Austin Texas & Mountain Biking.
A central Texas mountain bike scene is exploding right now. A real gem within Austin.
Would you believe me if I told you there are well over 150 miles of mountain biking trails in Austin Texas metro area, growing fast up to possibly 300+ miles by 2040?
The “Silicon Hills” is bucket-seated in central Texas on the Colorado River with a growing community of mountain bikers. It is one of the places you can find outside of Rocky Mountain high community of Denver, CO, and others. These mountain bikers here in Austin see Bentonville to the east in hilly Ozarks of Arkansas as the holy mountain bike mecca to make a pilgrimage to every year. Just like Denverites and Coloradoans see to the west with GJ/Fruita, CO to Moab, UT.
After being a lifelong avid skier, I had picked up mountain biking in CO again after riding bikes off of ramps as a kid. As the move to Texas from Aspen gave me some concerns about how can I keep my action sports spirit alive? I had started for the search for trails in Austin to see the feasibility of mountain biking in the area.
One of the goals was to see what the community is like in Austin. My other purpose was to see what trails were sanctioned and map them out on a platform like trailforks.com using data from Strava and mtbproject.com.
Everyone has a primary community and that community for me is the Deaf community, are there any Deaf mountain bikers I can connect with just like I did in Colorado? Yes, there are! Connecting with community members in your sport gives you and the people a holistic experience. One thing led to another.
Guess what? There are a decent amount of trails in the greenbelt water conservation areas of Austin. They are hidden from the eyes of the people walking and driving on the streets. In between streets, greenbelts are connecting every creek and river to the Colorado River; the greenbelts are in the park district of the City of Austin. In major greenbelts, there are trails of many sorts. These trails also have hikers and equestrian riders on them as well. Always respect the yield rules on the path to welcome a holistic community of trail users.
Sanctioned trails in the network are recognized, a good mountain bike trail map that maps out Austin’s single tracks can be found here on Trailforks, Strava, and MTB project. The four popular riding areas within Austin are:
- SATN (South Austin Trail Network) — A vast trail network along MoPac with Violet Crown Trail, and running parallel to Slaughter Ln. There are over 55 miles of trails in this area.
- BCGB (Barton Creek Greenbelt) — Thick, vegetive, hilly, rocky technical with some flow options. Ride up the valley walls and out on Violet Crown for a quick escape and connect to downtown Austin.
- Walnut Creek — Switchback flow trails with dirt jumps, runs around in a compact space.
- Brushy Creek — Switchback flow trails run around in a compact space, along the creek to connect to other trails.
There are several other areas, such as Pace Bend, private ranches, and lift-serviced hill bike park in Burnet, TX. There are gems out there, the trek to get there has to happen.
The picture below shows a general trail map of Austin from the trailforks.com website.
This screenshot below is just the general idea of Austin’s trails. Now I want you to understand the concentration of trails in the area better with the Strava Heat Map feature. It will paint the bigger picture better for you. As you can see, there is a high concentration of trails in the southwest area, the SATN and BCGB cluster. All the connections make for a lovely day ride with a stop at a cafe and taco food trucks. It’s perfect.
Now, a zoomed-in screenshot from the heat map on the southwest area concentration of SATN and BCGB, take a look at how much trails there are with roads and underbridge connections!
I don’t want to bat a blind eye to the north folks that make a part of the yin to the yang for all of Austin mountain biking as a whole. The Walnut Creek Greenbelt and Brushy Creek trail areas serve most of the riding north. Lake Georgetown provides some long rides around the lake.
Can’t have the best west! Here’s some great riding in the hill country that you can ride on the waterside of Lake Travis and more. The trail network in Lakeway has some pretty good elevation gains; there are tight short switchback trails that lead up to Mt. Lakeway peak next to a power line and an access road too.
And finally, my gut tells me things are brewing east of Austin. There is an Urban trail that leads from Manor northeast to east Austin along with the Walnut Creek Greenbelt parks and conservation areas. There is barely any mountain bike trail development in the area. Barely! To be honest, looking at it from a trail mapping standpoint, it’s boring out east for mountain biking, yet great for road bikes. Some action needs to be done here in the coming years; it’s going to be cool to see things unveil.
It takes a village to raise a group of avid community riders to make most of the SATN and BCGB trails on the heatmap red. This analysis tells me that the community is strong in Austin, Texas. I need to find out why.
I went out to search for a social media presence for mountain bikers in Austin. It’s surprisingly sturdy and stable. There are a few forums austinmountainbiking.com, Bike Mojo sub on Austin, and a few Facebook groups such as Austin Ridge Riders, SATN Facebook page, and more. Non-profit organizations in the area have a massive part in making things happen as well.
I wanted to see what the event scene is like here in Austin? Impressive, very impressive to find enduro events at Spider mountain, Reveille ranch, and more. There are even sanctioned bike races by USA cycling to qualify for the Olympics. A Leadville 100 qualifying race, the Austin Rattler, you can see there are some Lance Armstrong influences in the area. I do know as the fact that Lance does go back and forth from Aspen to Austin every season to chase summer and the ability to bike year-round. There are community-led events such as SATN Crank and Drank and other social rides that occur weekly that weather permits sometimes. Yearly events such as the Austin Enchilada Buffet that gives you a badass status for biking 80+ miles in a day to all major mountain bike area of Austin.
Community members and homeowners associations around Austin have an understanding in place for trails; these members have been here for a while to forge a robust two-way communication foundation. I scratch your back; you scratch mine mindset. The deeper you go, the more connections you find, a web of trails that is easily navigatable as more you build relationships with the community. It truly takes a village.
Dig deep, find your heart melted away with engagement stories. The best part is I can see the same spirit in action sports, no matter what geographical location I go.
Austin, Texas, you get my thumbs up! Keep it up and spread the stoke.
