Does anyone here ever ride the Redbird Crest / Elisha Creek / Gilbert Creek trail system in Daniel Boone National Forest's Red Bird Ranger District in the southeastern reaches of Kentucky?
This massive, desolate, and remote National Forest OHV / Wildlife Management Area area very quickly became our favorite place to ride. Hardly any trail traffic, absolutely beautiful forest, massive hills & steep rugged terrain, with a good mix of fast-flowing trails and challenging steep rocky technical sections. This is about as good of a remote national forest wilderness type trail riding experience as you will find in the Eastern USA, I highly recommend it .
Although as the Forest Service website says, beginners must absolutely be accompanied by experienced riders, due to the steep challenging and technical nature of the terrain. Much of these trails are not terribly beginner friendly, although a lot of sections are (6A & 7A are probably the easiest, perhaps 7 now that they've finally done some tree clearing maintenance after 3 years).
Here's a photo of yours truly, last July 4th, 2022, after running an unmarked trail off of trail 4 near Sugar Creek Trailhead, that takes you to the top of Lucindas Lookout Tower Rd where there are a few really nice graveled campsites 1.6 miles ride from the Sugar Creek Trailhead / restrooms.
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This point is a 900 ft elevation climb above the creeks at the base of these hills directly below (hence why it was the former location of a fire tower). The terrain regularly at Redbird Crest typically climbs anywhere from the creeks up 300ft, 400ft, to upwards of 900 ft between the creeks up to the peaks (lower elevations up to the higher points on the ridges) .
Here's a dreamy picture of some of the official single track riding to be had:
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This is the favorite roadside camp spot on Sugar Creek Rd at what the locals call Old Woman's Rock, looking from fire pit towards the road:
same spot but looking from the tent/road side back towards the forest where there's a small creek behind the campsite:
I've found that most videos online on YouTube etc don't do these trails justice whatsoever, so I tried to take a few photos documenting what the video is don't show at all, a lot of rocky, steep, rugged, and beautiful terrain.
Here's a KDX200 video (not mine) from January 2nd 2023 (yes, it's rideable most of the winter as it's far enough South & not high enough elevation to get heavy snow). The rider is starting from upper Sugar Creek Rd onto Redbird Crest #801 trail section 4, and onto some unofficial singletracks, down to the lower section of Sugar Creek Rd at Peter's Branch Rd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CvIFYy93U
So many of the videos on YouTube just show a lot of faster easier sections, but I swear there are TONS of steep rocky technical sections here on the official trails, all over the place... I think a lot of video creators just post only the sections where the had no difficulty
Trail 1, not far from the gravel access road entry into the forest:
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Trail section 1 climbs nonstop, sidehilling up a steep, gorgeous, and rugged ravine nearly 600 feet of elevation all in one shot over what seems like an eternity (8/10ths of a mile)...
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Trail 6B right off of trail section 6:
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There's free camping at 2 of the 3 trailheads (Bear Creek Trailhead is not advisable for camping, but absolutely has some of the best trails around right out of the gate) and a few dispersed roadside sites throughout. There's also an RV / ATV Campground down US421 a short drive, connected through a maze of logging roads adjacent beyond the National Forest that eventually take you to the edge of the forest boundary where you can pick up Trail 6B.
There's also 6 RV hookup campsites with indoor running water restrooms (& showers?) in front of the Stinnett Community Center just down the road from an intersection of Trail 7 to the North end Trail 8/9 to the South.
Last edited by Chuck78 on 02:47 pm Jul 08 2023, edited 7 times in total.
Trail Section 11, an absolutely epic and very long ridge running section with some intense climbs up and down, at the well known and easily recognized powerline clearcut vista:
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Here's a video from 6 months ago (not mine, one day I'll get an action sports video camera...) that highlights a really nice ridge running stretch of trail 11:
Note - as with most videos of Redbird on YouTube, this looks all fairly easy, but to run this section from the Oakley Cave Branch Cemetery down to Bear Creek Trailhead, requires fair bit of technical skill and finesse as there are some seriously steep sections and numerous intense rock gardens. The Hard Enduro Appalachia YouTube channel guy's Cincinnati area crew that we met at Redbird called that area the best trails in the whole forest...
This place has some amazing a fairly rugged trails to offer that we've found to be some of the best kept secrets in the Eastern USA for intermediate enduro riding, with some pretty challenging rocky climbs and singletracks as well. There's well over 150 miles of riding to be done here in this very remote National Forest area, with a 69 mile outer loop currently, making up the 22 trail sections of the Redbird Crest Trail #801 outer loop. Sections 14-15 are road connectors currently, (Sand Hill Rd area), but they will be re-routing the trail 801 loop route off the roads in the near future with primarily singletrack sections, and a few miles on old oil/gas access roads, from the end of trail 13 to midway into singletrack trail 16, the beginning/end of the official singletrack trails.
