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.