After years of planning, advocacy work, arm-wringing, fundraising & eventually building, the Bailey’s Trail System at Wayne National Forest is officially open for riding! I could do a whole post on the history of the project and what eventually brings this sort of idea to life but for now, I’d like to focus on first ride & overall impressions of the first phase of Baileys.
Chauncey, pronounced more like “Chancy”, is host to the main trailhead for the Baileys system. Just past the Wayne National Forest Park headquarters & visitor center on 33 South, there’s an exit for SR 682 which takes you into Chauncey. For us driving from Delaware, Ohio, it’s about a 90 minute drive on a quiet Sunday morning. You’ll turn left at the gas station onto SR 13 (Converse Street) where after about half a mile, on the left, on the other side of the train tracks, you’ll see the Chauncey-Dover Community Park. Turning left just past the park, crossing the tracks & taking an immediate left puts you at the trailhead. Future plans call for more facility development at the park including restrooms, running water, changing rooms, etc., but for now, there’s a covered picnic pavilion and some playground equipment and a fresh gravel path that leads you into the trail system.
The trailhead at Bailey’s is ~5 minutes off 33 making it really easy to get to. There were maybe a dozen or so vehicles there already with only a few defined parking spaces. Really, don’t overthink the parking. Lots of room on the gravel access road and the grassy area so find a spot & throw it in park.
Baileys will eventually be a network of nearly 90 miles of trails. Best described as a ‘stacked loop’, the trails closest to the parking lot are designated beginner friendly and progressively get more advanced the further you go. There are currently ~14 miles of trails open and I think beginner/intermediate is a fair description. The trail maps use a familiar green-blue-red guide: green=beginner, blue=intermediate, red=advanced, black=uh oh. All the trails we rode were either green or blue, mostly blue.
The trails are professionally machine built. What does this mean? Well, it means people who build mountain bike trails for a living built it with mini-excavators, Bobcats & such but the implications for riders is that it’s a pretty sweet ride. Hand-built trail tends to be narrow, in most cases 1-2 feet wide. Machine built tends to be wider, 3-5 feet, giving riders a more open corridor. For those of us who consider Alum Creek home, these trails are luxuriously wide. You won’t slalom around trees barely clearing your bars: it’s a different style of riding and it is a blast.
The other thing about machined trails is the flow. When it comes to trails, flow is created when the trail takes a rider down-hill and then captures that speed to move them back up the grade in a roller-coaster type movement. Flow is best created on machined trails because you have to move a LOT of dirt to make it happen. Nobody in their right mind wants to move that much dirt by hand. The fun part about a ‘flowy’ trail is the downhills are sustained and you can’t help but smile but also the uphills seem more forgiving. Because it’s typically not a long, sustained climb, the dips in the trail giving you a few seconds of sustained effort followed by a few seconds of reprieve. This type of trail literally has uphill flow. You can climb pretty fast and it doesn’t feel like you’re gaining as much elevation as you do.
Just a few words about elevation… we started the week spending a few days at one of my favorite places to ride, Brown County, Indiana. When comparing my GPS files, Baileys actually had MORE elevation per mile than Brown County. In many ways, for those of you familiar with Brown County, that’s probably a good reference point for the Baileys Trail System and pretty high praise right out of the gate! The trails reminded me of the terrain, elevation & flow of Brown County. (If only we could get Big Woods Pizza to open a shop in Chauncey, I’d be making fewer trips west.)
Like all first trips to a new trail, we stopped frequently at intersections to check our position on a map. We ran into a couple of locals & chatted them up a bit. We climbed, we ripped some downhills, we found some dodgy switchbacks that kept us on our toes. All in all, we had a great ride! I won’t bore you with the details of every trail section because I’d rather encourage you to go to Bailey’s and experience it for yourself!
Only being open a week, the trails were definitely in their break-in period. In fact, since we were there, trail builders have already returned to touch up a few spots that didn’t do so well during the spring rains. As the trail continues to get ridden in, these sections will harden up and better handle drainage.
Baileys is just a really fun ride! The terrain is definitely the star and it’s a trail that riders of all abilities will enjoy. Advanced riders will love ripping the fast flowing downhills with the occasional jump opportunity while novice riders will appreciate the generously wide trail corridor and machined ride surface. This really is a great trail for the whole family from novice to expert.
The Baileys Trail System has a very bright future as the next phases of development are already underway. For those of us who have been following the development of Bailey’s, it’s amazing to see this project come to life as a top notch trail system gets built such a short distance away! But don’t wait for the next 70+ miles to be built, get there now and check it out for yourself! It’s definitely worth the drive.
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