Oak Mountain (Birmingham, AL)

Yesterday I drove to Oak Mountain State Park to ride. I bought a trail map at the park office and found that there was only one loop for mountain bikes. As I made my way to the trailhead I came upon a sign for a BMX track, so I turned in. I decided to run a couple of laps on the track before heading to the trailhead.

Once at my destination I went over the loop on the map. It seemed like the trail followed a couple of ridgelines and ran roughly 17 miles. It all began with a long climb up a fireroad, but once at the top of the climb it seemed like the singletrack would never start. I decided to come up with another route since it's the offseason and I'd probably not encounter another person if I simply took a few of the hiking trails. After I chose my route and turned off the fireroad the ride improved drastically. The singletrack followed an adjacent ridgeline and was much more exciting than the slow and straight lines of the doubletrack before. The leaves on the ground were thick and made it a challenge to keep traction. Some areas had steep rockgardens and others offered blazingly fast downhills.

At the base of the mountain I met the original mountain bike fireroad and followed it towards the parking area. Luckily it branched off into singletrack and made the mostly flat ride back much more exciting. It passed near the BMX track and I had to take one more lap. Soon after that the trail came out to the parking area. As I packed up I noticed that my camera wasn't in its pouch, so I decided to come back the next day (today) to look for it. I had no luck finding it, but did get to ride the trails again. I replaced my camera after leaving today, so future posts will not be without photos.