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The wife and I headed North from DFW to visit the Cross Bar Ranch Off Road Park in Davis, Oklahoma yesterday. We figured the sleet and ice had melted enough to check it out.
Since we were alone and the trails were slick with mud coupled with the fact that we weren't familiar with the trails we decided to stick to the main road and the easiest parts of the trails.
Check-in is at the entrance to the park, visible from the road. If they are closed, there's a drop-box available to pay and you can fill the waiver out online.
The trails are not rated, except "Main Road", "Easy" and "Challenging". So, without a numbered rating, I'd recommend going with someone that's been through the trails or spending quite a bit of time scouting.
We were caught off guard when an "easy" trail we were going down quickly became what would be a hard 5 for a full sized vehicle. I don't know if the trail is always in this condition, or if the melting snow caused a small landslide but the trail washed out into boulders with a sheer drop off on the other side. I could see where ATVs and a couple of motor cycles went around the obstacle through the trees nearby, but there wasn't enough clearance for us to go take the alternate path.
Since we were alone we backtracked up the trail to the trail head and explored other areas of the park. We'll come back and check out "Dead Man's Slide" on another day. If we were reading the map correctly, that's the trail we were on.
There are some nice vistas through out, and you can get up pretty high in some areas, especially as you're coming into the main camp.
There are some areas of the park that are dual sloping. Some areas were as much as 14* sideways.
The GoPro doesn't do this angle justice.
There are lots of places to wheel, and quite a few places to crawl. Most of the trails are very scenic and double back onto other parts of the park or lead to the primitive campground areas.
All in all it's pretty accessible and stuff like this dots the grounds if you're looking for a little bit of fun without too much worry.
All that being said, we did NOT go on any of the "Challenging" trails, and the most narrow trails we went down were easy to back out of when we got to obstacles we didn't want to solo wheel in the mud, cold and ice.
We finally saw signs of other folks out playing as we were leaving the park. There were some hidden trails off to the left that these folks could fit down and it looked like they were having a blast.
Just down from this bend there is a staging area to unload UTVs and motorcycles.
All-in-all a fun little mud trip for the day. If you're planning on going and exploring the deeper trails, I recommend taking a buddy with recovery gear. Some of these trails are easily 3,4 and 5 rated and I saw a few areas where someone could get stuck pretty easily.
We're going to head back soon. Of course we'll be looking for others to join us and hopefully we can reach some of those trails that are off the beaten path.
Since we were alone and the trails were slick with mud coupled with the fact that we weren't familiar with the trails we decided to stick to the main road and the easiest parts of the trails.
Check-in is at the entrance to the park, visible from the road. If they are closed, there's a drop-box available to pay and you can fill the waiver out online.
The trails are not rated, except "Main Road", "Easy" and "Challenging". So, without a numbered rating, I'd recommend going with someone that's been through the trails or spending quite a bit of time scouting.
We were caught off guard when an "easy" trail we were going down quickly became what would be a hard 5 for a full sized vehicle. I don't know if the trail is always in this condition, or if the melting snow caused a small landslide but the trail washed out into boulders with a sheer drop off on the other side. I could see where ATVs and a couple of motor cycles went around the obstacle through the trees nearby, but there wasn't enough clearance for us to go take the alternate path.
Since we were alone we backtracked up the trail to the trail head and explored other areas of the park. We'll come back and check out "Dead Man's Slide" on another day. If we were reading the map correctly, that's the trail we were on.
There are some nice vistas through out, and you can get up pretty high in some areas, especially as you're coming into the main camp.
There are some areas of the park that are dual sloping. Some areas were as much as 14* sideways.
The GoPro doesn't do this angle justice.
There are lots of places to wheel, and quite a few places to crawl. Most of the trails are very scenic and double back onto other parts of the park or lead to the primitive campground areas.
All in all it's pretty accessible and stuff like this dots the grounds if you're looking for a little bit of fun without too much worry.
All that being said, we did NOT go on any of the "Challenging" trails, and the most narrow trails we went down were easy to back out of when we got to obstacles we didn't want to solo wheel in the mud, cold and ice.
We finally saw signs of other folks out playing as we were leaving the park. There were some hidden trails off to the left that these folks could fit down and it looked like they were having a blast.
Just down from this bend there is a staging area to unload UTVs and motorcycles.
All-in-all a fun little mud trip for the day. If you're planning on going and exploring the deeper trails, I recommend taking a buddy with recovery gear. Some of these trails are easily 3,4 and 5 rated and I saw a few areas where someone could get stuck pretty easily.
We're going to head back soon. Of course we'll be looking for others to join us and hopefully we can reach some of those trails that are off the beaten path.
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. I go there a lot in my Jeep and you’re right, it’s a completely different experience if you go with someone who knows the park. It’s over 10 square miles. There are people who go there every week and still haven’t seen it all.
