Wichita bike shop owner leads effort for new bike trails at El Dorado State Park

To the average person, it may seem that to have mountain biking in Kansas, the state is lacking one key component: mountains.

However, that has not stopped Bicycle Pedaler owner Tyler Branine from developing intermediate trails just outside of Wichita at El Dorado State Park, and he and a band of volunteers have more to come.

“It’s everything that we hoped it would be,” he said of the first 5.5-mile trail they opened in April. “It creates a next level of challenge versus anything . . . within an hour of Wichita. Probably longer than that.”

He and his team are now in the design phase for another 7 miles of trails at the park, and work will start in November after the growing season is complete.

Even before buying the Bicycle Pedaler in early 2021, Branine has long been involved in biking pursuits, including serving as a past president of the Kansas Singletrack Society, a nonprofit advocacy in Wichita that services trails from Arkansas City to the Fall River Reservoir.

Before that, he said he’d “been living in places that have significantly more developed trail systems.”

Now, Branine lives in El Dorado, and he said he regularly had to drive a ways to work on his technical biking skills.

“We just don’t have a place where you can practice that stuff.”

Previously, Branine helped plan and lead the build project for the 4.2-mile active beginner mountain bike trail at Santa Fe Lake in Augusta.

He then went in search of something more challenging.

“There was an old mountain bike trail at El Dorado, maybe a mile long,” Branine said. “I rode on that, and it helped me kind of see what was back there and I guess inspired me to engage with (park) personnel to see if they had an appetite to kind of let me start from scratch.”

Park manager Jacob Riley immediately was interested and said their interests aligned on several fronts.

“Cycling is one of those sports, like pickleball, where it’s just exploding.”

He said it’s something people of all ages and walks of life can do. Plus, since Riley arrived at the park in 2021, he’d been wanting a facelift for the park’s trails.

“I can’t say enough good things about Tyler and his team and the cycling community that come out,” Riley said. “They have a lot of respect for the park. They are great stewards.”

Branine said Riley had been discussing ways to improve positive traffic to the lake. As health-minded and resource-minded people who don’t leave trash, Branine said bikers made sense to court, especially since they clean and maintain trails instead of leaving it to park management.

Branine said Riley smoothed the way with the Army Corps of Engineers.

From the time Branine started talking with the park in May 2022, it took about five months to get to the point where he was authorized to build.

In addition to help from the park and corps of engineers, the Kansas Trails Council and Kansas Singletrack Society bolstered tooling and volunteerism for the build.

“Overall, there’s just a sense of reward,” Valley Center resident Randy Black said of building something that is going to last.

He helped with the first trail and plans to assist with the next one, too.

For others who want to volunteer, Black said he recommends some good gloves and a full bottle of ibuprofen.

“A few sore muscles and aches and pains are pretty normal after a trail day.”

Branine has been through trail solutions courses with the International Mountain Bicycling Association, which teaches people to build sustainable multiuse trails over various terrains.

He did his first in Bentonville, Ark., more than a decade ago and also helped put on another one in 2016 at Camp Horizon in Arkansas City.

Riley said this trail has been one of the only projects he’s seen that has had no criticism, even from surrounding land owners.

“They’re loving it,” he said. “It’s definitely given us a great way to be enticing and inviting to outdoor enthusiasts.”

‘Physically demanding’

Building a mountain biking trail is harder than the biking that follows.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Branine said. “It’s very, very physically demanding.”

More than 50 volunteers put in more than 1,000 hours of work on the trail.

For the initial build, Branine was the main planner.

First, he studied the topography of the area.

“You determine what would be the best general lines for a bike trail, and then you go out there and actually walk it so you can see the more minute details.”

Then, Branine walked the potential course with GPS several times to record the route.

During that period, he said he was looking for good examples of where to map the course, then he flagged it with colored ribbon every 20 feet throughout entire trail. The ribbons told him which way to orient the course.

“We mark the trail, and then we rough cut the trail.”

Branine and volunteers went through with brush hogs, trimmed trees, moved rocks and smoothed trail beds.

