Two Wheel Blogs

The Ouachita Challenge was a whole lot of firsts for me. Not the least among them was a whole new awakening to the concept of a rock garden.

I imagine there are other kinds of rock gardens out there. Maybe if I live long enough I'll get to see and experience a new species. The Ouachita Challenge serves up plenty enough rocks for any one lifetime though. They've got them in wide swaths and in narrow little paths, ascending and descending. The Ouachita Trail has rock gardens with switchbacks. There is even a narrow trough section where you're (in my case) walking your bike through a 2-3 feet deep trough lined with bowling ball sized boulders.

Speaking of size. I've heard the rock gardens at the Ouachita Challenge referred to as being strewn with fist-sized rocks, baby heads, monkey heads, bowling ball sized and even Volkswagen sized boulders. They're They're all true. They don't all necessarily describe the same rock garden, you see. Not only that but they vary greatly in shape. Some are rounded and relatively smooth; but many are angular. Some appear to be perfect cubes. Anything you see with a hard edge, you should also assume that edge is sharp. Hit it right and you'll be fixing a flat.

In a lot of ways the Ouachita Trail is a series of rock gardens of varying configurations joined together by awesome single track. One thing they all seem to have in common is that any given rock you choose to roll your wheel over or step on is equally likely to move as not. None of them seem to be tied down.

The photo here is just one of many rock gardens on the Ouachita Trail. I rode up to this one and looked up at the huge boulders arrayed before me and decided I should not only immediately get off my bike but also to take a picture. These rocks are huge. I spent a few minutes here watching people ride up to this pile. I didn't see a single one even attempt to ride any of it. Everyone jumped off and started walking without a second thought.

This photo is another instance where you can't really get a sense of how big this scene really is. See the bike ahead up the trail in the photo? It's a little over half way up and immediately to the right of the big tree in the left foreground of the photo. Here's a close up shot of that section of the picture:

Arkansas has some world-class rock gardens. No doubt about it.

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