Their proposed reroute sections end up into the middle or northern portions of trail section 16, totalling 18 miles of new trails. The South portions of 16 will cut out of the loop and will perhaps be renamed 16B or just abandoned.
There's 30 more miles worth of official trail riding on trail sections 5A, 6A, 6B, and 7A which intersect the 69 mile Trail 801 outer loop at trail sections 4/5 junction and trail 6, as well as Peters Branch Rd (4wd road that's mostly just another nice dirt/rocky trail aside from a mile of gravel up to Peters Branch Cemetery), Gilbert Creek Rd or Gilberts Creek Rd depending on which map you look at, and Big Creek Rd (another 4wd road that's just another nice trail to run basically).
The 69+ mile outer loop of trail sections 1-22 is referred to as Redbird Crest Trail #801.
The inner trail areas on the Eastern side of the Redbird Crest Trails are officially referred to as Gilbert Creek/Elisha Loop Trail #802 (Trail Sections 5A & 7A) and Left Fork of Elisha Creek Trail #803 (Trail section 6A), & Daniel Boone Trail Connector #804 (trail section 6B) that ends at the National Forest boundary and has SxS/logging trails continuing onto the Boone Forest Lands Wildlife Management Area (very logged out) to the campground formerly known as the Willie Begley Memorial RV Park, now reopened under new ownership in the past 9 months.
Section 12 or 11?:
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Sections 6A and 7A are the only somewhat beginner-friendly trails there, with 1,2,3,4, and 5B being a lot of beginner friendly segments, but also mixed in with several areas of rocky steep challenging climbs. Trail section 7 now should be fairly beginner friendly, as I believe they've finally cleared it of many continual tree blockages (DOZENS & DOZENS) that had plagued it for nearly 3 years after numerous severe storms with heavy winds). It's a sidehill trail cut in just downwind from a north-south running tall ridge with a lot of big old trees on some very steep terrain, and suffers a lot of big old tree blow-downs. I believe they are going to eventually re-route that whole trail off of trail 7A, on the other side of the ridge it runs below now, to avoid the blow downs. They ran a mini dozer through there to move some of the big tree trunks out, so it should be easier now since the work in progress when we were there in mid March 2023.
Trail Section 11 rock gardens:
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I wouldn't recommend camping at the Bear Creek Trailhead on the south end (neither do the Rangers, and don't leave anything out and unlocked down there either), but WOW, some of the best hard enduro technical rocky steep trails are accessed off of the Bear Creek Trailhead. heading across the road on 12>11>10>9 will take you to some intensely steep climbs with several rock garden sections, and some amazing and easier ridge running sections up high. Not for the meak, on our 3 day trip, the first 45 minutes of riding for us in 2023 were making it up the first mile of trail, and it took many tries for my buddy to even get 1/4 mile into this section due to the steepness and technical nature immediately out of the trailhead going north trail 12>11... I got to ride that KDX200 many times up the hardest stuff that day, as well as riding the '07 KTM 200 XC-W... My KDX220R was the best suited tool for this terrain by far, especially the way I've got it set up.
There's also free camping, and not even really any mosquitoes, although you should treat your clothes and boots with Permethrin and use DEET or Picaridin to keep the chiggers off of you especially if camping in the forest at some roadside dispersed sites or at the trailheads.
There's a recently reopened RV campground (formerly Willie Begley Memorial RV Park) adjacent to the forest directly on US421 that has logging road SxS trails that lead to Redbird Crest/Elisha Creek trail section 6B, as well as 6 RV hookup sites in front of the Stinnett Area Community Center with just a short ride down a paved road and then a gravel>dirt road to the middle of trail section 6. Both of those places have showers and indoor restrooms, FYI!
Amazing rugged terrain with elevation reliefs upwards of 900ft from the creek beds to the tops of the ridges, which for all intents and purposes, a lot of people would call mountains.
Last edited by Chuck78 on 04:12 pm Oct 18 2025, edited 6 times in total.
There's also a massive amount of old abandoned road grades as well as oil/gas well access roads and a couple dozen unmaintained forest service roads and county/township dirt roads in the area that aren't any different than a lot of the official 2-track trails, as well as tons of unofficial single.
old road grade with a singletrack path to some more traditional single:
single:
(not my vid)
Yours truly with my tough, lovely, and talented lady, at a pretty well hidden campsite just across a creek from Sugar Creek Rd, only 40 feet or less from the road but easy to drive past. Parking roadside, Jeep or small 4x4 pickup access and bike access only at the campsite, but lots of parking roadside in the grassy graveled area:
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This hidden but almost roadside campsite is located at GPS coordinates 37.12322, -083.50260 - but...DO NOT try to follow Google Maps GPS there from the west! The maintained gravel road continues North from this campsite along the creek for a while, but Google Maps shows it following a dirt access road from the graveled road at the campsite off to the west/southwest... you can follow the Google Maps directions off of US421 to the Sugar Creek Trailhead and then there to this GPS above 37.12322, -083.50260 and it will get you there. 100 feet down the other road past an oil well tank, what Google displays as Sugar Creek Rd (which it is not past here) turns to rugged dirt 2-track.
