Kids were in the Missoula Fireclassic meet for the Juneteenth long weekend. On Monday, 6/19, on our way back from Missoula to Seattle, we decided to do the scenic Hiawatha Bike ride. It is an all downhill 15mile ride through 10 tunnels and 7 sky high trestles. It absolutely falls into the do-at least-once-in-your-lifetime buckets.
History of the Hiawatha scenic rail can be found at Route of the Hiawatha (Official Website) > Area Information > History (ridethehiawatha.com). In short, the Milwaukee Road railroad company in Chicago decided to expand west to take advantage of the expanding West Coast markets and Pacific Rim Trade. Construction started in 1907 and intercontinental freight services started on July 4, 1909 with passenger service starting 6 days later. The last train west of Butte passed through in 1980 and after that the line was abandoned. Throughout the trail, historical information is displayed.
The "Route of the Hiawatha" is most famous for the long St. Paul Pass, or Taft tunnel which burrows for 8771 ft.(1.66 miles) under the Bitterroot Mountains at the state line.
Our first halt was at Mile 1, Idaho at Lookout Pass. It is one of the original US Ski areas that were used by local (?) Scandinavians who hopped off Northern Pacific freight cars to enjoy a day of alpine skiing at the Pass.
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| Interesting history of Lookout Pass. |
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| It really looks like Alpine meadows outside the windows of the |
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Nice and fresh start to the day!
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We found out that only folks that had the hitch installed on their vehicles could pick up their bikes from here. Since ours was a rental, Somnath had paid extra to pick up the bikes at the trail head and it meant that we needed to drive back into Montana and head straight to the trailhead where the bikes were waiting for us.
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| Picked up our bikes - S comfort for me while the rest picked up M comfort bikes. |
The first tunnel which is only a couple of feet from the trailhead is the St. Paul Pass tunnel which is 1.66 miles long. It was pitch dark and we could hear the streams flowing on the sides of the tunnel with water trickling down along the walls and through the roof of the tunnel. I was glad to be bundled up in a Marmot jacket because it was unbelievably cold and the gloves, I found in the jacket pockets was a welcome relief from the biting cold. The headlamps that Somnath had packed were an absolute must because my bike's headlight was not bright enough to spot the puddles inside the tunnel. We exited the tunnel to a beautiful waterfall.
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| Information booths along the way provided interesting historical titbits while also helping rest a little. |
Riding on the paved trails with the beautiful views of the forests and accompanied by the chirping of different birds was very refreshing.
The second tunnel was the last one where we had to share the road with shuttle buses that drop people and bikes off at the St Paul tunnel on the way back. After St. Paul Pass tunnel, all other tunnels were too short and tiny!
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| Our first view of a trestle was very exciting! |
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| Lots of chipmunks along the way trying to get treats from bikers. |
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| Riding onto the first trestle on the trail and stopping to take in the scenery. |
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| It was miles and miles of tunnels and trestles and yet we never got tired of them. Observe how the weather changed along the way - one moment sunny and the other cloudy and cold! |
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| I loved this trestle the best because we were hundreds of feet over the tallest trees in the forest. An engineering marvel and amazing to think they built this in the early 1900s. |
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| Read this funny story about bears that got drunk on wheat that had spilled during an accident and got fermented over time. |
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| And just as I began to feel the complaining muscles all over my body and mainly in the bottoms, we were done with the bike ride. |
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| Bottom of the trail where the sbuttle picks up bikers and takes them back up to the top. |
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| Loading bikes into the shuttle. |
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| Inside the shuttle. The gentleman in the back called himself Special Ed. Ed is a retired special education teacher from San Franscisco who moved to New York and worked as a teacher before retiring and moving to Wallace, ID. |
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| Back at St. Paul's pass tunnel where the shuttle drops off bikers. It was super hard to get back onto the bike and our bottoms did not like it one bit! |
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| Done with the ride. At this point, I was not willing to get back onto the bike even for a picture! |
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| Boundless energy! After 3 days of swimming with Prelims-Finals format and a 15 mile bike ride, these two still had the energy to jump around! |
A beautiful beyond words experience was a nice ending to our weekend and we drove back home through some pretty erratic weather across Idaho and Washington :)
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| Passed through the rain and left the rainbows behind as we drove into the sun. |
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| More rainbows along the way |
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| Columbia River comes into view. |
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| Beautiful bridge over the Columbia River. |
