I figured I'd write up a fairly extensive trail-by-trail report on the Redbird Crest / Elisha Creek trail system, with a few riders seeing my posts recently across various platforms and wanting to get more information on riding and camping at Redbird Crest for their upcoming trip plans. They all commented on there being very little information on the internet about these trails in comparison to other big trail areas of similar magnitude.
2024 Redbird Crest Trail Map image below.. I'll replace it with a digital image of the 2025 version this winter. Not much has changed.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #1:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #2:
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.
On trail 2, at one point there's an outlaw trail that goes forward where the official trail makes a hard right down a slight hill, then back up an area that always gets washed out into a deep rut with logs thrown in to help fill in the erosion rut, then makes a hard left turn up a real fun short (8ft?) rock climb on the official trail directly out of the hard left turn, with a left and a right route to choose from, left is easier, right only has one easy line and the rest is a BIG boulder hop at the top.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #3:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #4:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #5:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION # 6 (& # 6B):
After coming down a fairly long rock section on the end of 5 to Gilbert Creek Rd, crossing the road is the beginning of Trail 6. 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 bedrock shelf boulder 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 40ft 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.
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.
Back to running the outer loop of trails 1-22, If you were to continue on trail 6 there from that 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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTIONS #5A, #6A & #7A:
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 FSR-1710 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 a 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 are 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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #7:
After the picnic table spot at the end of trail 6 next to the seasonal waterfall, 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.
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 down to where some other 4wd access road splits off from it down the hill, but when you get down dropping down towards the creek, it's 50-inch trail and gets a lot nicer, with 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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTIONS #8 & #9:
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. At the end of Trail 9, you'll come to a paved road crossing of Army Trail Rd.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #10:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #11:
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.
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTIONS #12 & #13
I believe what they call section 12 is just the route across the back of the trailhead and down to the Redbird River ford/crossing.
At the back of the Bear Creek Trailhead lot, 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.
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*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)
REDBIRD CREST TRAIL SECTION #22 DOWN THROUGH SECTION #16:
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 at all 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 a slight bit left into the uphill side a little bit at an angle aiming for a vertical split up the rock face for more traction, so you don't slide, and with plenty enough momentum. After that, it levels out for a few feet enough to choose the next line. Upper left is more bedrock shelf steps, but you can bypass this on the downhill side last I ran it, in a deep rut just beyond the bedrock slabs. This is medium steepness and may have gotten dug down to some tree roots by now, as I think some were exposed a few months ago on our last run down this section. This bedrock obstacle section is 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 real nice trails. I won't go into too much detail about the middle portions of the official singletracks, as it's all generally similar.
When you come up to the 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 really nice single track trail.
(Apparently this area is being graded out and cleared out for logging activity and is no longer single track. It wasn't a single track the last time I was there, but a more recent report on the next page of this thread states exactly that, daylighted for logging activity access. )
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.
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.
