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Escondido Draw Recreational Area (EDRA)

Mike, Adam, Scott, et al:

We will be starting trails this fall most likely. Between now and then we are wrapping up the paperwork with the State and Fed folks and working out design concepts now that we have two long weekends under our belts laying stuff out and walking about.

Much of the trail system will be hand cut (and machine worked) in the areas of the slopes, but the tops and the bottoms of the park will be relatively flat and should go quickly. At this juncture the 4x4 routes are the least defined as the brush is too dense in most places to see under the cover to the ground below without walking into the briars.

We will need the practiced eye of wheelers to search out the routes and it will all be via walking about.

We will be having some get togethers at the park to continue the process. I will post up info as it becomes available on our schedule.

Everybody is welcome to join in the process.
 
Be nice to get the boys together for a beer and some work!!!!

Well maybe the other way around.
 
Is this the GPS coordinates?

30.652090, -101.584225
I guessed using "about 3 miles south of 290 on 406"

30 miles on the other side of Ozona?
 
Is this the GPS coordinates?

30.652090, -101.584225
I guessed using "about 3 miles south of 290 on 406"

30 miles on the other side of Ozona?

I just checked the intersection of our dirt road and the asphalt at CR406

N30.58491 W101.58294

You might be off a bit, but I am betting you could see the sign that we painted TMTC on from your waypoint.

It is about 50 feet shy of the FOURTH cattle guard on the road.
 
I sold my offroad bikes several years ago, but this looks interesting...
Can you bring us update please?
 
There is a trail cutting "party" this up coming weekend. That is about all the changes thus far. I am sure this fall/winter/ spring things will really pick up.
 
OK, great. Thanks for the info.
I'm subscribed, so I'll be watcing this thread. May have to get back into the dirt bike game!
 
Larry sent me the following report put together by Bunny. Thanks Bunny for a report and the photos ... I was too tired to even pick up a camera which is VERY unusual for me.

I'm glad y'all had a good time. It was great to see everyone and I look forward to getting togetheer again in the fall when it is cooler to open up some more trail!

Tony

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ESCONDIDO DRAW - JULY 25-27

Thank you Hurricane Dolly! Expecting to be blazing hot for the end of July in Ozona, we were surprised to have very pleasant weather! Overcast skies and a pretty constant breeze blew on Friday and Saturday with Sunday coming around for a more typical west Texas day. Artie and I even slept with just the windows open on Friday night and the cool breeze brought the bigger blanket out by morning! Couldn’t have asked for better weather!

Upon our arrival late Friday afternoon, Larry Lancaster, Mike Zumwalt and son Zach, and several other TMTC members had nearly completed cutting the first trail. Calling it a day, it was back to camp for cooking and comradery. Joining the campout was John Flowers and son Bryce with friends Patrick, Kyle, JB and Sidney.

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Saturday’s goal was to finish cutting the first trail, but of course you have to run it to where you left off, right? Doing this, we had some fun before the work began. The last section was cut and cleared, bringing this the first cut trail in Escondido Draw! This trail had been scouted by Larry and Artie way back in April. In truth, this trail still has an easier route section to be cut that is densely covered cedar. When it is completed as planned, it will have the main trail and two alternate "loops" that add some off camber challenges.

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The TMTC was holding their meeting in Ozona that afternoon, along with meeting and greeting some of the Ozona locals. The locals furnished hot dogs and hamburgers to those attending. Back at camp the rest of the day was spent just cruising the ranch roads, getting ourselves familiar with the lay of the land. Artie and I went scouting for more trails. After walking up a couple of draws we found another good possibility, flagging it to return again.

Sunday morning saw most everyone leaving out to head home, but Larry and us hadn’t had enough. We went to look at our scouted trail and decided it was worthy of being trail #2 to be cut for next time. This trail will begin easy and work its way up to a category 5 or better. We hope to have a bail out spot for those that do not want to complete the extreme part of the trail. The final elevation gives you 4, yes 4, waterfalls before you top out the ridge! Each waterfall has a platform, so if a rollover does occur, you should just land it there and stop. One waterfall may require a permanent wench point.

Escondido Draw is definitely out yonder, but what it brings to the outdoor enthusiast is just that. The feeling of being absolutely away from all hustle and bustle. Stars shining brightly with no outside lights interrupting their beauty. Silence - ever heard it? What a place to unwind - not completely - cause cell phones do work! Drawbacks at this point is that it has VERY dense vegetation of scrub brush and cedar. It is HARD WORK cutting trails. It is hard to navigate just to scout trails! There are no tall hardwood trees, so camping under the shady spot of an oak tree really doesn’t exist. This is the ground floor – there is MUCH work ahead. For some, this is part of the fun - being part of the pioneer spirit, blazing that trail, being the first to drive over it, just knowing your sweat and hard work got you there. Helping in the formation of a new area is a worthy cause to many. Personally, I think this is going to be a great place to come to for folks in central Texas.

