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After 5 years of labor by the town and volunteer trail-builders, San Antonio’s latest park is open. It brings about three miles of brand-new trails to the North Side, with about two miles constructed by and for mountain bikers.
The 204-acre Classen-Steubing Ranch Park within the Stone Oak space is the latest of San Antonio’s pure areas to open to the general public. The park, which opened in Could, lies over delicate areas that recharge the Edwards Aquifer and contains an earthen flood management dam almost 2,000 toes lengthy.
In contrast to many parks the place hikers, runners and mountain bikers share the identical trails, Classen-Steubing has separate areas for every exercise. The town’s parks division constructed a separate trailhead and parking space close to the park’s entrance for mountain bikers, with the hiking-only trails off the principle car parking zone close to sports activities fields and a future playground.
The mountain bike trails, completed solely final week, embody about 2 miles of singletrack paths that stretch throughout the northeastern fringe of the property. My map right here is usually appropriate, however verify Trailforks for a way more detailed map.
Navigating the interwoven paths remains to be a bit difficult due to among the present ranch roads and sport trails. Observe the paths the place volunteers have minimize via the comb utilizing weed-eaters.
The mountain bike trails roughly parallel an present powerline highway that skirts the northern fringe of the property. After a brief entry path from the car parking zone, the brand new trails kind a roughly quarter-mile loop named Caracara Circuit, together with a sequence of parallel downhill tracks which are a bit rockier and extra technical, with one important rock function that makes the downhill phase a bit extra fascinating. On the backside of the hill, there’s one other roughly quarter-mile circle known as Karst Loop that’s clean sufficient in some locations to assemble slightly velocity.
These trails wouldn’t exist with out South Texas Off-Street Mountain Bikers (STORM), an all-volunteer nonprofit that has a proper trail-building settlement with the town. The paths at Classen-Steubing are STORM’s most vital new path challenge since ending the Devil’s Den network on the Leon Creek Greenway in 2020. They’ve been working at Classen-Steubing for the previous two years.
“We’ve minimize the identical trails in a number of instances, simply due to the time it’s taken — the pandemic, right-of-entry and issues like that,” Jordan mentioned. “We’ve been placing plenty of work in on the market since April.”
As with Satan’s Den, the work at Classen-Steubing was the results of a small group of devoted volunteers, Jordan mentioned. He attributed many of the path design and structure to native mountain biker John Rodriguez, with others pitching in to assist with the bodily labor.
“We normally have about 4 or 5 individuals,” Jordan mentioned of the group’s volunteer workdays. “If we get eight to 10, that’s a great day.”
STORM is continually in want of volunteers to keep up the path community it’s been steadily increasing. Test the calendar on the group’s website for upcoming workdays and different methods to become involved.
Jordan mentioned STORM plans to proceed engaged on the paths, including jumps, berms and different options to make them extra progressively difficult relying on which line riders take. They’ll additionally add indicators to make it simpler to navigate the brand new trails.
After descending to the incessantly dry mattress of Mud Creek, the paths proceed via a niche within the fence to the southern part of Stone Oak Park, the place a paved path extends 2.2 miles northward crossing below Evans Street and Stone Oak Parkway.
At Classen-Steubing, no bikes are allowed on the 2 trails off the principle paved path, nearer to the San Antonio River Authority dam. Each hiking-only trails are well-marked and simple to navigate. They make for a nice stroll, but it surely received’t take guests lengthy to totally discover them.
Ranch Loop is a 0.73-mile path off the southeastern a part of the principle paved path. The path is probably the most scenic within the park, passing first throughout a savannah with stands of giant oak bushes interrupted by fields of grasses, forbs and prickly pear.
A few quarter mile in, the path enters a extra thickly forested space, the place it varieties a loop. The bushes there present some much-needed shade throughout these sweltering summer season months. On this patch of woods, site visitors noise appears distant and it feels such as you’re a lot farther into the Texas Hill Nation than you actually are.
Prickly Pear Loop, accessible on the north aspect of the paved path, affords the same expertise, although a lot shorter at 0.32 miles. This rocky path additionally varieties a loop via a patch of extra dense woods than the Ranch Loop, with a number of open prairie patches and tons of prickly pear.
A lot has modified at Classen-Steubing since my first go to to the long run park in 2017, shortly after the town had purchased the primary 165 acres utilizing $6.3 million in aquifer safety funds. It bought the remaining 39 for $3.8 million after a voters permitted it as a part of the town’s 2017 bond package deal.
The land is initially a part of the roughly 40,000 acres of northern Bexar County initially aquifer by German immigrant Johann Hubert Classen and his youngsters, in keeping with this historical past of the household. Little by little, the land was carved up, offered and developed through the years to turn out to be what at the moment are San Antonio’s suburbs north of Loop 1604.
Not one of the new trails supply entry to the dam, inbuilt 1982 to guard downstream properties from flooding on Mud Creek. Water that backs up behind the dam is ready to infiltrate into the bottom by way of cracks and crevices within the rock and recharge the Edwards Aquifer.
I used to be among the many reporters who acquired a uncommon probability go to that underground world in 2019, when the San Antonio Water System provided a tour of a 4,700-foot tunnel, 8 toes in diameter, to make room for a pipe that might combine carrying water from the Vista Ridge pipeline into SAWS’ system. Guests to Classen-Steubing can truly look throughout Hardy Oak Boulevard to see the 2 huge water tanks at SAWS’ Agua Vista Station. These tanks mark the endpoint of Vista Ridge, a greater than 140-mile pipeline that pulls water from rural counties northeast of Austin.
Like many issues in San Antonio, water is underlying cause behind Classen-Steubing’s existence as park house. From the flood management dam on the property to the aquifer safety funding used for the acquisition, water is a continuing present that flows beneath the story on the floor.
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