CHAPEL HILL - Dirt bikers discovered its rambling passages in the 1960s, joggers fell in love with its foot-friendly surface during the running boom of the 1970s. It was one of the first places local mountain bikers went when off-road cycling arrived here in the late 1980s. Who knows how long the hikers have been here?

For at least two generations, people have been playing in the woods blanketing Carolina North, UNC's 900-acre parcel two miles north of the main campus. And during that time the university has looked the other way, allowing recreation if not encouraging it.

Concern that the property was falling into neglect caused UNC to reconsider its approach to the tract. Late last year it created a property management plan that included the hiring of two permanent and two part-time employees to tend to the land on a daily basis.

Last week, the school took another step toward boosting the tract's recreational value by agreeing to allow Triangle Off Road Cyclists, a local mountain bike club, to design, construct and maintain trails on the property.

"There's been a lot of trail building going on haphazardly," Carolyn Elfland, UNC's associate vice chancellor for campus services, said last week. "We need to get a handle on it."

No one is sure how much trail is on the tract, which is bound roughly by Bolin Creek and Homestead Road to the south and north, Airport Road to the east and to the west by a line three-quarters of a mile west of Seawell School Road. UNC and the Triangle Off Road Cyclists (TORC) say 15 to 20 miles is a good guess. The number is squishy because volunteer trail builders are constantly blazing new paths, resulting in a mishmash of hard-to-follow unmarked trails.

That's one of the first things UNC hopes to change with its new approach.

"We're going to put up signage along entrances, mark trails better, make them more accessible," says Elfland.

Unmarked openings

For the uninitiated, getting into the trail network is akin to leaning against a bookcase to find the secret passage in a castle. There's an unmarked entrance at Wilson Park and there are several subtle drop-ins along Seawell School Road between Chapel Hill High School and Seawell Elementary. Once you finally are inside, orienteering becomes a valuable skill.

UNC also was motivated to step up management by concerns over erosion and deterioration of natural resources.

"We needed to put some framework around the way the land was used," says Elfland. "You could go out there and dig and build yourselves a jump or whatever you wanted without regard for the environmental aspects of what you were doing.

"That's a big advantage of our relationship with TORC," she adds. "They specialize in trails, in sustainability of the resource."

Leading the way

TORC is a volunteer organization formed two years ago as an umbrella group of various local clubs that existed throughout the Triangle. Though it is volunteer, it now oversees design, construction and maintenance at most of the public mountain bike trails in the Triangle, including Lake Crabtree and Harris Lake county parks, the Beaverdam area at Falls Lake State Recreation Area, Little River Regional Park and in Garner. In addition, it is spearheading development of mountain bike trails at the new Forest Ridge Park in North Raleigh and at the Brier Chapel development south of Chapel Hill.

Though the agreement is intended to protect the land and preserve parts of it from development, some longtime patrons are leery of what the agreement might mean.

TORC President Stewart Bryan says the initial goal is to reroute or eliminate trail that's damaging the environment. To that end, he says TORC probably will begin working on the older, more worn trails west of Seawell School Road. Otherwise, expect the integrity of the network to remain the same.

"We don't anticipate radically changing the challenge level from what it is now," says Bryan.

"There's a range of trails and challenge levels, up to pretty advanced. There's not set restrictions on what we can and can't do at this point."

That's good news to Michael Oehler, who has ridden the trails -- typically referred to by the locals as the Chapel Hill High School trails -- for 10 years.

"The runners, the mountain bikers, the hikers, we all use these trails," said Oehler, as he wrapped up a ride Monday morning.

"It's a great place to ride."