Bunny Erfurt, Bandera Texas

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Not exactly bike photos, but you can get the idea of the terrain that we are dealing with
 
As far as my report ...

I arrived Wednesday afternoon after a morning racing around getting things loaded and tied down. It is 6 ~ 6 1/2 hours from my side of DFW to the park, so south I headed, adding to a growing list of things I had forgotten to purchase along the way.

Always looking for new sights on the road, I chose the I30/I20/US277/US67 route from Dallas to San Angelo.

Along the way I stopped in at the WallyWorld and Home Depot in Abilene and grabbed the last minute stuff and was soon back on my way south.

San Angelo fell by the wayside with a quick wave and I headed south on US67 for Barnhart. At Barhart it was a quick turn to the south on TX163 and the home stretch into Ozona.

I met Steve Thompson in Ozona and Pepe's served up some Mexican vittles for dinner. Soon we were on our way west into the sunset ...

Hurricane Donna did her best to give us a show and I obliged by taking a few photos ...

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Soon we were in Deer Camp and enjoying a cold

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Thursday was a day full of meetings. I also gave a speech at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon on the tie between OHV parks and economic development. Following that, I looked at a couple of buildings in town, one an adaptive reuse project, the other historic restoration. J.R. Rhodes (aka SuzukiQ here) showed up on Thursday and we prepared to do battle against the mesquite and cedar the following day.

Friday was consumed by work. We completed about 1 mile of trail. Terry Houk arrived around 10 and we worked through the heat of the day and into the evening to complete the first segment of single track. I should have taken photos, but to be honest with you my tongue was dragging on Friday.

Saturday we had the TMTC annual meeting in Ozona on the square. I wish I could say that it was well attended, but alas I cannot make that statement. It is hard to get members to a meeting nevermind the gas costs and the fact that it is about the last fling before school cranks up again in mid-August. I announced at the meeting that we are going to adjust the meeting dates to more appropriate times of the year ... times other than January and July.

Saturday morning before the meeting J.R. and I put in about an hour or so cleaning up one up hill and adding flagging to extend our trail segment to 1.73 miles according to the GPS.

Sunday we all cleaned up, loaded up and headed home. I rolled in about 7:30 PM, off loaded bikes and the cooler and called it a night.

We did get a chance to critique our work with a quick ride on Sunday morning.

There were only 4 motorcyclist present over the weekend. We had a larger group of folks that were into 4x4, ATV and buggies.

All in all it was a successful first visit to the park. We have a long way to go before the park will be ready for visitors.

Our target is to be open after the end of deer season on a weekend basis. Between now and then we will be building trail and we have the park leased one lsat year for hunting, but only on weekedays.
 
The property is huge. I had a good time adding some nice off camber for the 4x4 on Friday. Tony had his KTM 400 there so I used it to escort some folks out to him and to other places in the park. With hard work and good planning we can have some long un interupted trails. Motorcycle,ATV and 4x4.


Mike Green
 
The property is huge. I had a good time adding some nice off camber for the 4x4 on Friday. Tony had his KTM 400 there so I used it to escort some folks out to him and to other places in the park. With hard work and good planning we can have some long un interupted trails. Motorcycle,ATV and 4x4.


Mike Green

Good points Mike.

We have some opportunities to create trail segments in excess of 10~15 miles in length should we choose to do it.

I'm guessing we will have some sweet singletrack segments that are 4~5 miles at least with maybe one or two crossings.
 
We now have about 20 miles of trail flagged and about 3 miles of it cut in. The next couple of work weekends will be concentrating cutting with no additional flagging being done.

And 6-7 Dec has been added as a work weekend.
 
Well, we have three weekends of work under our belt and almost 20 miles of trail cut.

We are planning a MEGA weekend event that will start on December 3rd when I arrive and continue until December 14th when I go home. Yup ... 11 days of fun and frolic in our little 3400 acre slice of heaven.

We are planning on renting a walk behind track loader that has a 30 inch bucket to cut the sidehill single track ... yup, you read that right ... singletrack ... in fact all the trail will be single track. We will have the SWECO there as well, assuming that we can wrap up the truck purchase by then.

Come on out and join in the fun. It will be a blast for sure. We have lots of room for campers and there is a shower with hot and cold running water for stripping off layers of work in the evenings.
 
Hoping to resurrect a really old thread here...

EDRA appears to be alive and well here at the dawn of 2017. I expect we could gather up a group of hearty off-roaders to go play out there but all I am finding for guidance is a pdf map of trails. Better than nothing but...

Has anyone put together some GPS tracks of the moto trails?
 
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