Ride the Hiawatha

We decided to go a few hours out of the way and check out the Route of the Hiawatha.  It is on the Idaho Montana border along I-90.  It is a 15 mile gravel trail that follows the abandoned Milwaukee Railroad grade between Taft, MT and Avery, ID.  The route includes 10 tunnels and seven steel trestles- the St Paul Pass tunnel was 1.7 miles long.  You drop over 1000 feet during those 15 miles and there is a nice shuttle at the bottom that takes you back up to the top-Chad and I had planned to ride back up but it was a very bumpy 15 miles and we are getting older.  

I learned during the first 10 minutes of this ride that I am a huge fan of light-it is extremely comforting.  During the first few minutes of the cold pitch black tunnel and was thinking I was on the brink of a panic attack-but after a few minutes and a higher setting on my bike light I started to feel less scared and more intrigued by the tunnel. It had a 1 foot trench on each side of the tunnel that was filled with water, these directed water from the middle to either Idaho or Montana. The walls of the tunnel were also very wet-even though they were concrete.  It looks pretty light in this picture but it was not!!

There was a lot of interesting railroad information along the way and being a history geek I had to stop at all the information signs.  Here is some of the information I found the most interesting.  This section of railroad was the most expensive ever built-it cost $75,000 per mile.  The 22 miles of track through the bitterroot mountains consisted of 21 bridges, 16 tunnels, and seven high trestles.  In 1917 the track was electrified through the Bitterroots, giving the company the longest electrified mainline in the world.  Companies came from all over the world to see the first electric trains.  The entire track section went thru the great fire of 1910 (or the big blow up) which burned over 3 million acres.  It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history.   It is worth looking up if you are interested in random fire knowledge - Chad and I found it very interesting.

Here is one of the tressels.

Here is one of the tunnels.

It was a very fun experience and more of a history lesson which I enjoyed.  If I did it again I would go all the way to Avery ID (an extra 8 miles) and then ride back up to the shuttle buses.  I didn't realize until we got to the end of the paid ride that there was more to see.