I'm planning another Redbird Crest Kentucky / Daniel Boone National Forest trip mid-September, may head down mid August for a scouting run to see how the trail maintenance has been this year in terms of downed trees causing blockages etc. before I take some first-timers out there.
Also nearby the Redbird Crest Trail (1 hour north), I've gotten some feedback that the OHV-legal portion of the Sheltowee Trace Trail between S-Tree Campground on the south end and Turkey Foot Campground on the North end (which I've been very curious about for some time) is a very highly regarded section of trail, although this has some road connector sections, so technically a street plated bike is required. Also, the Renfro OHV Loop starts and ends at the S-Tree Campground. From the glowing positive responses I've gotten from a couple of riders about the Sheltowee Trace Trail OHV segment, it sounds like these guys REALLY LIKE that stretch of trail... So that's a pretty positive thing.
In addition to that, if you look up the "2019 Loose Nut Dual Sport" or the annual Renfro Valley Dual Sport on ADV Rider, you'll find more local routes listed as the hard/difficult sections there in the same vicinity. This area we may ride the Sunday and Monday of Labor Day Weekend.
I'm not sure what happened the the US Forest Service's website (funding cuts most likely), but since overhauling their website this spring of 2025, virtually all useful content regarding the Redbird Crest trails, OHV riding, and so much more is lost, and their website only directs you to the 3 different Redbird Crest trailhead info pages, which basically don't have any info other than GPS coordinates of the trailhead itself.
I cannot find the map downloads anywhere, and had to dig through my archives to find the newest trail map brochure pdf file, fseprd1149631.pdf, which seems to have disappeared entirely from the internet - including direct linking from the forest service website! I think they lost too much staffing and budget to continue overhauling their website as planned? As well as losing web server space?
Update: it appears the website has been somewhat rewritten by AI so it seems to give the impression of. The map I was having difficulty finding is still on the USDA USFS servers, but was just a bit difficult to locate until this AI rewriting of the website, where it is linked now with this:
I figured I'd write up a fairly extensive trail report with a trail by trail breakdown, on the Redbird Crest / Elisha Creek OHV trail system, after a few recent inquiries from riders seeing my posts recently across various platforms and wanting to get more information on riding and camping at Redbird Crest, as they noted there being very little info on the internet about these trails in comparison to other big trail areas of similar magnitude.
From the main Peabody Trailhead by the Redbird Ranger Station off of Rt 66 just south of the junction of US-421, you'll ride a gravel access road for close to a mile before it is gated off (private property access gate) and turn left onto Redbird Crest Trail #801 "section #1" trail. Then you cross a (slippery-when-wet!) little wooden bridge across a seasonal creek, and proceed to climb up about 650 ft elevation in just under 1 mile of trail going straight up the hillside following a steep and beautiful ravine on the left side, all being 64" wide sidehill trail with steep uphill slopes to the right hand side as soon as you start the climb, but mellowing out near the top when you get into the bigger rock sections, although the actual slope of the trail doesn't change much and is still a moderate climb almost the entire way with a few leveled out stretches.
Trail #1 can turn into a pretty big rock garden depending on rainfall vs recent maintenance, but it gets groomed out roughly once annually. Currently it's mostly just real mild rock garden, but there is one pretty tough spot near the top where it turns into the medium difficulty rock garden, and the only easy line is the very far left edge of the trail. Others in my group seem to think it was harder than previously, I assume they are talking about near the top, but I felt that there was really only one rather challenging spot.
When you get to the top of Trail #1 from Peabody, the trail tees into a dirt 2-track (Lawson Cemetery Rd?) on the left, but you'll hang a right turn onto the portion of it that's now Trail 2, formerly a stretch of road grade continuing from what is on the maps as Lawson Cemetery Rd. Coming the opposite direction, heading from the Sugar Creek Trailhead area on Trail Section #2, it's easy to blow past this intersection as the Western portions of Trail 2 are quite easy/fast, however, it is marked. You'll not see any further orange diamond trail markers after that if you were heading towards Peabody and miss this sharp left downhill turn on to trail #1, and the trail will get generally easier if you went the wrong way.
