Enterprise South Nature Park - Chattanooga, TN

[Angela]

Had the opportunity to check out two of the trails and the skills area at Enterprise South Nature Park in Chattanooga, TN this weekend. This nature park has -

• 10 miles of mountain biking trails (novice, intermediate, advanced, skill park)
  
• 5 miles of paved walking/riding trails
  
• 4 1/2 miles of hiking trails
  
• 1+ mile woodland ADA accessible trail
  
• Historical concrete magazine displays - TNT was produced for WWII, Korean War and the Vietnam War - some bunkers are open and you can go inside.
  
• Picnic areas, a great visitor center, perimeter road around the 2,800 acre property.
  

If you are enjoying a mountain biking weekend in Chattanooga - Raccoon Mountain is a great trail system but make some time to hit the 10 miles of trail at Enterprise South Nature Park while you are there. If you are in Chattanooga with your family, the Nature Park has great options for the whole family.

Historial Bunker -

The trails are directional depending on the day of the week -

Black Forest Trail - 3 miles - good for novice bikers but everyone will enjoy this flow trail -


TNT Trail - 4.5 miles - reminds me of Big Rock at FATS - identified as an intermediate level trail, some climbing (nothing drastic) and some nice rock gardens - last third of this trail going clockwise was a great downhill - was a 6 minute video so I didn't post but here is a portion of the trail -


Skills Area of Log Rhythm Trail (Advanced) - trail is 2.6 miles - you can access the skills park without riding the Log Rhythm Trail

Log -

Bridge -

[yetichick]

Nice video tour of the trails and skills area. We still have to work on a skills area in the CSRA! I know the Cleveland group raved about the Enterprise Trails, but nice to hear from someone in our own group. How was Cloudcroft? When we got back from our NW GA trip, we were thinking about dragging our RV up there sometime in the future and riding both Racoon and Enterprise South. Cloudcroft is the closet state park. If I remember right, that is where you and your family stayed for this trip. Thanks for the videos!

[Angela]

We had gone to the Georgia Aquarium early on Saturday and then on to Cloudland Canyon State Park - it is a little known park so not huge crowds - their camping sites were really, really nice ones - we did a hike down into the canyon (I think about 600 steps down) to two waterfalls - they weren't spectacular like the ones at Dupont but it was a nice hike (my sister wouldn't be up for an all mountain biking weekend - those steps up and back down let me know I don't do that activity on a regular basis - www.gastateparks.org/CloudlandCanyon

The thing that always surprises me about Chattanooga is.... I like to think about it being further north so in my mind it is cooler, but both times we've gone in the past year the temperatures mirrored ours down here in Augusta!

In June the Riverbend Festival will be going on from June 10th until the 18th (we went last year and combined it with mountain biking the Raccoon Mountain trails).

www.riverbendfestival.com/pages/lineup

We actually stayed in a cabin on top of a mountain in Rock Springs, GA

[JIMMYC]

If I may add Cloudland Canyon is a great state park, we rented two cabins there about 10 years ago ($60 ea per night) for a family vacation. We did the whole Chattanooga tourist thing, drive the "Lookout Mountian Scenic Hwy" from Cloudland to Chattanooga, you'll drive the ridge the whole way.

[kconner]

the log ride and bridge are both really cool, would LOVE to have something similar in the CSRA.....

[Angela]

Not sure if you could tell or not but the two areas where you had to navigate between the trees on the bridge you would have to do a little maneuvering unless you had narrow handlebars! They aren't finished with the skills park yet and it looked like a pump track or something similar was in progress just off the TNT trail as well.

[Catalyst]

+1 on seeing something like that around here. Cool videos Angela. Thanks for sharing!

[seenvic]

I like the log ride. The ladder bridge....if it had a purpose I'd be for it. But if one is built just to have a ladder bridge over an area that doesn't need a ladder bridge...meh.

Where would be need a ladder bridge? Say we ever wanted to get off the pavement/gravel from Deep Step to Big Rock. Well, there is a swamp that we currently ride over on the paved bridge. Old schoolers will recall there used to be a "floating bridge" that took us from the best 7/10 to the bottom of Jeremy McGrath. A ladder bridge system over this swamp....would be ideal. Expensive, but cool.

Then we could build a trail up to Big Rock. Gotta ask for permission and get it done if that was something we wanted to do.

The log ride....very cool. Wish we had more of this. It is natural looking and not made of treated lumber. I like it.

[Angela]

Another factor to consider - the skills area is not in an area that just anyone could easily access. I think that would mean less chance for people like unsupervised children going out there and getting themselves hurt on the features.

[Angela]

COPMOBA out in Colorado incorporated a skills area into their one mile Kid's Meal Loop (it is part of the Lunch Loops out at the Tabeguache trail system).

There are instructive signs along the way that are very helpful for new riders (how to ride dips, cornering, braking, passing, etc) and along the trail they frequently had two lines for many things an easier line and then one requiring a higher skill level. It looked like they also had a pump track and a jump track.

www.h3publications.com/nucleus/media/89/20101004-LLBP_VolunteerDay1_Skills%20Feature.jpg


Blanket's Creek used to have a skills area as well, you can see a few of the obstacles during one of their kid's events -

www.sorbawoodstock.org/photos/kids-ride-06/