Is it legal to ride a mountain bike on the Lone Star Trail? I'm wanting to do a little bikepacking this summer with the family.

only hiking is allowed on the LSHT. you wouldn't want to ride a bike on it anyways. it gets really over grown in places and downed limbs are common. there is a multi-use trail in the forest and there's the Double Lake Bike Trail.

multi use trails info:
http://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/texas/recreation/bicycling/recarea/?recid=71012&actid=24

[This message has been edited by YellowPot_97 (edited 3/27/2014 11:25p).]

That stinks. I'm wanting to do a little bikepacking and there aren't any long trails for biking in Texas.

One of the caprock canyons trails is 60+miles. Old railroad bed.

Hill Country State Natural Area 30+ miles. Mixed trail.

Well, heck, here is a link to a lot of trails in TX.

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_bk_k0700_0715.pdf

there are 85 or so miles or multiuse trails in the Sam Houston. in Big Bend Ranch State Park I believe bikes are allowed on most if not all trails.

I have some friends who were working on trying to open up LST to bikes, and what they found was that it was so poorly maintained that biking it would be a real problem. They figured that opening it to bikes would improve maintenance (by riders) but that was met with heavy resistance from hikers.

Same guys do a ride that includes both Double Lake and HSP trails, and small roads in between. I'll try to find details.

We used to do the same between Rocky Hill Ranch in Smithville and Bluff Creek Ranch in Warda and call it the Gutbuster. Years later, they modified the route, made it a race and called it the Excrucuating Exam or Torture Test. Both of those options are only about a half a day, though.

Another possiblilty is to pick up a Texas Backroads Atlas and look around. There are tons of backroads that you could probably link up together between other state parks without dealing with many cars or even pavement.

If your family are decent riders, you would have a blast up in Arkansas by linking the Womble and Ouachita Trails. Great camping also and definitely worth the drive up there.

As said above, the Caprock Canyons rails to trails has camping areas. Though the section from Quitaque to Estelline is probably not open. I don't think there's enough money/traffic to justify maintaining it.

If you want to camp and mountain bike, Palo Duro Canyon has lots of mountain bike trails.