Biking the Route of the Hiawatha

Today is Monday, July 24, 2017.  We heard about a rails-to-trails bike path called "The Route of the Hiawatha," which runs to the Montana state line from a trailhead near Wallace, Idaho.  The trail, together with the Trail of the Coeur d'Alene which runs through Wallace, Osburn, Kellogg, and west to Coeur d'Alene, was admitted to the Rails-to-Trails Hall of Fame.

The trail follows the former route of the Hiawatha trains.  The Hiawathas were a fleet of named passenger trains operated by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (also known as the Milwaukee Road) between Chicago and various destinations in the Midwest and Western United States. The train was named for the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In the late 1800's the Milwaukee Road was a prosperous railroad out of Chicago which decided to expand west.  The route proposed for the new line was through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains. The exploration on the Idaho side began in May, 1905, and by early 1907 the construction work began. The actual construction of the rail bed and the track was very difficult due to the forbidding terrain and the weather conditions. The cost of the project which was originally estimated at $45 million, ended up exceeding $234 million. It took nearly 9,000 men, Italians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Austrians, Belgians, Hungarians, Japanese, French, Canadians, Spaniards, Irishmen, Swedes, Norwegians, and others all working together from 1906 to 1911 to construct this Pacific extension.  As the construction proceeded, numerous settlements sprouted throughout the area.

In August 1910, one of the most devastating forest fires in recorded American history burned much of the natural forests in Northern Idaho and Western Montana. The fire burned 2½ to 3 million acres. It was so huge that a massive cloud of smoke spread throughout Southern Canada and the Northern United States all the way to the St. Lawrence waterway. The darkness from this smoke was so bad that for 5 days artificial lighting had to be used from Butte, Montana including Chicago to Watertown, New York. There were numerous stories of very heroic actions by the railroad employees who drove engines and box cars filled with people through the flames to the safety of the longer tunnels. Reportedly over 600 lives were saved in this manner alone.  Eventually, the railroad was forced into receivership in 1925, and never really recovered before its final bankruptcy in 1977.  The last train passed through in 1980. After that the line was abandoned.

With government funding and private donations, the rails were removed, and the construction of this spectacular wilderness bicycle and hiking trail was undertaken in 1997. The Idaho portion of the trail first opened for public use on May 29, 1998. The St. Paul Pass, or Taft Tunnel, was completed in May of 2001, and is now open for bike riding.

Most of the public starts the trail at its East Portal, at the Idaho-Montana border, and rides downhill for 15 miles to the West Portal at Pearson, Idaho.  However, this forces you to choose between a long, 15-mile uphill ride in the afternoon back to your place of beginning, or accepting a shuttle ride back.  These choices didn't seem acceptable, so we found a Forest Service road between Wallace and Pearson that let us park our Jeep at the bottom of the trail at its West Portal.  This let us bike uphill for 15 miles in the morning, rest and have lunch at the top, and then cruise back downhill another 15 miles to our original trailhead in the afternoon.

Our drive to the West Portal was an adventure in itself.  It took us up Placer Creek Road and over Moon Pass down into the valley of the North Fork of the St. Joe River, which we followed to our trailhead.  The St. Joe River valley is spectacular, and we found many spots where we would love to boondock.

Along the way, we spotted the charred snags of giant cedar trees that were burned in the 1910 fire that destroyed the forests and many of the communities in this area:

After an hour's drive, we arrived at our trailhead and began our ride:

The trail, 15 miles in length, with a steady 2% grade, boasts 10 tunnels and 7 trestles.  The views from the trestles were awesome:

The tunnels were equally awesome.  We were required to wear helmets and carry headlights in the tunnels because they were so dark.  One of the tunnels we passed through boasted an avalanche canopy to prevent snow and rocks from crashing down on the trail at the tunnel entrance:

The experience of riding inside the tunnels was surreal.  Many of the tunnels were long enough that we experienced the disorientation of near-total darkness inside.  Our way was lit only by our own headlamps and the occasional headlamps of passing bicyclists:

As the crow flies, the East Portal, our destination, lies only 4 miles east of the West Portal, where we began, but the railroad line - and hence, our trail - winds 15 miles to achieve its desired low grade.  As a result, it curls back upon itself, and for most of the ride we could look across to see the trail where we were going to ride (above us) or where we had ridden (below):

The most dramatic feature of the trial came at the end of our 15-mile climb:  the St. Paul Tunnel, which was over 8,000 feet long - 1.7 miles of utter darkness!  We entered with trepidation:

Inside, the tunnel was so long that, though the outside air temperature was in the mid-80's Fahrenheit, the interior was in the mid-40's, making for a chilly tunnel ride.  Just before we reached the point of shivering, however, we burst back out into the bright sunshine to the East Portal, where we sat and ate our lunch, watching the activities of bikers getting ready for their ride down the trail:

Once rested, we mounted our bikes and RACED back down the 15 miles to our West Portal.  We did it in less than an hour - at a pace of almost 20 mph!  Here is a video showing the experience of racing across the high railroad trestles on our bikes:

Once done, we drove back over the dirt roads, across Moon Pass, back to Wallace, where we slaked our deep thirst at Wallace Brewing Company, where we filled growlers with one of our favorite brews:  their Wallace Strong Ale.  With a short stop at a self-serve car wash to hose the heavy dust off our Jeep and bikes, we returned home to our campground, exhausted but satisfied with this unique adventure.