Epic Trail, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas

Big Bend Ranch State Park (BBRSP) boasts one of two International Mountain Bike Association rated “Epic Rates” in Texas. The whole loop is 54 miles but we broke it up and did 36 miles of it from camp. We’ll do the other part next week. This loop is a mixture of maintained dirt roads, extremely unmaintained rocky roads, jumbled doubletrack, and singletrack and really fits the definition of epic. Our 36 mile loop had 2700’ of climbing, some of it EXTREMELY steep. Around almost every corner we were oohing and ahhing. This was the ultimate experience with mountain after mountain, rock formations, huge canyons, big mesas, cottonwood groves, washes, and of course, El Solitario. If you read our blog post from the other day, I mentioned our ride around El Solitario but didn’t elaborate. Now I will.

El Solitario means “The Lonely One” or “The Hermit” and is the signature landscape feature of BBRSP. This is one of Earth’s largest and most symmetrical geological features as observed from space. About 36 million years ago molten rock from deep in the Earth pushed upwards and displaced thousands of feet of overlying rock. This created a blister or dome shaped bulge on Earth’s surface. Over millions of years, erosion collapsed the dome’s older rocks. Subsequent volcanic activity further removed overlying rock, collapsed some of the lava chamber and formed a small caldera in the center. The collapsed and eroded structural dome is what we see today. And see it we did. The entire southwest quadrant has steeply inclined vertical V-shaped rocks called Flat Irons and were my favorite part of El Solitario. It’s 10 miles across!

The trails are a blast on this loop. The riding is quite challenging in sections and you are constantly rewarded. We passed by El Solitario and continued up Fresno Canyon which is drop dead gorgeous. It’s extremely remote and we didn’t see anyone other than another guy on a bike going the opposite direction. We stopped to see the Madrid House and the Crawford Smith Ranch. The Madrid House structure was built in 1887. Father Joseph Hoban operated a school for boys before it was occupied by Ceferino Madrid in 1904. I’m not sure why the house is named for the second owner and not the first, poor Father Hoban. The Crawford Smith Ranch up the canyon was occupied from 1915-1946. The Crawfords planted citrus groves, grape and fig trees, and raised angora goats. They continued ranching operations and even delved into cinnabar mining for mercury production but droughts, the Great Depression and the declining health of the rangeland caused an end to ranches in the areas by mid-20^th century. We admired the beauty of the canyon as we continued on singletrack along the mountain walls.

The trail dumped us onto Fresno Canyon “road”. It’s a very rough 4X4 road that is ridiculously steep. Ridiculous. In our easiest gears we barely inched up the steep grade and then climbed back up to the main road to ride all the way back to camp. Sitting in our chairs, kicked back and relaxing in the middle of nowhere we recounted tales of the Epic Day. This is definitely a special place and as hard and beautiful as this ride is, we’ll always remember it.