Dan Casey

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As stream crossings go, it was a tough one. The narrow red clay trail rose briefly before plunging into a rocky rivulet. On the opposite bank, the damp path climbed steeply for at least 25 feet through a thick green jungle.

Josh Meltzer, who had been hobbled by mechanical problems, and I, a confirmed chicken, had opted to cross this 6-foot wide stream by hopping the rocks on foot, our bikes held aloft. But Ian Webb was determined to ride it.

Webb backed up his bike, tightened his grip on the end of his handlebars and launched toward the water. The front wheel dipped in with a splash, then he yanked his handlebars upward. They pitched left and his back wheel slid out toward the right. Without any traction, the bike stopped dead. After three tries, he sighed and pushed his painted pony to the other side.

That was the lowlight of our Sunday afternoon at Explore Park -- that is, until we ran out of water a couple of miles later in the 93-degree heat. But there were plenty of highlights, too.

Fantasy meets reality

Imagine, if you would, a system of single-track trails where almost all the switchbacks are ridable, most stream crossings are navigable and the trail obstacles are jumpable. Imagine also that there also is an elaborate, air-conditioned visitors center with clean bathrooms and cold water. And that next door is a fine restaurant, perfect for that post-ride pit in your empty stomach, or wetting your parched gullet with a frosty beer.

It sounds like a marijuana-induced fantasy dreamed up by some landlocked surf bums following hard day's ride -- the ideal place to mountain bike that will never, ever exist. But such is the trail system at Explore, a historical interpretive park set on thousands of wooded acres off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Roanoke County.

Between the time it was merely an idea, in the mid-1980s, and its long-awaited opening in the mid-1990s, Explore's identity changed greatly. It was conceived as a massive economic development project -- an enormous amusement park sporting hotels and a conference center that would draw hundreds of thousands of business and recreational tourists to the Roanoke Valley each year.

But the funding necessary to pull off that audacious dream never materialized, and plans for Explore were vastly scaled back. For years, its development limped along on meager state and local appropriations and some private fundraising. For a brief period in 1994, the Disney company flirted with setting up a theme park there after canceling its Disney America project in Northern Virginia's Haymarket area. But Disney also took a powder on Explore.

The park ended up as an outdoor museum of the American frontier, with nice walking trails in woods that lead to a handful of outdoor exhibits staffed by actor-interpreters in period costumes. In 1998, a long, broad entranceway from the Blue Ridge Parkway was opened. In 1999, the historic Brugh Tavern, transplanted from Botetourt County, began serving meals and drinks. Meanwhile, thousands of beautifully wooded acres remained virtually untouched.

Into that breach stepped a some bright mountain bikers, led by John Bolling. A manager at a Roanoke Valley auto dealer, Bolling saw the potential for all those shady acres. Over a few years, he organized a scores of volunteers, secured funding from the Subaru auto company, and invited International Mountain Bike Association representatives to conduct classes in trail-building.

The result is the roughly 10 miles of mostly single-track trails that snake through more than 1,000 acres between the park's headquarters and the Roanoke River far below. And each June, Explore and Suburu jointly host a mountain biking festival that draws dirt-loving guys and gals by the hundreds.

"This trail system," Bolling said, "especially when all 30 proposed miles have been created, will provide a wonderful place to ride right here at home. It's a real boon for all those bicyclists who, until now, have been forced to drive to North Carolina or West Virginia for a weekend of trail riding. I see a large, varied audience for it."

Something for everyone

But the true beauty of this mountain biking jewel lays not in its pristine woods, nor at the fancy restaurant at the end of the ride or in the cool and sparkling-clean bathrooms inside its visitors' center. Rather, it's in a simple, appeal-to-the-masses concept.

Bolling and his dedicated crew of volunteers have cut three levels of trail -- beginner, intermediate and expert, the kind of thing ski areas in the east and west mastered long ago. The trails are marked (although not that well, yet) mapped (available at the visitors' center) and they all lead back into each other (hard to get lost). It's unlike any other mountain biking ground in Western Virginia that I'm aware of.

Dan Casey | The Roanoke Times

Josh Meltzer, followed by Ian Webb, takes a spin on the 'beginner' trail. It's a bit more than a mile long and mostly rock free.

What it all boils down to is Explore is a place where there's no good excuse NOT to try off-road riding, if you haven't, or to sharpen your skills at it, if you're rusty, or to merely have a fun romp in the woods, if you're a mountain biking stud or stud-ess.

The ride

Webb, Meltzer and I took the trails from easiest to hardest. The one-mile beginner trail is a twisty, up-and-down romp on some freshly cleared trail between two of the park's parking lots. It's single track (narrow), but not so hard to negotiate (or "technical," in mountain bike-speak) that I would be disinclined to take my 9-year-old daughter on it. It's a fairly speedy loop, and a good one on which to gain some trail-riding self-confidence.

The real fun came with the intermediate loop. This was Explore's first trail. It is it's longest, and for my money, it is the best. This narrow swath is well-cleared single-track, and it's largely free of my personal mountain-biking bane: loose rock. It's full of tight switchbacks, but they aren't so tight as to be unridable. I'm a certified pro at falling on the really bad ones, like out at Craig County's Dragon's Back, but I can ride these. Wooden bridges have been thoughtfully erected at the difficult stream crossings, and care has been taken to build water bars (large dirt humps) in erosion-prone sections of the trail. If you pick up a little speed before you hit these bars, you can catch some air.

Finally, we came to the expert trail. This is the newest trail at Explore. It snakes its way down to the banks of the Roanoke River parallels the river for a short distance, then heads back up.

An experienced, fit mountain biker would find plenty of challenge in this trail. Webb could do almost all of it. Meltzer could have, if his bike hadn't nearly broken into pieces halfway through the ride. For me it was too much. I'm a little too old and carrying about 40 pounds too many to enjoy a trail like that in 93-degree heat. After a long climb up off the river, we more or less got close to the top, ran out of water, and out of an abundance of caution against heat exhaustion, got off the trail and took a road roughly two miles back to the parking lot.

Details

Explore is open from April through October. There is no fee for mountain biking there. Parking is also free. There's a water fountain inside the visitors' center, where you can pick up a map. The trails are patrolled intermittently. Helmets are required. They have a Web site, too.

To get there from Roanoke, go up Mill Mountain on the Fishburn Parkway, following it all the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway, take a left (north) and go 6 miles until you see the signs.

Most of the trails at Explore are narrow single-track. This is one of the exceptions, an old road through the woods that volunteer trail builders have cleared to add to the trail system. This downhill is a fast ride. It's part of the 'intermediate' loop.