Lebanon Hills Mountain Biking Trail

If you like mountain biking, another great place that you should check out is Lebanon Hills.  Lebanon Hills park is located in Eagan, MN with the trail head located here.  If you haven’t mountain biked before on these single tracks, check out our post on Murphy-Hanrehan Mountain Biking Trail for all those necessary preparation steps.  The park features nearly 10 miles of single track mountain biking trails and continues to be expanded. 

Over the last couple of years, a lot of work has been done to the mountain biking park with a new parking lot, restrooms, water fountain, terrain park and trails.  The new pavilion (on the right) was built this year and is really nice.  Overall, I have to say that the water fountain with a bottle tap was my favorite since this trail always manages to tire me out.  As this trail has gained popularity, the new parking lot adds room for more cars since it was sometime difficult to find a spot on nice weekend days with the old parking lot.

One of the new additions is the skills park that’s located right by the trail head pavilion.  There’s always quite a few youngsters in this area testing their balance and building up on the biking skills.  It’s a cool section to get prepared for all of the obstacles to come…

After leaving the skills park, you can keep warming up on the beginner trail.  The beginner trail winds around and opens up into a field with three different trails to pick including continuous jumps or turns.  Since this section of the park was new to me, I actually ended up taking a wrong turn and went through the whole beginner trail again.  While the trails are pretty well marked, I’d recommend studying the trail map to help you follow the route through the park and make sure you don’t go in any circles like I did.  Luckily this section of the trail is only 0.8 miles long.

After the beginners trail, you’ll get on the intermediate trail which is called “Dream II”.  In this section of the trail, you can hit some pretty good speeds while enjoying the scenery of this beautiful park.  Due to the high usage, there were some sections of the trail that have the “washboard” feel.  This caused me to take the corners a bit slower than other places such as Murphy-Hanrehan since my tires would leave the trail even with the dual suspension.  After going through the intermediate trails that contain numerous tree roots, rocks and turns, you reach the first entrance to the section called the X Loop. 

This section features a lot of technical features which lets you test your balance while slowing down the speed a bit.  The picture on the right shows the start of the trail which gives a good representation of how technical the rest of this path is.  Expect multiple log piles, jumps and rocks while biking through this section.  If you’re newer to mountain biking, you might want to stick to the intermediate path using the “intermediate out” trail instead of the X Loop.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can take the XX loop which is marked as “Expert” which features a number of really challenging trails.  One section of this trail is covered by some difficult rock runs which love to hit the bike gears and pedals for those like me who don’t have perfect balance.  In this path, there were a few times where I was walking the bike since the trail was too difficult for me to ride on.  My recommendation on this section is if you’re looking for speed, I’d probably stick to the intermediate trails to cruise.  If you’re looking to test you balance and technical abilities (and also how well you bike is made), the X and XX loop will give you a number of great challenges.

Once you’re done with either the Intermediate Out or the X Out, you’ll get on the Dream Trail which is probably my favorite trail. This trail allows you to pick up speed and take quite a few switchbacks coming down hill.  Even if you’re tired after the expert sections, I’d still recommend that you take this trail since it’s just a fun way to end the trip.  If you’re too tired to try, you can also take the expert loop back to the parking lot.  As this section of the trail goes around a small lake, you also get to ride on a few cool bridges which helps keep you out of the wet areas.

After all that riding you’ll be back at the parking lot (probably exhausted like I was).  One of the last pictures that I have for you is the hidden gnome sitting on a tree over a swap.  He caught the corner of my eye while I was riding and had to get a picture of him.  If anyone else can find the gnome on this trail, reply back to this post and we’ll forever think you’re awesome for also finding him:)

Hope you enjoy your riding and we’d love your perspective on Lebanon Hills if you have anything to share!

Joe