March 2, 2023
Stringing the gems together
First shot at the route
Last fall while playing our favorite game of "where shall we go next on the bikes?" I was captivated by photos of the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. The 73-mile paved trail across the Idaho panhandle runs through a diverse landscape of prairie, lakeshore and riverlands into the Bitterroot Mountains. The wildlife looks abundant in this area. Barry and I have never been to Idaho, this sounds like a worthy place to start.
What else might we link up with here for a longer tour, we wondered? Looking around various maps, other trails appeared, notably the Centennial Trail through Washington and Idaho. From west of Spokane it runs east to within a half-day's ride to the Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes. The Adventure Cycling Association's famed Northern Tier and Lewis & Clark trails, two trips we've thought about doing for years, are both less than 100 miles away.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place when I read Scott & Rachael Anderson's Northwest Passages journal about the rolling prairie of the Palouse. That region fills in the space between the Trail of the Coeur D'Alenes and the Lewis & Clark Trail. Stringing together all these scenic trails and road routes would make an amazing tour through the Northwest territories.
Eager to move the idea forward from "what if" to "how to," we turned to the practical question of how to get ourselves and our bikes from St. Louis to the Northwest. A cross-country train ride would be a cool way to start the adventure. Checking Amtrak routes, we found the Empire Builder line that travels west across the northern states. It has three stops in Glacier National Park which is right on the Northern Tier route. Perfect. Let's put this together.
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We have train tickets to Glacier June 1 and will fly home from Portland in early July. That gives us a month to travel 1300+ miles on our recumbents, our favorite rigs for a self-contained tour. There will be some camping when the weather is nice, and indoor sleeps if there isn't a good place to camp or we're not feeling it.
Here are the details at the moment; still tinkering with the route. Suggestions about roads, must sees or other advice are welcome!
Note - the route details below are updated in the post The Route, for real this time.
Going to the Sun
We'll get off the train in West Glacier with a notion to ride Going to the Sun Road up to Logan Pass, maybe. The road is usually closed to cars in early June, yet the National Park Service is taking car reservations for the drive from West Glacier starting May 26. I don’t love the idea of climbing up the narrow shoulder-less road with cars at our elbows. If the road is open to motorists, the potential for heavy traffic is one wildcard. Weather and construction are two others.
Then there's the matter of elevation. The starting point in West Glacier is 2,700 feet higher than St. Louis and climbs up 4,000 feet. We're hanging out in Tucson this winter with an ambition to tackle the 8,000 foot ascent up Mount Lemmon. If I can do that (a big IF), the Sun road is fair game.
Northern Tier
We’ve talked about riding this route over the years but haven’t been up for committing three months for the trip. The part from Glacier National Park to Newport Washington will give us a good bite of it. I really like the elevation chart here. We'll get a lot of downhill through the Rocky Mountains starting from the west side of the Continental Divide.
Centennial Trails
From Newport we’ll turn south and make our way down to Nine Mile Recreation Area on the Spokane River Centennial Trail. The trail runs east to the Idaho border where it links up with the North Idaho Centennial Trail. From the city of Coeur d'Alene at the east end of the Idaho trail, another 35 miles around the lake will take us to Harrison on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes.
Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes
By mid-June we'll be in Harrison Idaho, riding east on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes to Pinehurst or Kellogg. That will set us up for a luggage-free day ride out to the eastern terminus of the CdA at Mullan, and back.
We looked at the Route of the Hiawatha that starts a ways further east from Mullan. According to the Rails to Trails Conservancy you can get there from the CdA on the Nor-Pac trail, if you are up for some steep grades on a gravel forest road. We're not; it doesn't sound like much fun on a recumbent. There will be plenty of thrills as it is.
The Palouse
We've seen some enchanting pictures of the emerald green rolling grasslands in eastern Washington and north Idaho. Check out the Andersons' ride up Steptoe Butte - the spiky point on this route. The spiraling climb up and around the butte will give us lots of time to gaze at this otherworldly landscape in all directions.
Lewis & Clark Trail
We've ridden most of the start of the Lewis & Clark Trail through Missouri, much of it on the beautiful Katy Trail. There's been some discussion of doing the whole thing but the passage through the Rocky Mountains is rather daunting. Instead we'll just cherry-pick the big finish, from Clarkston WA to the Columbia River Gorge and out to the Pacific, then double back to Portland to visit friends and fly home.
The whole trip is just a sliver of the great Northwest, but it's a good sliver, much to explore.
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I might think again about how much time you’re planning to spend on Highway 14 in the gorge though. It can get uncomfortable in spots, especially with the amount of traffic you’d expect in the summer. I’ll email you another idea you might consider.
1 year ago
1 year ago