Unlike the long rocky climb of Trail #1, Trail #2 starts out as a mild ATV / side by side dirt road for a little while, with some typical big mud holes for that type of trail, and eventually it turns into nice 2-track. At one point you will cross a graveled road right by some gas pipeline type transmission lines coming up out of the ground, that is called Bear Branch Rd I believe. It appears to just go to a section of private property in the forest, and may or may not connect out to US 421.
From then & out, most of the official trails are really all pretty nice through the end of Trail 7, with Trails 5 and 6 virtually being single track goat trails that are impassible for even the width of a 50" ATV. They're GREAT on bikes.
There are some pretty decent rock gardens mixed into this stretch and some nice smooth bedrock chute type hills on trail 2 and 4.
Trail Section 3 is just a real short road connector that did have a short trail loop on the other side of the road that was nothing special at all, and then ran along/below the side of the road, which you can see now is completely blocked by limbs and debris because no one rides that - they just hit the gravel for a short jaunt. When you get to the gravel road (Sugar Creek Rd) coming from Peabody/Trail 1, there's a shortcut that just dumps you out straight onto the gravel, or you can just hang a left on the trail 30 ft prior to that, cut into the hillside there, and ride up above the road for a short bit until it dumps you out into grass and gravel within a few hundred feet or less. Most people just ride the road for a short bit until you get to the frog pond, and hang 90° turn into the forest where there's a picnic table & fire pit, and now, that's mandatory as the short road bypass trails are impassible.
Trail Section #4 starts as you cut back into the woods North across the road from the ridgetop frog pond, where there's a picnic table and firepit at the trail entrance. This a nice flowing stretch with some good moderate hill climbs and rock gardens pretty similar to the latter half of 2. One rock garden in particular can be pretty challenging depending on how long it's been since they ran a dozer through it to smooth it out, vs how much in the way of heavy rains have washed them out.
When you're almost to the Sugar Creek trailhead on section 4, you'll come to a junction of another trail that crosses it, with no markings whatsoever. Eastbound, a right turn (or downhill) takes you down to Sugar Creek Rd after just a couple minutes of riding. An Eastbound left turn (to Northbound / starting to head uphill) takes you up to Lucinda Lookout Tower Rd to some free primitive mostly graveled campsites with 2 picnic tables and 2 firepits, and then up a steep switchback, up to the cell tower and scenic vista, as well as a 2 additional and less frequented campsites.
If you go on the loop road just below the cell tower instead of doing the last 40 ft straight up to the knob, there's a real nice campsite on the back there for tent camping or 1 small-medium rig, but it can be pretty darn tough to pull a trailer up the gravel road that you would have just come up, to get much past the first/lower campsites, and this upper campsite is a lot smaller, but is up on a ridge that runs off of the knob out to a bunch of rock out crops on private property. Better for tent camping, not so friendly to big rig camping.
Trail 5 starts around the Sugar Creek Trailhead area. There's a nice scenic view here just above the Sugar Creek Trailhead a few minutes, prior to the 5A intersection, at a nice rock outcrop step up on the trail, but nothing quite as spectacular as the scenic overlook on trail 11 and a few other spots down that way. Trail 5A junction is not far from the Sugar Creek trailhead on 5. 5A is generally easier going at it westbound from this end, as the 2 major rock gardens are downhill, with the only uphill rock garden I recall being shorter and filled with baby heads, as they call the smaller grapefruit sized loose rocks.
Trail 5 has a few mild/moderate rock gardens, but you'll hit them downhill this direction. It's a nice trail with a decent bit of flow, not quite goat trail tight but close, and not too fast, and basically grown into being single track, not terribly passable for ATVs. Once you get down a pretty long but not too steep rock garden to the Gilbert Creek Rd crossing, you're onto Trail 6 on the other side of the road. It's got a pretty decent short to medium length rock garden climb early on, with some bedrock at the top as it widens out substantially and then funnels back to a 50" rooty uphill corner after the crest.
This next technical rock section headed southbound on Trail 6, steeply goes down a big rock garden that's got a pretty noticeable downhill drop nowadays. It wasn't like this last April when we rode it in the spring, but I've seen it almost this challenging in the past a couple times, as the trail changes with all the heavy storms Southeastern Kentucky gets these days, with the forest service occasionally getting the bulldozer back there to make it possible for an average rider.
It was still pretty freshly bulldozed out back then when it was at it's easiest in recent years in 2024. This time around a couple of the guys told me they didn't really want to go back up that if we were going to ride for several more hours, because they were certain a couple people would be dropping their bikes on it.
Trail 6 is a good & long one that switches back and forth between old 50-inch trail bed and virtually being singletracks currently. You'll pass Trail 6B on the left, which is pretty significant baby heads type rock garden climb up to the top with some nice bedrock shelves on the left or the easy pass on the right, which is a fun little jaunt. The rest of trail 6B is just average beyond that and takes you to the edge of the forest towards the Leslie County RV Park and all the side by side trails on logging lands out that way. There are also herds of elk in that area, but I've never once seen them. I have seen a few of the largest deer of my lifetime in these hills, although deer spottings are few and far between here, as it seems being a wildlife management area, the place is severely over-hunted in general.
