Oleta River State Park

Amazing area for being right in the city , full suspension helped get over roots .
Overall dry conditions

it is a good trail. A lot of roots though, hardtails might become a little uncomfortable and you might need to stand most of the time

Very good trail for beginners. Even the advance trail is fairly duable for beginners.

4

Fun park with a wide variety of terrain !

Oleta River is a love/hate kind of deal. Let me start by saying it is worth riding, without a doubt. To me it's a 4/5. Great challenges but it does lack a few characteristics.

The terrain is monotonous. Roots, sand, rocks and it is LOOSE. I cannot exaggerate enough when I say roots. There are an abundance of trails, however there's little distinction between the trails you're on. They are mostly similar in layout and features. They are well marked and have a variety of beginner, intermidate and expert trails. No problem there.

This is not a place where you will find trails that constantly flow or a place where you can expect to find fast sections (more on that later). This entire place is a character builder. It will piss you off and reward you in the same moment. It's very technical and when you approach some features you just kind of scratch your head and say "how?", then you find a line and proceed to play. The roots provide the biggest challenge. They're most abundant EXACLTY where you wouldn't want them. The climbs and the climbs with sharp, narrow turns. It will teach you how to ride better and how to pick a line.

Beyond the roots, many of the trails are very loose and rocky. There's a lot of careful manipulation needed to not wash out in the corners of some sections, which is also a good skill builder. There are some fun, quick ascents and drops found throughout the trails, including a few stair features, bridges (elevated and flat). No major elevation changes except for "Stairway to Heaven" which is probably the best part of the entire place. There's a lot of water accompanying many of the trails (several trails parallel the river), very nice scenery and SHADE to help beat the heat.

For someone looking for a good challenge and "expert" trails, hitting "Stairway to Heaven" to "Gilligan's Island" are great choices. Stairway is a nice, extended ascent top of a 40-50' hill (roughly). The best part of the park to me, is this section. It is the only part of the park where you can hit the decent of the hill with some great speed AND there is a GREAT jump (optional) with a nice, smooth landing that is a new feature. I easily hit it 5-6 times and it will give you some GREAT air time depending on your speed. The rest of the Stairway section provides another fun descent following a pretty narrow and loose, challenging climb at the end. Gilligan's trail is very narrow, technical root features with lots of small and medium bridges to get over some fallen trees or big roots.

Another area worth mentioning that's a new addition is preceding Stairway. You will find another quick, medium sized ascent into a banked corner, another quick and decent ascent, into another drop with two VERY AWESOME banked corner lines. Wide or tight lines. Caution: these end FAST in a very tight and loose right hand corner. I became close friends with a small tree due to not scoping the trail out beforehand.

In conclusion, definitely visit it. Ride with open expectations and don't expect it to be Amelia or Markham. It's a different build. The park itself is a gem amongst the urban sprawl of Miami. It's cool to be in the woods and get a peek of the high rises at certain areas. The park offers many other activities like kayaking, camping, walking/running trails, picnic/event areas, fishing, etc.

There is something that needs to be done about walkers with loose dogs that are NOT on leash or on tight trails. Cant get good ride if you have to stop several times cause there is a dog running across your front wheel. Almost hurt the dog or turn into the trees to avoid one. Not to mention some dogs get scared and try to give you warning bite on your leg.
Also high crime area. Expect your car getting broken into sooner or later, if you ride there a lot.

I absolutely love this park. It is slow, tight, rooty, with technical short up and downs all over the place. It is not flowy or smooth, but there's plenty of fun to be found working your way around all of the natural and man-made obstacles.

Fairly nice single track. Lots of tree roots they also but down a lot of loose gravel in the trails I assume to you help you see the trail but i found that with any kinda of speed it made the ride feel unstable. Also there is a very important lack of signage & trail maps out on the trails. I was stopped & asked for direction many times

Home park! Rocky roots! Good full suspension ride! Giligans island (in back) is a super technical.

First time riding in Florida. I am from Utah and I think this review will be most useful to someone visiting Florida and Oleta. Locals may love this place because you could squeeze in a quick before or after work ride. And as you got to know the layout, you would be able to link trails together more quickly and easily.

Oleta is series of separate, tight, twisting, short rides divided by gravel/dirt roads, not one continuous ride. I rode nearly all of the routes in 2 hours and that was with quite a bit of time spent trying to figure out how to get to the next group of rides. (Make sure to grab a map at the ranger station. Even with it, it can take time to get oriented because the trails are marked well but the roads connecting them are not.)

At first, riding through the swamps and jungles was cool and unique--but I was surprised at how quickly it got old. Maybe because there was no flow or places to really get up some speed. I don't mind technical riding and roots as long as it's mixed with some speed and flow sections.

I saw lots of amateurs exploring mountain biking here which is fantastic. The short length and slowness of the trails is well-suited to beginners. Advanced riders will likely not enjoy Oleta as much.

Oleta was fun to try once but once was definitely enough for me.

Not for people that come from well groomed trails. This is grass roots(no pan intended) trail riding in south Florida.
You can ride fast here you can ride anywhere.

It has so much potential but you can tell they have done very little in terms of maintenance and upkeep. There's tons of rocks, roots and coral rock but it's boring. Beware of car break-ins. Last visit, a fellow riders car had the window broken for a bag he left.

My favorite place in Florida. This is a beautiful park, right on the Intercoastal in N. Miami Beach. Great trail system of one-way trails. One trail will start and end, and the next one will pick up. Great flow to everything.

Rode the expert trails and a few intermediate.... very technival for fl riding and you need good bslance and the ability to ride slow since the trails are so tight
It was wet too when i visited

First of all, the trails were wet and should have been closed the day we were out there, but they were poorly marked and even more poorly carved. We got off trail multiple times because we could not tell where to go. Very rooty, rocky and some technical climbs though.

All the trails are now reversed
Amazing!!!!
Come and enjoy, it's a new park

For flat and no elevation ground the park is pretty good actually. As opposed to most bikers who don't enjoy too many roots and rocks...c'mon it's MTB, or in this case off road biking). It's part of it! You take away all that and you take the fun out of MTB. It's supposed to be a challenge, that's the cool part of this sport. The more technical it is (rocks, roots, more roots, more roots, turns) perfects your skills as a biker. Your skills as bikers don't come from riding flat surfaces and few turns, but places such as these and besides good work out for your forearms because of the bumpy ride lol. I do agree that the trails can get confusing since they don't mark them as well.

Great trails, rode late January 2015 and the trails were perfect! Lots of rocky/rooty trails, hard on a hardtail.

Awesome Park! The trails are very rocky/rooty, but great scenery and variety of trails. The gilligan's island trails are the best!