Piedmont Ridge

Piedmont Ridge

2300 Jim Miller Road

Southern entrance: 1700 Eastcliff

After a few weeks of being busy, the spirit of adventure once again stirred inside me. I took the first opportunity I could to go out, and after spending so long away from adventures, I felt like I needed to go big with this one. So I chose Piedmont Ridge as my destination, having heard about its overgrown trails and sometimes difficult terrain. After gathering a few experienced adventurers, we hit the trails.

For this trip, we had 3 main destinations in mind: the Scyene Overlook, the Piedmont Ridge Overlook, and the Comanche Storytelling Place. We decided to start north at the Scyene Overlook and make our way south hitting the Piedmont Ridge Overlook and the Comanche Storytelling Place on our way.

Scyene Overlook (Gateway Park Trails)

The trail head at the baseball field

We parked at the baseball field on Jim Miller Road, and got in through the trail head past right field. The trail was white rock for a stretch, until it opened up into a large field of tall grass. From there, there was a trail of flattened tall grass that lead around the field. We followed this trail to the south around the field, then entered the woods again. The entrance was slightly obscured by overgrowth, so we missed it the first time and had to double back. This entrance is at about 32.760420 N 96.706723 W.

Stumbling through overgrowth

Once we got into the woods, it was pretty easy for this section. We followed a well defined path to the creek, now dried up. After jumping across the creek, we came across the markers pointing to the JJ Beeman Trail and the Scyene Overlook. The JJ Beeman Trail looked too overgrown to follow and didn't lead to any of our 3 main destinations, so we went up to the Scyene Overlook. The trail was well defined in most areas, except for the occasional patch of overgrowth, which was easily passable. We soon reached an open patch of trees, where we got very confused on which path to follow. We eventually figured it out and found our way to the overlook. My camera got weird here, so I don't have any good pictures of this overlook. We confusedly made our way back down, getting sidetracked a few times on offshoot trails that lead nowhere. But soon enough, we had made our way back to the open field.

We walked back across the field and out towards the trail head, then took a detour when we found a small escarpment that seemed to lead to the Laceywood Overlook. We climbed it up and followed the trail until we came across what seemed to be the Laceywood Overlook. The trees had all grown too tall around the overlook, but I can imagine the view would be beautiful if not for these trees.

It's a lot steeper than it looks.

From the overlook we followed the trail back down another escarpment, which dropped us off on the west end of the parking lot of the baseball field.

Gateway Trails

Notes: Moderate terrain. Trails slightly overgrown, sometimes confusing to follow. Long pants and other protective clothing recommended. I give it a difficulty rating of MEDIUM.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

From there we walked over to the golf course to hike the Piedmont Ridge trail. The trail head is located near  32.755208 N 96.703108 W.

Piedmont Ridge trail head.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

This section of trail was very well maintained. The trail climbs in elevation almost immediately, following a few switchbacks that take you up a large hill. From there, it's pretty flat. The nature reminded me of New Mexico - short grass with many cedar-like trees and paddle cacti. After a few minutes of walking, the Piedmont Overlook will come up on your right.

Views from the overlook. God is great.

#Squad taking a water break at the overlook

We took a break here to take in the views and drink some water. We also decided to come back in the fall when the leaves are changing color, so hit me up if you wanna join that adventure.

After we took our break, we kept going. Eventually we went down a steep hill and were dropped off at Bruton road. We crossed the road and walked left along it until we came across the entrance to the Devon Anderson overlook trail. I had read that this section of trail was extremely overgrown, so we weren't sure if we'd be able to keep going. But it looked passable from where we were, so we decided to go at it.

This was a horrible decision.

Piedmont Ridge Trail

Notes: Steep terrain at beginning and end of trail, mostly flat otherwise. Poison ivy and oak spotted growing alongside trail, but not on it. Easy hike, relatively well maintained. Great views from overlook.

Devon Anderson Trail

Right off the bat, we were plagued with poison ivy and poison oak. But we all wore long pants, and we could still see the trail, so we kept going.