Trail 6 beyond the 6B junction winds around and makes a hard change of direction heading northbound and westbound twice. There's another rock garden hill section, right at a trail re-route, where the trail makes a hard switchback right at the bottom of the rock garden, whereas before, you would have gone forward into an overgrown area heading generally southbound towards Trail 7, but now, there is a Trail Closed sign there. This confuses some people, as there's an outlaw hill climb going back up to the ridge to the left, but you need to ignore that and the closed trail segment that's posted, and make a hard switchback the other direction to loop back around.
Shortly after that, you'll end up at a big trail intersection that's a small 30ft or so oval clearing. If you're heading generally Southbound on 6, a hard left westerly-bound is marked as Trail 6 and continues on southbound. If coming from any other of the three routes leading to this junction, choosing which Trail # 6 direction to run here can get you completely turned around if you're wanting to head south or head north back to camp, so look at the GPS map good, because the trail winds around so much that it's not pointed the direction that you're actually going to end up if you take it.
The next left (SECOND left, with the Trail 6 continuation being the FIRST left) is Trail 6A, which takes off directly parallel to the other portion of Trail 6 that had Southbound. 6A is an easier trail with a lot of flow (7A is very comparable). The next one after that is an outlaw hill climb.
As a side note, I'll describe 6A and 7A here, but this is good for a side trip, and if you want the more rugged trails, you'll want to simply continue Southbound on 6.
Trails 6A headed westbound and then Southbound, crossing a creek and winding along another Creek and following it parallel, you will need to make a hard left turn into a field that is never seeming to be clearly marked. We didn't go past this area this past time but it has never had a good sign there. You might find yourself riding in a rocky creek bed and then climbing up a 2-track access road without seeing any trail markers for a while. You should have turned left into a field there to continue on to Trail 7A. Trail 7A is very similar to 6A, with minimal rock sections and generally pretty easy and flowing. Taking 7A back Eastbound to the beginning of Trail 7, you can hang a left there and head back northbound on Trail 6 to complete basically the only long easy loop that is possible in this trail system. When you come to the big 5-way intersection on 6 after a bit of an uphill with some mild ruts and mild rocks to get back there, taking the unmarked 4wd Big Creek Rd out to the gravel on Gilbert Creek Road is the only relatively easy way to get out of there back to the central portions of the trail and Sugar Creek trailhead. You can alternately answer this section near the creek crossings where that unmarked turn is on 7A you can come in off of the Route 66 side on what I believe is Elisha Creek Rd. You can also enter this section where Trail 5A turns to Trail 6A at Gilbert Creek Rd on the central western end.
5A is mostly easy, but like I said, on the western end, if you come up from Gilbert Creek road, once it starts climbing more steeply, you have another major climb with rock gardens all over the place that is nearly a mile long before you move around through the last two switchbacks up to the ridge. These generally aren't the most difficult rock gardens, but they definitely are enjoyable for riders of mid skill levels and up. Beginners will struggle. Past that after a short bit on 5A Northbound off of Gilbert Creek Road and then heading eastbound once up top, there is an unmarked right turn that shoots you uphill into a shoot of eroded dirt and rock which turns into a hard left turn up a bedrock chute.
Basically straight forward across this intersection area is and unmarked 4wd trail called Big Creek Rd that's a nice fun and scenic run that takes you out to Gilbert Creek Rd closer to the Sugar Creek trailhead. We always hang a left there at the end of Big Creek Rd onto the graveled Gilbert Creek Rd, and run it maybe 2 miles or so, and then when the road dips down sharply and goes through a concrete bottomed creek crossing with flood warning signs (& a small waterfall down the bank after you cross the creek, good swimming hole bath spot in the summer), you climb up the hill after the creek crossing and look on the right for a very sharp hair pin turn on to another Forest Service road, Peter's Branch Rd. This is graveled up to the cemetery access.
Peter's Branch Rd turns into a four-wheel drive trail after that, and then it climbs uphill and crosses Trail 5A with a little jog, 5A basically goes a hard left uphill (westbound) -or- forward (eastbound to 5) depending on which direction you want to take 5A. The left turn downhill in between the other two is the continuation of 4wd Peter's Branch Rd, which takes you out to Sugar Creek Road 1.7miles west of the Sugar Creek Trailhead. From there you can hit the gravel and hang a right and cross the creek and you'll be at the Sugar Creek Trailhead in 1.7 miles. You'll also pass the unmarked 2-track up to it's trail 4 junction before it heads up to Lucinda Lookout Tower Rd which takes you uphill to Lucindas Knob and the campsites up there.
