Hamilton County’s Walden’s Ridge Park set to open
Almost a decade in the making, Walden’s Ridge Park is set to open Saturday with a ribbon-cutting and public celebration.
The 200-acre park features more than 10 miles of trails, including downhill, crosscountry mountain biking and hiking trails, as well as a boulder field for climbers, Hamilton County Parks and Recreation Director Matt Folz said by phone.
“What makes this park unique is that it will be the first publicly owned, progressive downhill mountain biking trail on the East Coast,” Taft Sibley, past president of the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy, said by phone. “But really, it’s the proximity to the town and the quality of the trail that ultimately make it extremely unique.”
The conservancy acquired the land for the park and managed the project throughout its development, he said.
Designed for intermediate and advanced riders, the downhill trails include technical components such as berms — banked turns — and rock features, Folz said.
“That’s kind of one of the things that’s been missing in the area,” Folz said. “We have a lot of your standard mountain bike trails, like you would find in Enterprise South, but these were the first purposebuilt downhill gravity trails for mountain biking in this area.”
Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association Chattanooga provided the vision and oversight for the trail construction, the association’s Chattanooga director at large, Les Warnock, said by phone. The construction was done by Trail Solutions, a subsidiary of the International Mountain Bicycling Association.
The Chattanooga group worked in partnership with The Land Trust for Tennessee, North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy and Southeastern Climbers Coalition to develop the park, which was then handed over to the Hamilton County Parks and Recreation Department for operation and maintenance.
Chattanooga has more than 100 miles of mountain biking trails within 30 minutes of downtown, but most of those trails are crosscountry oriented, Warnock said.
“We saw a void in gravity-fed mountain biking in our region,” he said, adding that Walden’s Ridge Park will have the area’s largest collection of downhill-specific trails, in addition to trails for crosscountry riding. “It offers a whole new, different type of riding experience for mountain bikers in the region.”
The park’s downhill-specific trails are closed off to hikers, he said.
“It’s such a great amenity for Chattanooga and the county,” Sibley said of the park. “We’re going to see folks coming in from 12- and 15-hour drives just to come ride this park, so (the grand opening) is a great opportunity for folks to get a sneak peek before the word gets out nationally.”
The climbing components of the park include a variety of angles and features, but it’s mainly bouldering, a type of climbing that’s low to the ground and doesn’t require ropes or a lot of gear aside from shoes and a mat, Meagan Evans, executive director of the Southeastern Climbers Coalition, said by phone.
The Land Trust for Tennessee raised $1.2 million for the park’s completion, Liz McLaurin, Land Trust president and CEO, said by phone.
Major donors include the Lyndhurst Foundation, Riverview Foundation, Tucker Foundation and the city of Chattanooga, she said.
The park comprises 119 acres donated by Jack McDonald to the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy in 2004, as well as another 103 acres The Land Trust for Tennessee helped acquire through a donation by the same family, McLaurin said.
Sibley said the donated land is valued at about $1 million, the cost of the trail construction was about $1 million, and volunteers put in about $500,000 worth of work at the park.
The county also purchased 5 acres of flat green space, including a large post oak people sought to preserve, for $240,000 at the park’s lower end that will be used as a neighborhood park for people who live in the area, Folz said.
“Even if you’re not mountain biking, it’s a great space for you to have a picnic or to just kind of unwind at the end of the day and have a true neighborhood park to relax in,” Folz said.
It’s been eight years since the inception of the idea for the park, and the construction of the trail system took about three years, Warnock said.
Creating a trail network of this size from scratch on the side of a mountain — involving dirt and rock work, building technical components and countless volunteer hours — accounts for the length of time the park took to complete, Folz said.
“It’s been a journey to get here, and we’re all just extremely excited about getting the park open to the public and letting everybody enjoy it,” Warnock said.