The overgrown Devon Anderson trail

The trail went up and down with a few switchbacks, nothing too difficult in terms of elevation. But the trail soon became EXTREMELY overgrown. Olivia described it perfectly when she said "it's like we're swimming through trees!" But the trail was again still at least faintly visible, and there were orange tape markers marking the trail, so we again kept pushing on. We ran into many interesting things on our walk in the woods here. A gasoline canister, a shotgun shell, a car seat, and a snakeskin the diameter of my forearm. Did NOT want to come in contact with the snake that shed that thing. The path grew narrower and narrower and changed elevation frequently as we went on. At times it felt like a hike through the Ozarks. We had finally gotten the hang of pushing through the overgrowth and keeping our eye on the faint trail, when suddenly the trail ended. We were barred on all sides by a thick wall of intertwined tree limbs, bushes, and thorn vines.

This was when everything went south.

I decided we should attempt to push through some of the overgrowth to try to find the trail again, and I walked off into the web of small trees and vines. After struggling to break through this web, I found myself in a bit of a predicament. I had accidentally gotten a vine with large and VERY sharp thorns a little too close to my face. I found myself with a large thorn stuck through my eyelid. "Crap," I said quietly to myself. I kept my cool as I calmly removed the thorn from my eyelid, not wanting to scare the others. I was eventually able to detach myself from this vine of Satan, but not without drawing a bit of blood. I give this experience 3/10 stars. Would not recommend.

The clearing where we lost the trail

We decided we had two options left - follow a short trail to the back of a complex of houses (behind Bodine Lane) and see if we can get to the street from there, or turn back and follow the trail out. We attempted the first option, but once we got to the back of the houses, the vegetation was too thick to go through. We could hop a few fences to get to the street, but this required going through a stranger's backyard, and I didn't want to deal with any angry homeowners wondering why 3 sweaty, raggedy, and bleeding teenagers were in their backyard. So we followed the trail out, crossed the road, and followed the Piedmont trail back to the golf course parking lot.

We were all pretty tired from that stressful experience, which took a good 2-3 hours. But we weren't about to leave without finding the Comanche Storytelling Place, so I drove us all down to the southern trail head at the end of Umphress Road.

We entered the woods and followed a short trail straight to the Comanche Storytelling Place, a sacred natural white rock amphitheater used by the Comanches since before European settlement. This area was very easy to find, and we were back out of the woods in less than 20 minutes.

Comanche Storytelling Place

To sum it up, this was an awesome adventure, except for when we made the mistake of following the trail past Bruton road. I do NOT recommend going past Bruton road, unless you enter through the southern trail head at around 32.741503 N 96.706558 W. From this trail head, the Comanche Storytelling Place is easily accessible. You can also head north from this trail head towards the Devon Anderson overlook before it gets too overgrown.

Devon Anderson Trail

Notes: Extreme overgrowth. Inescapable poison ivy and oak. Don't even think about going in if you don't have long pants. From the southern trail head, access to the Comanche Storytelling Place is easy. If you're gonna go in here, go through the southern trail head.

Fue Un Accidente in Arbor Hills

After a two week long hiatus, I finally was able to get back out into the wilderness of DFW. During my time away from exploring, I spent a week in Costa Rica on a mission trip, where I joined a crew of ruthless explorers and white water rafters. We called ourselves "Team Unique Bad Boys" (all name credits go to Luke "Unique Bad Boy" Parker) and after a series of mishaps adopted the slogan "fue un accidente," meaning, "it was an accident." After we returned to Dallas, we decided to have a team adventure.

Team Unique Bad Boys in Costa

We chose Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in Plano, Texas as our destination, and we went early in the morning to attempt to escape the inescapable heat of a Texan summer. We arrived at around 9:30, and quickly set off into the woods.

