By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Cloudland Canyon State Park Manager Bobby Wilson says that the two new patrol bicycles recently donated to the park will shortly be fitted with small cop-style lights and other police equipment, but resists the Sentinel’s humorous suggestions that he may use the bikes to chase down speeders.

“I don’t foresee a speed limit,” said Wilson. “It’s going to be more about the rules of the road, dealing with hikers, horseback riders and the different user groups on the trails.”

Wilson spoke last week following a small dedication-ceremony-cum-photo-op at the park office as the two Trek 6700 mountain bikes were delivered. Present also at the Jan. 26 ceremony were representatives from the donors, the Lula Lake Land Trust and SORBA-Chattanooga, the local chapter of the Southern Off-Road Bike Association. 

The bikes, state-of-the-art 2010 models, were obtained at cost from Trek Bike Store of Chattanooga.

The police bikes will be used by park rangers to patrol the recently opened Long Branch Trail as well as a network of new trails due to be opened in coming months via a joint project between the park and Lula Lake Land Trust.   

The next leg of the network, a connector trail that will link Long Branch, currently accessed from Nickajack Road off Highway 157, to the park proper, will be ready for action by summer, says Michael Pollock, project manager. “It will be an additional four miles to the Long Branch Trail right there, and then there’s going to be in between 10 and 20 miles of single-track mountain biking trails, similar to what have been done up on Raccoon Mountain on TVA property,” he said.

Master trail builder Walt Hodges is currently working on trails in the old Durham Mines property, said Pollock, currently called the Five Points area. “It’s a big area,” he said. “It’s probably 5- or 600 acres.”

The Durham trails are representative of the peculiar private/public partnership between the land trust and the Georgia Department of National Resources, with most of the mileage going through DNR property but some on LLLT land, plus a small percentage through private property for which the project was able to obtain an easement.

Cloudland Canyon Park personnel will be responsible for administering and policing the whole area, and Bobby Wilson is currently hard at work on a management plan. “This is groundbreaking for us, here at this facility anyway,” he said. 

The Five Points area is slated to open for bike, foot and horse traffic by the end of the year, but that’s just the beginning, said LLLT Director Bobby Davenport, whose father’s 1994 land donation began the project.

“There are only two property owners between the Lula Lake Land Trust and the National Park Service trails below Covenant College, and they are Covenant College and my family,” said Davenport.

Davenport is pretty sure he’s got his family sewed up, and he’s talking to Covenant, he said.