Those two 4wd roads make a nice quick way out or a fast shortcut deeper into the trails.
If you were to continue on trail 6 there from that big 5-way junction intersection, you'll pretty quickly get to somewhat of a clearing down in the flat bottoms with real tall grass and very sandy clay. When you get to a 4wd road that cuts in from the left, with a mowed grassy hillside to the right, that's a cemetery access up in the woods there. That trail/road on the left is Garrison Hollow Road County Road 1238 I believe. That's the one that you can take out to the paved Kentucky Route 406 and hang a right onto KY-406 southbound and get down to Trail 9 or the Stinnett Area Community Center, or take it all the way down to Oakley Cave Branch to the cemetery to catch Trail 11.
Beyond that Garrison Hollow Road junction/cemetery access on Trail #6, you'll come to a spot right before where the trail crosses a creek, and if you look back to the right, there's a picnic table and fire pit. This is a nice little break spot. There's a maybe 13 or 14 ft tall seasonal waterfall there. All of this you may miss if flying past at a brisk pace.
After the picnic table spot you'll come in to Trail 7 I believe starting at the creek crossing above the waterfall. Trail 7A will cut in from the right. It runs quite a ways and eventually links up to Trail 6A to make a loop, or you can continue and cross Gilbert Creek Road and then do a real long loose rock filled hill climb for about a mile to get up to the ridge. (From there on 5A, you can get into some other single tracks off of the trail or off of some other 4wd access roads.)
Trail 7 is a decent one, mostly a bit wider (62"-ish). It's got one uphill rock section that's short but pretty fun, mostly just one big flat rock that's very exposed at an angle and some boulders around it on an uphill, and can be a bit tricky for some. The rest of that is SxS width, but when you get down dropping down towards the creek, it's a real nice super long downhill that's another 550ft or 600ft elevation drop over about a half mile or 3/4 mile to a creek that's flat bedrock sheets and is a really gorgeous spot to take a break.
Trail 8-9 is just mediocre, SxS routes (map says 50" max, not really though, locals run it on SxS). 9 is better than 8, but 8 has been blocked by roughly 5 huge tree trunks since late April 2025 anyways, just starting up the big hill climb from the creek where Trail 7 ends, so you're going to bypass half of it if you ride the creek East to the four-wheel drive trail called Amy Branch Road at the end of the clear cut field you'll end up in , just hug the right side of the field towards the creek the whole time including going into a second field (this appears to be private property as it was mowed this last time, but nothing in the way of No Trespassing signs, and no structures or cabins etc are on this land as far as I can tell). When you get back to crossing the creek at the end of the second field, and up a 2-track ("Amy Branch Rd"), at the top of that you'll hang a left to continue on trail 8. Consider 8 etc a loooonng connector (SxS easy trail, 50" listed but wider in actuality).
Trail 8 eventually narrows back down after the section where it runs on the road grade called Amy Branch Rd, and going downhill for a while, eventually ends at a stop sign at the pavement. Hang a left and go 30 ft uphill on the paved road and you'll see the trail 9 entrance on the right side of the road there going down at an angle where the pavement extends onto the shoulder of the road.
If you're coming from the Stinnett Area Community Center or if you just want to skip Trail 7 and all the rerouting around the tree blockage, you can just ride Kentucky 406 down to this point from Garrison Hollow Rd Twp Rd 1710 off of the southern portion of Trail 6, out to KY-406 Southbound to this part where there's no signage but Trail 9 drops down at a hard left hand turn angle into the grassy field and into the forest.
Trail 9 drops down through the grassy area on the side of the road (KY-406) and then back into the forest. The trail marker sign always gets run over there. This is decent 2-track trail, nothing of significant noteworthiness. After a creek crossing at it's lowest elevation point, and passing some minor rock outcrops, this trail comes out to another paved road crossing with no signage. Hang a left.
Trail 10 you'll almost miss off the road crossing / left hand turn jog when you come to a paved side road crossing from the end of section 9, because 10 looks like an unmarked outlaw single track that's all grown in, climbing up at an angle from the road. It's all really nice trail, almost like singletrack, but there's a couple turns you might miss on both 9 and 10 and go off on a few boring ATV trails and end up at a road, so anytime you see any trail intersection/junction, make sure you're following your GPS to go the correct way, because the UNOFFICIAL 2-tracks in this area especially aren't generally as good as the official ones, and beyond trail 5 or 6, things aren't marked out all that well after trees and limbs that had trail markers have fallen down over the years, and the Forest Service only having one and sometimes two trail maintenance guys for the whole Southern portion of Daniel Boone National Forest, things don't get updated so much, but it makes it more of an adventure!
