Mountain bikers have opinions about flow trails. They’re fast and fun. They’re sterile and boring. They’re great for all skill levels. They’re not challenging enough. Tell us where you land!
Bonus question for the comment section: Why do you like or dislike about flow trails?
Flow trails are great, but not as great as natural trails that flow well. All mountain biking is great though.
Not my end all, be all favorite – but definitely a good time.
Flow trails get boring really quickly. Not to mention that very few of them hold up well to the elements. I prefer trails that flow, not flow trails.
Sounds void of features. Unfortunate.
Flow trails are a double-edged sword. On one side they draw in new riders, are easy to make and require very few people to build them. One the other side, they tend to fall apart quickly, they often do not drain well, they take longer to re-open and worst of all they get boring very quickly. Specifically I can point to The Mill at Rope Mill Park and a number of sections of trails at Blankets Creek Park. The commander here Mr Barber should be quite familiar with these as like me he too is an ATL metro native.
As to these trails being void of features, that is not true as they are filled with table tops, berms and g-outs. It is the aforementioned negatives that I do not care for, but predominately their Dingo/backhoe built smoothness that I don’t like. The trails at The Mill do not require an aggressive tire tread at all and they could be ridden well even on a road bike with maybe slightly wider slick tires.
Admittedly, I’m an old fart, but that kind of stuff isn’t mountain biking to me (Cue Old Man yells at Clouds meme). FWIW, my long time favorite local and home base trail is Big Creek in Roswell, GA. It drains and re-opens faster than any other metro trail system. That said they’ve built some flow jump lines (Hawkeye and now Hollywood) there and to no surprise they require more maintenance, take longer to dry and reopen. The rest of Big Creek is all old school hand cut singletrack, filled with rocks, roots and plenty of gnar. It is in fact the most hectic tread of any metro ATL trails and consequently is not as popular often getting derisive comments about its washboard-like singletrack on assorted social media. It is this type of terrain that I prefer that demands you to be a good technical rider. These trails are as noted harder to build, but IMHO worth the time and efforts.
Boulder and log pile bike! Yus, I ride trials…
My comment was inspired by the first statement since it points to the mindset that some folks have of flow trail.
Life is good at 7,000′!!
Most of the flow trails in my area are man-made bike park flow. They’re very fun, but also very short. They can get old after a while. I’ll take a sprawling cross country singletrack any day of the week.
I like flow trails to get a fast pace workout. It is all about speed for me on flow trails.
Riding flow trails is like skiing groomers
I enjoy any trail where I don’t have to hit the pedals much.
There fun but I really enjoy old school rooty rocky steep gnarly riding with tons of drops and jump. Sections where you have to run down knife edge rocks. This is where skill come into play.