The George Bush Bike Trail showing the flood line on the trees, the scraped off mud and a clean bike trail!
One of my standard longer rides is a 50 mile circuit that goes north along farm road 1464 to George Bush Park and Barker Dam.
George Bush Park encompasses the headwaters of Buffalo Bayou and also acts as a major drainage area for flood plains, street drainage and small streams leading into the Bayou from north and west of the Houston/Katy area. The park encloses and area roughly 12 miles long and about 3 miles wide. The Barker Dam is an U-shaped earth dam which encloses the flood basin for the bayou on the north, east, and south sides for about 7 miles. At the eastern end of the dam the bike trail which runs through the park and runs along the base of the dam connects with the Terry Hershey Park Bike and Hike trail which runs along the Buffalo Bayou from highway 6 to the Sam Houston Tollway another 7 miles to the east.
Between early June and mid July, Houston had 40+ days of heavy rain. Since then it has been basically dry.
One of the results of the many days of rain is that this particular route has been flooded out. Until About two weeks ago,the bike path through George Bush Park, roughly the middle 1/3 of the route was covered with anywhere from 3" to 6' of water, depending on it's proximity to the Bayou. The entire area strongly resembled a wet lands, including massive amounts of wading and shore birds. The bike path was submerged under the water and the fields on either side were flooded as well. The parking lots of the soccer fields , the playing fields and the Millie Bush Dog Park were also under water of one depth or another.
Since then it has been drying, the water has been receding and the area has been left covered with a thick layer of mud and debris. The grass in all the fields is brown and debris choked and the trees all show a 4 to 5 foot flood line.
When I tried to ride the route last week, although the area was drained out and drying, the bike path was covered with several inches of rutted mud which had been ridden through while wet but had since dried into a entangled web of tire ruts which were of a cement like, tire slicing consistency. I turned back and found a different route to ride for the sake of my new bike and its' new tires.
Today, for the first time in nearly two months, the path is open, cleaned off and dry although there are still ditches of water and mud along both sides but with the entire 9 miles through George Bush and the additional 7 miles along the base of Barker Dam dry, clean and accessible.
The Bike Hike trail through Terry Hershey park is another nice 14 mile loop. Long sections of it are shaded by tall trees and the terrain contains a nice variety of gentle slopes and flat stretches. East of Dairy Ashford road, the path has some interesting chicanes and some rather surprising swoops up and over with a curve on the other side along with at least one rather challenging zig zag ramp to the crossing below one of the major cross road. There is also a very short, steep climb with a sharp curve half way up which I have yet to get the rhythm of shifting on and invariably end up standing on the bike or getting off and walking the last 25 feet.
Terry Hershey Park is a popular park and on weekends the Bike Hike trail is busy with pedestrians, families with dogs and couples with strollers. This makes the ride slow enough to count as a pleasant weekend leg stretcher but is not conducive to speed and steady tempo. During the week the path is much quieter and it is possible to ride the hills and vallies, swoops and swerves pretty much at speed.
So there and back again made a pleasant 50 mile circuit, with enough room to do the first and the last third at speed and cadence and the middle third at a nice tourist recovery rate.
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