Enterprise South Nature Park
Chattanooga, TN
We set out to explore our first and only mountain bike trail during our visit to Chattanooga Tennessee. If we weren’t heading out to Gatlinburg in the morning and had a bit more time, no doubt we’d have hit a few more. Chattanooga is a cool little industrial and railroad town where seemingly all the best geological features come together in one spot to form an amazing playground for any outdoor enthusiast. With Lookout Mountain standing tall to the south and the Tennessee River running right through town, there is no shortage of fun to be had here and there are certainly plenty of trails for biking, hiking, and trail running to work up a sweat.
Tara found the Enterprise South Nature Park online and after a little digging it seemed to have everything we look for in a trail system. This place is right next to the massive Volkswagen plant on the east side of town and is a beautifully tucked away gem in the woods with an elaborate visitor center (was closed during our visit). Should you venture out there for a ride, be sure to go into the park another half mile or so from the main entrance in order to park at the mountain bike trail parking lot vs. the pedestrian trail parking lot right at the entrance where the road turns into one way.
Tara crushing the downhill
It was humid today hovering around the low 90s when we set out around midday for our biking adventure. Enterprise has 4 trails in total here according to Trail Forks. Each are characterized as beginner trails with the exception of Atlas which is labeled as more difficult mainly due to having more technical features and steeper climbs. All of the trails here appear to be bi-directional based on days of the week. In other words, a trail will be labeled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday meaning these are the days that you can ride it in a specific direction. The same trail will flip directions on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Love this idea and it worked out in our favor since our direction of travel would be slightly easier as a result of its elevation profile as we started out on the Black Forest loop going counter clockwise. The initial climb out of the parking lot was modest at best but we quickly got a sense for how sweet these trails were going to be. Overall, the trails were impeccably maintained, and well-marked too with signage at each tenth of a mile. The ride was smooth and fast with little to no technical sections to be concerned about. There was lots of packed dirt for much of it along with sections that traversed pine straw for several miles at a time.
The route we chose on the day (Tuesday) was Black Forest to TNT back to Black Forest tallying just over 8.5 miles on the day in just under an hour and half. The climbs were not significant, and we were rewarded more than a few times with some really nice flowy downhills stretches.
Kudos to SORBA or the Southern Off Road Bicycle Association for creating and maintaining some kick ass trails. We will definitely be back to ride the many new trails that look to be on the road map in the months ahead.
