Slip past Gate 1 at Enterprise South Nature Park and ease back along a trail about a quarter of a mile into the woods.
Before long, the sound of a Bobcat excavator mashing and moving brush and the voices of three men in hard hats will guide you to the site of what will soon be the newest in Chattanooga's growing network of mountain biking trails.
"This will be a more advanced cross-country trail," said Andy Sowell, a trailblazer working for the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association. "But it will have some real flowy features. Flowy is a big mountain-biking word."
Sowell and two workers from the Southeastern Conservation Corps began work last week on the 6.2-mile trail that is expected to open this spring. The new trail will be a slightly more challenging addition to the 10 miles of mountain bike trails already usable on the nature park's 2,800 acres.
The $45,000 project being funded by Hamilton County and the Benwood Foundation is adding to the approximately 120 miles of mountain bike trails SORBA maintains in and around the city that are helping solidify Chattanooga's place as a mountain biking destination.
The goal of the new Enterprise South trail is to offer new riders a bridge to some of the area's more challenging trails, one of which was featured in a national magazine this month.
Graham Averill, the same writer who penned the article that accompanied Outside Magazine's designation of Chattanooga as "Best Town Ever" in 2015, returned to the Scenic City to scope out the mountain biking scene for a recent article of Bike Magazine.
Andy Sowell of the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association uses a mini-excavator as he works on a new mountain biking trail at the Enterprise South Nature Park on Monday, Jan. 18, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn. The pink flags show the route of the trail. His chronicle of the area's mountain biking offerings starts with a third-person account of Raccoon Mountain's High Voltage trail and details of the grassroots-led expansion of the area's singletrack opportunities over the past decade.
"In a word, it's glorious," Averill concludes.
Singletrack is another term for the narrow trail that constitutes a mountain bike path, and a brief glimpse at the labor required to build a new trail is enough to dispel a feeling that local SORBA President Lee Carmichael said he often senses from the public.
"There's this notion that trails just appear out of nowhere," he said.
Dillon Brady and Alexander Gold combed through the soil with shovels and hoes in near-freezing temperatures at Enterprise South last week, configuring the unique bumps, banks and turns that differentiate a mountain bike trail from a simple hiking trail.
"The constant work keeps you warm," Brady said.
Volunteer crews are pitching in on the weekends to speed the process along.
Later on, test riders will come in and offer feedback.
"Mountain bikers are fussy," Sowell said, adding that the new trail will be rougher and more narrow than the others at Enterprise South. "They really like to have their own kind of trail. It keeps it interesting for them."
Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.