I enjoyed the glorious 4th of July with a early morning ride at Fort Ben Harrison State Park with my Monocog 29er. If you haven’t had chance to ride the new trails at the park, I would highly recommend making a trip.The Hoosier Mountain Bike Association (“HMBA”) has done a great job building the trails at Ft. Ben over the past few years. So far there is one trial, Schoen Creek, rated as Very Difficult, and a one mile Easy trail, Camp Glenn. A new trail, apparently to be called the "new" Lawrence Creek Trail is in the final stages of being completed and will be open for riding and hiking. Presently it is unofficially open for riding. It is categorized as More Difficult. Here is a trail map showing the locations of the trails within the park and other information.
I spent my time on the new trail, taking a relatively easy pace and stopped to enjoy some of the views from the top of several hills and bluffs. This is a view of the trail from somewhere around the midpoint of the ride. There is a small rock garden just beyond the two large trees at the center of the photo.
Ft. Ben is particularly well suited to riding a single speed, as the flat sections aren’t so flat that you spin out, and the hilly sections at the most require a bit out of the saddle work. I recently changed out the cranks and bottom bracket on the Monocog (the original Octalink BB was not working out) so it was due for a test ride. Everything worked well and I think the chain line issues I was having with the original crankest have been resolved. The The Strava file for this ride may be found here.
Overall a great ride, although the temperatures were already pushing into the upper 80s by the time I finished. I did encounter quite a few hikers/walkers on the trial. Most were friendly, although one guy seemed to stare daggers at me. The trails built by HMBA are usually billed as multi-use trails so hikers and trail runners are common place. However, the new trail crosses the "old" Lawrence Creek Trail, a crushed grave lhiking trail six to eight feet wide that loops through this part of the park and is very heavily used. At the trail heads for this hiking trail are signs which indicate the trail will be closed in the coming months and all traffic would be routed onto the new multi-use trail (the trail HMBA built). Questions about this arose on the HMBA online forum and the explanation was that the Department of Natural Resources wanted to shut down the Lawrence Creek Trail due to sustainability issues. Understandable that DNR does not want to continue to pay the costs of repairing a unsustainable trial. However, on Wednesday morning, the Lawrence Creek trail heads were quite busy with hikers, runners, families out for a stroll, and dog walkers.
While I expected some folks would take advantage of the new multi-use (trail runners, hardy hikers), I am a little worried about ALL of the old Lawrence Creek traffic being routed onto these trails. It is pure single-track and about 2 feet in width for most of its course. I'm not sure the multi-use trail can accommodate the capacity of usage experienced by Lawrence Creek and its hiking oriented users. I would liken it to closing down a four lane highway and routing the traffic onto a winding two lane country road. For now it seems ok, but once Lawrence Creek is shut down, and the multi-use trail officially opens, both bike and foot based traffic are going to increase. Hopefully the trail will be able to handle the traffic and all the users will be able to get along.
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