Texas Trail Doctors Diary #4

February 13, 2003: Driving from Austin to Warda.

After we left the kind folks in Lajitas, we turned the Subaru towards San Angelo State Park. On the way we stopped in the little town of Iraan for a scheduled meeting with Jim Cade who is the president of the bank in town. This connection was facilitated through Ira Yates, a life member of the Texas Bicycle Coalition who owns much of the land in and around the city. During this meeting, we also met with Mayor Carl Sinclair, Phyllis Inman who is head of the economic development board, and Todd Green, a dedicated cyclist (as is the mayor!). All of these folks are very involved in the workings of the community and want to see Iraan grow and prosper. In particular this group is interested in improving opportunities for cyclists to ride in and around the city, and invited Ryan and me to come and discuss strategies with them to work toward this goal.

Initially the group was interested mainly in delineating a route for road rides utilizing the county roads encircling the city. In addition to that worthy goal, as the Trail Doctors we suggested that creating a system of off-road trails using the rugged and scenic hills surrounding the city would also help to increase the number of cyclists who come to town. They were interested in the new proposal and Phyllis said she would investigate the land access issues and get back to us, with the promise that we would be invited back to work on trails if it gets approved. Before leaving town, we got a guided tour with Mayor Carl, who was a gracious host who obviously cares very much for the city. Iraan has a lot of potential to become a cycling destination, and we look forward to working with the economic development team in the future.

On the way to San Angelo, we had a neat nature encounter when we spotted a pronghorn antelope grazing by itself in a field just off the highway. (We've been keeping track of the interesting wild animals we see during our travels, such as a huge 8-point mule deer buck, javelinas, a red fox, turkeys, and prairie dogs.) When we pulled into San Angelo State Park we got free entry and set up with a free campsite courtesy of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Many thanks go to Walt Dabney and Andy Goldbloom with TPWD for setting that up for us, which will last the entire length of our program. It was especially nice when we got upgraded to a free cabin, because it got so cold while we were there that it sleeted and even snowed briefly. During that time we saw the lowest temperature reading yet on our Subaru's thermometer: 28 degrees. Talk about a change from the desert!

We had hoped to meet with the park superintendent, Pat Bayles, while we were there, but he got called out of town for a meeting. Fortunately two of his rangers took excellent care of us, and we're grateful to Bob and Bill for giving us tours of the park and discussing the trail situation with us. The park has approximately 50 miles of mountain bike trails, most of which were designed by a small group of local cyclists and built and maintained by Ranger Bill with his free labor source: local prisoners.

The majority of the trails are nicely designed and quite fun with swoopy singletrack that just goes on forever. However there are some areas with fall line trails that have eroded badly in the couple of years since they've been built. Ryan and I scouted some of these areas on bike, then took Bill there and asked about the possibility of doing a minor "tread adjustment" to get water to sheet across the trail instead of flowing down it. Although there's not much rain in San Angelo, when it does come, it can still do damage to the trail surface, so we wanted to redesign those areas to prevent further erosion problems.

Bill said the park resource staff had given permission to work in that area, so using the clinometer we laid out a new contour trail, pin flagged the route, then cut in part of the tread to show the labor force what we wanted it to look like. Bill said the work should be completed in the next few weeks, and he'd take some after pictures for us. We also met the local bike shop owner who gave us a tour of some of his favorite trails in the park. Ronnie Taylor and his wife Mary run a nice shop called Bike Pro, and Ronnie was very interested in working with us to ensure that the San Angelo trails stay in good shape for a long time to come.

San Angelo is a bit of a drive from central Texas, but it's a great park with great facilities and a staff that truly loves the park and wants to increase its visitor numbers. Therefore we'd like to recommend that all of our cyclist friends go out there for a visit and ride the trails: you'll be glad that you did!

Next up on our itinerary: Frisco and Dallas area for our first trail clinic