Trail Entrance

 We set off without much idea of where we were going. I tried to look at the map, which had marked on it the main concrete trail and a few of the natural surface trails, but I had no idea where we were on the map, so it didn't help much. We decided it would be pretty hard to get too terribly lost, especially since we had my GPS, which visually tracks our movement so we can backtrack if we get lost, so we felt comfortable just wandering around.

There were many different trails and paths to choose from once we were in the woods, and I felt a little overwhelmed at times, so I delegated the responsibility of choosing which path to take to the rest of the team. After a few minutes of walking, we came across a clear creek.

The Creek

 Our only snake encounter of the trip took place here at the creek. We saw a water moccasin slither into the water and under a log, and it left us totally alone. We took a few pictures then went on our way.

We followed the trail we were on (Indian Creek Trail?) until it let off on the main concrete trail. From there we spotted another trail off to our right, so we decided to follow it. About 15 minutes or so after we entered this trail, we realized that it was actually a mountain bike trail. We decided it would be safest to get off of the bike trail, so we don't risk getting plowed into by a speeding mountain bike. The only problem was that the mountain bike trails were each somewhere around 3 miles in length with no intersecting paths or turnoffs. If we wanted to get off the path in the next hour, our only option was to turn around. So we turned around and made our way back to the concrete trail, which we then followed up to the pavilion for a bathroom and water break.

After taking our break, we made our way back into the woods and followed a rather hilly combination of paths on the north side of the park for about an hour, until it crossed over the creek and lead to a pavilion called Fort Arbor. We stopped here for a water break and ate some Chikys, a popular Costa Rican cookie bar, that Blake had brought with him. From there, we followed the Riparian Loop Trail until it connected with the Outer Loop Trail. We took this trail back to the concrete main trail, and followed that for a while, taking minor detours through natural surface trails every time we saw one.

It's hard to see, but this tree is growing out over a 15 foot drop. I'm making this stupid face because I slipped and almost fell in.

Olivia living life on the edge.

We eventually made our way to the lookout tower, a small pavilion on the edge of a steep incline that looks out over the whole park. We stopped here and ate some oranges we had brought, reflected on the beauty of nature, and shared some favorite memories from our trip to Costa. We spent a total of about 15-20 minutes here, then kept going.

The Lookout Tower

A mesquite tree on the prairie

 We made our way to the Outer Loop Trail again, and followed it along the outskirts of the preserve for a while. It took us through a prairie on the west side of the preserve, and the openness was well received.

The prairie

This trail eventually lead alongside train tracks before reentering the forested area. We decided to detour onto a loop trail that lead into the forest then met back up with the Outer Loop Trail, but as we got into the forest, there were many different loosely defined paths, and we couldn't pick out which one was the right one. In the true spirit of our slogan, "fue un accidente," we got lost in a poison ivy infested patch of heavily wooded forest. Using the tracking feature of my GPS, I lead us back to the main trail, and we found our way out, but we were all pretty certain we had gotten poison ivy. Luckily, none of us ended up getting a rash, though. 

After this close call, we were ready to call it a day. We made sure there weren't any areas we had left completely unexplored, then headed to Sonic to reward ourselves for a long day of adventure. 

YOUR TURN

If you liked what you saw with this adventure, you can head out to Arbor Hills and explore it for yourself! Arbor Hills Nature Preserve is located at 6701 W Parker Road, Plano, Texas. It's about a 30 minute drive from downtown Dallas. There is a concrete trail that loops through the whole park and natural surface trails that branch off from this trail everywhere. You could easily spend an entire day walking every trail. The park is kid friendly, with a playground near the front pavilion. The park also has a long system of bike trails - the only place bikes are permitted in the park. Bring lots of sunscreen, bug spray, and water, and consider bringing a hiking stick. I used my hiking stick heavily on my adventure here to keep me from slipping on rocks and to push poison ivy and stickers out of the way so I can pass safely. If you plan on off-roading, consider wearing long protective pants, as there was a lot of poison ivy off of the main trail. There are also snakes, but I didn't have any problems with them.