Over the last few years I’d heard from DK about a trail network being built in Clinton. DK is a member of the Clinch Valley Trail Alliance (CVTA), and that group was involved in the trail building. But we didn’t know who was in charge of the project, nor when it would be open to the public.
Finally,
this summer some FB ads and the park’s website started promoting the official
opening of Aspire Park (Aspire). It turns out the park
is privately owned by the Hollingsworth family who envisioned it as a community
development project for the nearby city of Clinton. The project also includes a
restaurant, pavilion, and boat launch. There is also a dog park, adventure
playground, and pump track/skills area. The grounds include a wildflower meadow
and a war veteran memorial. The property covers 370 acres, and is billed as the
largest private park in the Southeast that is freely available to the public. The
hiking and biking trails are listed at 22 miles. A TVA easement covers about
half the bike trail area. There is no map of the trails online (yet), but the
Trailforks website shows all the current trails (Aspire Trailforks).
Aspire Trail Map from Trailforks.
I’d
been watching the opening date and wanted to get onsite the first week the trails
would be open. I went over on a Friday of school Fall Break on a perfect cool
clear day. There’s no dedicated parking for the trails, but I started from the
lot near the Pearl Restaurant. There were only a few other cars when I started
at 9AM. I biked through some of the Great Lawn before finding the start of the
greenway along the Clinch River beyond the playground and pump track. There
didn’t appear to be any place to pick up a paper map, but there were signs,
arrows, and map boards at all the trail junctions. This was a good thing as I
had left my phone at home, so I couldn’t take pictures or use links. The trail
system is a spaghetti bowl, a bunch of trails all twisted together. I decided
the easiest thing would be to ride the perimeter of the park counterclockwise.
This course would loop me around the base of the small ridge that constituted
the trail area.
The
paved greenway started down a wide path alongside the river, and would be a
great family walk. My first trail was Fortitude (#9), rated easy. Like all the
trails I rode it was dirt single track, often twisty and occasionally rocky. I
found their easy and moderate ratings to be accurate, with only a slight
difference between the easy ones and moderates. An interesting feature of the
trail signs was the listing of the trail builder, almost always different for
each trail. A few trail builders apparently liked rock work, so rock gardens
and rock bridges would irregularly appear to challenge my bike handling. The
green trails rarely connect, so except for the Hustle/To-Hi circuit, any loop
at Aspire will include both easy and moderate trails.
The
toughest trail on the loop was Virtue, a short trail which switch backed tightly
and steeply to the top of a small ridge. The rest of the perimeter to To-Hi was
moderate and was fun biking. I only saw a few other riders, and they were
invariably, focused on the trail maps. The system is complex, there are lots of
trails, and lots of junctions. I spent a lot of time looking at the maps, and
planning my next leg. I imagine most riders will eventually ignore the maps,
but for a first timer, following a set course took some concentration.
To-Hi
and Hustle gave me some easy riding and I was able get into the flow more. I
was feeling confident in my ability to handle the terrain, and decided to take
a side trip on the west ends of To-Hi and Relentless Ridge. This was great
riding, at least until the point where I should have rejoined the perimeter,
but instead got myself lost in a devils triangle of intersecting, switch backed
trails.
The
rest of the ride was a fun tour around the west end of the ridge, finishing at
an upper trailhead. I passed the bottom of Right Stuff (marked as a one way
downhill trail on the junction posts and in Trailforks, but not so on the maps)
and the bottom of To the Top (marked as
a hiker trail on the junction posts and in Trailforks, but not so on the maps).
I’d only ridden about 7.5 miles and was having too much fun to go home. So, I eyeballed a route for second loop, then headed back to the car to freshen up on bug spray. I’d seen deer twice on the loop, and thought that could signal chiggers, even though the terrain had mostly been open forest, and the trails were cleared wide enough to keep riders away from the underbrush.
Lap
2 would be mostly moderates. I again started on the greenway, but rode back on
inner Vim and Vigor and took Relentless Ridge and Renegade to the crest of the
ridge. This route might have been even more fun than the perimeter, though I
saw fewer bikers on it. The flow was good, there were old trees in the forest,
and the surface was more dirt than rocks. From the crest of the ridge, I rode
Renegade and Contender back to the trailhead at the top of the bike park.
I
still wasn’t ready to quit so I copied the plan of another rider I’d talked to
out on the course and rode the paved walkways around the grounds of the rest of
the park. This was nice cool down, but a bit risky as there were now crowds of
families to weave through. It was great to see all the little kids fired up to
explore the bike and adventure parks.
After
stowing my bike back in the car, I headed over to what is called the Onward and
Upward Center. I found it housed the Pearl Restaurant and also had an information
desk where I could get a copy of the trail map. The handout map differed from
the trail intersection maps in the info shown for each trail, but also has very
poor resolution, so I’d advise using a downloaded map for one’s first trips at
the park.
10-11-24 ride at Aspire Park.