There's a hard right uphill switchback you've got to hit somewhere in there, but you'll realize you went the wrong way if you pass it because you'll end up coming out towards the road and a grassy mowed yard by somebody's backyard or a barn or something. After that switchback that you might miss and turn around for, making a long rocky climb, there's another switchback up after that on the trail that continues uphill further, giving you a real satisfying and quite long hill climb. Redbird is full of big elevation climbs/descents, especially down in this area, as well as lots of ridge riding.
Towards the end of trail 10, it seems like you're just going to plunge down an extremely steep wide 2-track that opens up into side by side width. The official trail is actually on the left there just down from the ridgetop trail section 15ft or so, and looks like an outlaw singletrack that shoots across the wider more established looking (but actually outlaw) trail. No trail markers that I recall. Like I said, stop and look at your GPS often at any unmarked trail intersection. The enticing looking outlaw single track is actually the official trail here but it's a short one that takes you to gravel driveway down to where the trail crosses another gravel road and drops down in the ditch on the other side heading towards the real good stuff on 11.
If you accidentally go down the really steep side by side outlaw track, it comes out onto a gravel drive, hang a left there, then when you get to the road, hang a left again and it'll take you down to where the trail crosses and there's a nice official sign. You'd be hanging a right basically down into the ditch and up the hill the other side. The gravel driveway where the sign is takes you up to the trail that you missed and you should have been coming down to this point from there.
The beginnings of Trail 11 is a bit tough to get into for beginners, from Oakley Cave Branch Cemetery southbound, but the hardest part of the rock garden is at the bottom of the hill, then it's just mild rock garden and loose rocks after that but another long long climb. Then it turns into basically a seldom traveled ridgetop side by side trail with a lot of limbs down across it (September 2025), but everything you can just ride over, just a bit dirty, watch for all the acorns on the trails, they're like marbles in the fall. Trail Section #11 is a 13 mile long trail, and once you get down deeper into the southern portions it gets REAL good, ridgetop riding often, somewhere in between flowing singletracks & 50" trail bed. It's gorgeous there.
You'll hit two pretty darn gnarly big rock gardens downhill this direction southbound heading towards Bear Creek. Boulder gardens might be a better term. It used to be a lot easier than it looked (always looked like big boulders) to go the uphill direction northbound on both rock garden sections, but we didn't try it this time uphill because of daylight remaining, but going down it it sure looked like it was going to be a lot harder uphill versus last time we rode it uphill. More washed out from wet summer of heavy rains, so the boulders got taller!
A bit further south from those two rock gardens, there's a really REALLY nice mountainous ridgetop flat sheet bedrock overlook spot 50 ft before you'll hit the power line clear cut where most people always take pictures, stop at that rocky mountain top flat sheet bed rock overlook spot and take a nice break. The area to the left/east is all slated to get pretty substantially logged out by the forest service, and as soon as you enter the forest after the powerline clearcut, you'll see a lot of trees marked with orange spray paint, probably indicating they are clearcutting the ridge area there, sadly. They call it "Early Seral - Salvage" logging slated for this area, removing dead damaged larger trees from fire or storm damage, but the ones marked at the ridge are none of the above, and are just being commercially harvested unlike their logging plan statement. They aim to create more wildlife habitat for ruffed grouse and other hunted species, but are taking the lazy way out and commercially harvesting significant amounts of timber right off many trail areas, sadly. I'd be nice if they'd keep the trails IN the National Forest, and save the "Early Seral" small trees / grasslands type areas for off of access road grades, as to preserve the beauty of the trail users' experience within the forest.
There's a couple short technical rocky downhills headed towards Bear Creek from here after the big powerline clearcut. One of them has become too tough for just about anyone to make it up if heading northbound, so there's a short steep maybe 25 or 30 ft downhill/hill climb to the side as a bypass for either direction of travel, on the left if you're headed southbound. We took the harder route downhill, rock step dropoffs etc, because that side route used to be really steep, but it's worn down pretty deep now and shouldn't be too bad if you come back up that way northbound.
There's one more rocky 10 ft drop shortly after with some exposed boulders, a right turn downhill, but it's not bad at all for even amateurs or coached beginners, and fun to make it up, but no struggle as long as you give it some throttle. I believe the trees marked for logging were only up to that 1st/much more challenging of the two technical rocky drops. My biggest concern for the logging project is that I hope the road grades they cut in up to the ridge on old logging roads don't invite side by sides up here afterwards. It's incredibly gorgeous trail currently. This is only legal for 50" ATV, although quite difficult for an ATV to make it up here from the North at least. A very heavenly bike trail for serious enduro riders, it is. This is perhaps my favorite section of Redbird Crest.
