different tree species turn different colors in the fall.  I helped plant a lot of the trees out there many years ago, and know first-hand that the huge deer population in the park is severely stunting the growth of the trees in this garden.

The two updates I have to share on the park are:
1)  Be mindful of locking your car and what you leave in your vehicles when parking at the Two Rivers Bridge or the Big Dam Bridge.  Break-ins are more common at those parking areas than they should be.
2)  There is a new bike lane/bike trail from Two Rivers to Maumelle Park.  I believe the idea is for this to one day continue all the way to Pinnacle Mountain State Park.  The bike lane runs along County Farm Rd. from the park entrance to Pinnacle Valley Rd.  From there, there are 5-6' wide asphalt paths along both sides of Pinnacle Valley Rd. all the way to Maumelle Park.  As I wrote earlier, these are much safer than bike lanes.

Detailed maps and descriptions of Two Rivers Park, Pinnacle Mountain State Park, the Little Maumelle River, and lots of other great places in Central Arkansas can be found in Trails of Central Arkansas.

Lake Fayetteville Nature Trail and Paved Loop News

Yesterday, I went to Lake Fayetteville again and it turned out to be a great day for birding and seeing some interesting aquatic life.  I walked most of the nature trail around the lake and while I enjoyed all of it, I did appreciate some parts much more than others.  The map below shows the trails around the lake.  Blue represents paved trails and roads, green represents my favorite sections of unpaved trail, and orange represents my least favorite.  Though all the dirt trails are referred to as part of a nature trail, the ones around the outside edge of the park on the north side are really more for mountain biking and running, as they go through less scenic areas often by roads.  The trails shown in green felt more like a true nature trail, with great views of the lake, lots of wildlife, plenty of solitude and no bikes whizzing by.

Lake Wilson - Joe Clark Trail

Today I drove out to Lake Wilson Park to explore the Joe Clark Trail and the adventure began before I got to the lake since Wilson Hollow Rd. was closed for repairs.  After checking the map, I decided to take an alternate route to the park via Schaeffer Rd., which turned out to be a gravel road that had seen better days.

According to Access Fayetteville, there are 3.1 miles of trail in the park, but the route I took, the outer loop, is about half that.  A full map can be found here.  I hope to visit again in the spring and check out the other routes.  My favorite part of the trail was the interesting rock outcropping near the southeastern corner of the trail.  The worst part of the trail were the numerous dump sites near the northeast corner of the lake.

Updated 10/8/13 - The map below now shows all the trails.