Mountain Biking Deer Grove

Yesterday after church, I headed over to Deer Grove Forest Preserve for some mountain biking. For 20 years, this forest was a mere 3 miles from my house and served as my main biking and hiking venue. Now that I've moved, I still return several times a year to revisit what I consider the best mountain biking locale in the northern Chicagoland area. (Click to enlarge map.)


Sure, Crystal Lake has its Veteran's Acres/Stearns Woods complex, but it lacks mileage. Lake County has made gargantuan additions to its forest preserve holdings and added amenities to many of its preserves the last 2 decades, thanks to 3 voter supported bond referenda, but though they have dedicated areas for horse riding, snowmobiling, cross country skiing, and dog exercising, they still have no single-track area for mountain bikers.

So Deer Grove remains the best mountain biking around. They "civilized" large portions of the loop trail several years ago, adding gravel to eliminate the rocks and roots and ruts, but they didn't re-engineer the trail, so the same places that had erosion issues in the past, still have them, though the runoff gullies are now gravel. Three sections have lengthy re-routes which are single-track dirt through tight, dense foliage, and these sections are the highlights of the trail now, but the dirt gets muddy after rain, but a "mountain bike trail" feel is returning to the terrain in many places. It was a wonderful ride as I biked 12 hilly miles on both sides of Quentin Road, carefully negotiating the washouts and mud areas, as well as dealing with 5 downed trees, the worst of which is seen below...



One of the re-routes had a volunteer trail crew dealing with a large mud area, so I stopped and talked with the leader, Rick, who is the president of the north area of "cambr" -- the Chicago Area Mountain Bikers -- a large group dedicated to expanding and improving the mountain biking venues in the Chicagoland area. Great work, guys -- work that is much needed and much appreciated!