Trails at the state park are for more than just visitors on foot, something the folks at the Dallas Off-Road Bicycle Association are well aware of.
DORBA trails, designed with bikers in mind, dot the Dallas-Fort Worth Area, and two are around the area’s corner of Lake Ray Roberts.
“We’re blessed in Dallas to have a lot of good trails here including both Johnson Branch and Isle du Bois and on the south side we’ve got Ceder Hill State Park, Cleburne State Park, Dinosaur Valley State Park, and they’re all within an hour-and-a-half drive of downtown Dallas proper,” said Shawn McAfee with DFW Series Mountain Bike Racing. “Every one of those trails is very unique.”
DORBA is a volunteer-led nonprofit that builds and maintains bike trails on land owned by other entities, largely cities and state parks.
“The state park does not have the resources to go out there and maintain the 40-plus miles of trail in the Lake Ray Roberts area,” McAfee said. “For DORBA, it’s done through annual memberships for $40 a year that maintains over 250 miles through the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.”
The trails they maintain are not exclusive to DORBA members, however.
“We step in and manage the trail as far as maintenance and everything,” IDB trail steward David Starr said. “Anyone can use it though. On the typical weekend, you get at least 50 riders out there a day. During the week, being as far north as we are, you won’t get as many. On the trails that are closer in, there are hundreds of riders out there a day.”
Each of the two Ray Roberts trails work on a progressive loop system, meaning, generally, the farther out you go, the harder the ride.
“I have A, B, C, D and E loops,” Starr said. “If you just want to ride the A loop, you could go out, turn around and come back. It gets pretty difficult after that. There is some elevation and a lot of rock. The D loop is the most difficult on the trail. It’s the largest loop, too.”
The trail at Johnson Branch is similar, albeit smaller. “Someone called it the little sister to the IDB trail,” Johnson Branch trail steward Darby Stewart said. “It has an expert loop known as a rocky challenge while JB is consecutive loops with the red loop being our expert trail. It’s a more intermediate trail overall with some beginner parts connected by challenging terrain in-between.”
Both trails use a color system posted at points along the way to indicate when riders are moving into a new section and the difficulty they can expect.
“It’s just like skiing,” Starr said. “We have green, blue and black tags for each one.”
Stewart had a similar explanation for her trail. “The red loop has some climbs and challenges that a beginner would not do well with,” Stewart said. “The way the loops work is you can skip the red loop and get up on the Dogwood Canyon Trail, a yellow, and come back.”
The stewards explained they put a substantial amount of work and thought into keeping their trails up.
“Mostly what you deal with is grass and tree growth because the trail is through the woods,” Starr said. “You weed eat the edges of the trail, and of course the trees and branches grow into the trail path. We call them face slappers, so you just trim them back. You also have erosion sometimes and try to take care of that by rerouting or cut to help it run in different directions.”
Stewart expanded on the threat of erosion. “My goal is to maintain the longevity of the trail,” Stewart said. “It was originally built it 1996. The existing portions that were built well still look brand new, but if there is one that didn’t get built as well, it’s getting washed out and it comes to a point where that has to be changed either by adding more soil or rerouting it.”
Both additionally shared on the damage the Memorial Day weekend tornado did to their trails and the time it took to return them to ridable conditions.
“The tornado wreaked havoc on our trails,” Stewart said. “I had over 220 trees down on just a couple loops. We got part of the red opened Sept. 7, and it was two weeks later that we got everything open. There is still tornado damage out there though, and I’m still working on it.”
Starr explained cleanup wasn’t as easy as just going to town on the debris with chainsaws, especially considering it’s not possible to get a truck into most areas along the trail.
“It was a matter of going in with a team,” Starr said. “You have to be a certified sawyer through the park to be able to operate chainsaws, so we’re limited on who we could get out there to help. It was a group of six guys total who did most of the chainsaw work out there. We just had it back open in the first part of November. We had half the trail opened back up pretty quick, but the back side took us through to November.”
Starr spoke highly of both trails but had the most to say about IDB, which he connects to several other nearby trails during Rudolph’s Revenge, a holiday bike race he organizes each year.
“It’s got the smooth, fast gravel road on the Greenbelt into a dynamic, diverse, single-track horse trail with sand pits and technical rocky climbs and descents and then you get to the IDB trail and it’s the most technically challenging route we have,” McAfee said. “You combine those three different elements and have a really unique race where everyone has an advantage at any point in time.”
He praised the route’s difficulty, while Stewart had different praise for her trail at Johnson Branch.
“As an intermediate bike rider, it’s not too challenging but is challenging enough,” Stewart said. “I can take beginners on it, and they can do well and walk where they need to. What I really like about it is it’s kind of away. You get back to nature. At JB, even if there are people on it, you don’t see a lot of them.”
Starr offered some direction for interested bikers regarding how to get educated on the local trails and stay informed on closures.
“I have a Facebook page, Isle du Bois Trail DORBA,” Starr said. “Then there is a DORBA app. On the actual trail itself, there is another app called Trailforks. You can get all the riding conditions. You get a map and whether the trail is open or closed, also. Opening and closing also goes on the Facebook page, which is hooked up to the DORBA app.”