For the first El Dorado course, they used a variety of machines, he said, “But most of it’s hand built.”

The volunteers had specific guidelines to work within.

“Most of the time, we tried to avoid taking any trees,” Branine said.

He had to get permission for anything they removed or for any chemicals they used.

Branine said the course was designed to have minimal interference with equestrian trails. There are two 90-degree intersections that the bike and horse trails share, but that’s it.

“Other than that, we didn’t have a lot of parameters as far as trail design.”

Riley said he and Branine have the same philosophy on using minimum impact trail building.

“It’s just highlighting and utilizing the natural features of the land,” Riley said. “You do not alter the features of the land.”

‘Pretty significant, really’

When designing a mountain bike trail, particularly a more challenging one, Branine said diversity on the trail is important.

“Every time you experience a different type of trail bed, you can design the trail to ride differently,” he said.

“They’re riding on dirt, they’re riding on rocks.”

There might be a dip in one spot followed by a rock shelf followed by a tree to go around.

Some rocks are broken up, and some are large slabs that allow riders to take drops — “a literal drop-off, like a 90-degree edge that you ride your bike off of,” Branine said.

This trail has five drops.

“Those are features that people ride off of elsewhere that we don’t have on our local trails,” Branine said.

He said the soil composition is pretty rocky, not simply flat or muddy, and it handles water well. It can be ridden within a day of rain.

There is more than 1,000 feet of elevation gain, which Branine called “pretty significant, really.”

“We want to use climbs and descents to enhance the climb experience.”

There are also what Branine described as ride flow sections, which are “sections of the trail allow you to mostly use gravity to motivate the bike.”

“The turns are specially designed to allow you to accelerate.”

As bikers accelerate through corners, he said they “flow versus having to work hard.”

There are “undulations to push and gain speed instead of pedaling to gain speed.”

“It’s like a roller coaster.”

‘Something for everybody’

When Nicole Lindeman returned to Wichita after becoming a mountain biker in Georgia and Texas, she said she had one reaction:

“Man, these trails are kind of flat.”

That’s why she became an enthusiastic supporter of Branine’s efforts and hit the El Dorado trail to help.

“It has a little bit of something for everybody, so that’s what I like,” said Lindeman, who said she’s still learning the more technical aspects of the sport.

She said Branine is “really good at getting folks to participate and want to be engaged” on trail building, even on blustery 30-degree days.

“It’s not the most glamorous thing, but it’s very rewarding,” Lindeman said.

As a board member with the Kansas Singletrack Society, she said, “I’m trying to drum up more awareness of how trails come to fruition — how they’re built and how they’re maintained.”

The build for the second trail, which will be about 7 miles, will be different than the first in a couple of ways.

The initial phase of the first trail development was all Branine. Now, there is a committee, which he said he appreciates.

“More minds are better minds. Something like that.”

Also, he said, there are several sections of the new trail that have been identified for machine building instead of doing it by hand. Now that the first trail is successful, Branine said there are even more offers of tools and equipment plus volunteers.

“We’ll take them up on those offers.”

Anyone interested in volunteering should follow Kansas Singletrack Society on social media. The Wichita Area Mountain Biking Facebook page also will post work days.

Branine hopes to have the new trail ready by April.

He and Riley are planning future trails, too.

Riley said they dream of a 20-mile trail for everyone from beginners to advanced riders.

Branine said it’s hard to find places to build trails in Kansas.

“You can drive across Kansas and see a lot of places that would be great to have a mountain bike trail, we just don’t have access to it. . . . We just need champions to build that stuff here.”

He and Riley both credit each other and the volunteers.

“I love seeing people like that that have the passion for these projects,” Riley said. He said it’s clear they “will follow through and deliver on what they promise.”

It will take one year at a time, but Riley said, “We have high aspirations — high hopes for this for a long time.”

Lindeman said she likes that Branine is “wanting to take it up another notch” one day with races and campouts at the park.

“We could get people from out of state coming here,” she said. “That would be neat to put our mark on the map.”