The Deer Grove Bike Trail Photos
Rugged Unpaved Sections

I'm sure you can't read this from the photo, but this is one of the "No Horses, No Bikes" signs, off of the main path. They had some hiking only paths in this area too.

Fallen trees are very common along the DG "mountain" trails... Here's the About-Bicycles mascot (Dale) carrying his Trek hybrid over one of the smaller obstructions. Keep in mind this is before the trail improvements that were made a few years ago. The trails are better groomed, wider and have more of a crushed stone surface but trees fall where they will and there is still a possibility of running across trees and large branches on these trails.

Here's one of the purple trail markers and a view of that trail. The purple trail is just a very short section that connects the yellow (the longest loop) with the orange (the abandon Forest Preserve road).

This is the trail intersection sign for the yellow and purple trails. This is an important intersection if you want to head over the the orange section, which is a really nice part of the trail system in Deer Grove. Take the Purple to go to the abandon Forest Preserve area and ravines (the orange section), or just stay on the yellow to go around all of DG west on the mountain trails.

This is how the unpaved trails in Deer Grove looked prior to the trail upgrades. They were mostly just dirt paths. This was fine in dry weather but could get messy, difficult and practically impassable in wet weather.

You will also find the "letter" trail markers on these back woods trails, but I find them much harder to make sense of and to follow... I'm sure there is some logic to them and they do make good landmarks to help you keep track of where you are... or have been...