There's a lot of medium steepness downhills and tight turns navigating down from the ridge at the end of Trail 11 down to the Bear Creek trailhead. Hit the pavement diagonally crossing to the end of the Trailhead lot area towards the Redbird River crossing, or just ride the pavement and you'll come out of the Bear Creek trailhead entrance at the kiosk and pit toilet in just a few seconds. At the back of the lot there, Upper Bear Creek Road legally crosses the Redbird River there (the bridge 100ft to the north was taken out of service presumably after flooding completely destroyed it I assume, as there are only remnants of it left). It was pretty shallow last time, not even knee deep, but I've ridden through it when it was up to the bottom of my gas tank deep.
You want to stay to the right when you see a more well-traveled trail on the left, that's Upper Bear Creek Road (4wd obviously). Trail 13 goes up some fairly challenging steep climbs and switchbacks basically nonstop from there for quite a significant climb distance uphill, up to another ridge, and is pretty similar to Trail 11. 13 is a seldom traveled route for us at present, but it's a really good one. It's rather rugged getting up there, and very much like Trail 11, but I can't vouch for its current condition. There was an area that they logged out in the middle of it late 2024, I can't report how that affected the trail or side by sides poaching into it, as it's not a side-by-side legal trail, 50" max width.
At the end of that I think it's Sand Hill Road you take and I think that turns into another road, they call it section 14 and 15 but it's just roads for a couple miles to get to the bottom of the official single tracks at Trail 16. You'll be making a hard right down into a creek just a little bit past a house, and if you get to more houses in 1/4 mile, you missed it. I believe there might be a small sign there still. Across the creek, it's not an easy climb for the first several hundred feet here but it's absolutely gorgeous once you get up to the top to an easier trail section. The trail is still likely completely rerouted in one or two spots there due to tree blockages, making it even tougher.
*I'll narrate the official single tracks from the Peabody Trailhead direction as that's usually the way we come and then we hit some other trails or roads or backroads back.* (we typically take a leisurely 4 days here to explore and don't do the epic long haul of all 70+ miles of the outer loop in one shot)
If you hit the official singles south from Peabody / Ranger Station area, starting on the corner of Big Double Creek Road and Route 66 just south of the ranger station and the grassy field in front of it, you're riding a real narrow benched in sidehill trail on some steep steep hillside for the first mile or two to get up to the ridge. If there's a tree down, it might hold up the whole group to the point where you might want to just turn around and go down the side road (Big Double Creek Rd) to the first access road that goes up to the ridge. Going off the trail accidentally here means 2-3 people struggling to drag a bike back up the steep hill and wasting all of your energy for the ride just trying to get past a tree trunk downed across STEEP sidehill terrain.
There's also an off-camber & not squared up & slanted/sloped rock shelf ledge about 24 inches tall not too far into the trail, maybe a half mile. If it's wet, everybody's going to be slipping and sliding off the trail on the downhill side, so make sure you hit that starting on the right side of the trail at the edge of the downhill slope and veering LEFT into the uphill side a little bit at an angle so you don't slide, and with plenty enough momentum. It's the gatekeeper for timid riders - I had to ride the two other bikes up at last time we went down that stretch. Then we hucked it over a 45° slanted big slippery wet tree trunk blocking the trail also, which really wore us all out lifting all the bikes. I think that might be cut out by now, but we didn't hit that section last time.
Once you're up on the ridge, the official singles are mostly intermediate flowy ridge trails, not too much difficulty, but nice trails. When you come up to that gated access road bailout or bypass route that comes up to the ridge from Big Double Creek, you'll see side by sides have driven around the gate and onto the official trail, which the single track as it's technically called, is just running on an old access road for a while there, then the side by sides jump off on another access road that's not on most maps, while the single track goes around another gated off road grade entrance and goes back to being single.
You'll probably encounter a couple tree blockages here and there but at this point most of them will have ride arounds.
We always pack our hand saws just in case something needs to be cut out. Corona 10" folding saws on Amazon are the best $36 you can spend for these trips!
There is a lot of nice ridge riding with some ups and downs in the middle portions of the official singletracks.
Towards the southern end there's a pretty darn steep hill climb headed southbound on trail 17, plenty steep enough that there's a pretty lengthy diagonal unofficial re-route trail up the same hill a little bit before the bottom of the big one.
The last stretch Trail 16 is really gorgeous nice trail. It makes some sharp turns towards the most beautiful parts at the end, and may be permanently re-routed due to a tree blockage perhaps. It can be challenging going down here, but it's more challenging going up from the road!
Eventually, back in trail section #17 somewhere, the trail is going to be re-routed on what is currently outlaw singletrack, and completely skip the road connector sections, crossing Rt 66 and into some future new trail that will continue onto a few different stretches of old oil and gas roads and eventually come out to the end of section #13 with no road running, only road crossings. I believe this is slated to be singletracks, but can't verify. At least the portions between Rt 66 and trail 17 will certainly be.
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