Another amazing bicycle ride…The Route of The Hiawatha

While camping at the “Merry Widow Mine Campground” we met a very interesting guy. Wayne had many campfire stories to share with us but the one that stuck with us is how he remembers bicycling an 18 mile long railroad line downhill all the way. He claimed to ride through many tunnels that had no lighting (with one tunnel being almost 2 miles long) and over many really high trestles. He pointed to Lookout Pass in our atlas. It is located on Interstate 90 near the Montana/Idaho border. We looked it up online and found that it was called the Route Of The Hiawatha and it was still open for another 3 days this year. Talk about good timing!

In we go with my photographer doing all the pushing on the back of the tandem.

I cannot believe I attempted this in shorts as it was 55 outside and the tunnels were supposed to be much colder.

We carried a small helmet light to help light up our way through the cold dark and damp tunnel (actually it was just enough for me to keep the bike out of the drainage ditches on each side). The lighting in the picture is actually just the camera flash.

Looking back at the 1 and 2/3 mile long pitch black tunnel we can see the next group of cyclists coming. Can you see their small headlamps?

There were many sharp turns as the rail bed descended with many switchbacks. Trains cannot go up or down anything steeper than a 4% grade so the hill did not cause us to get going too quickly.

A smile of relief as we emerged from the tunnel into weather that was now sunny and 65!

There is that “light at the end of the tunnel” that seems to keep appearing on this trip.

Each tunnel and trestle was marked with a number and its length. For trestles they also mentioned what the drop to the ground would be in feet.

Glad those guide wires were on all the trestles!

Those are actually very tall trees we are looking down on!

Some of the tunnels had their walls smoothed with cement but this one did not. Can you see the Stalactites on the ceiling?

It was an eerie feeling to ride into the dark.

This placard talks about the 3,000,000 acre wildfire in 1910. Over 80 people died in it. Many were saved by hopping on the moving train and riding it into the almost 2 mile long tunnel. This allowed them to escape the heat but they did worry about running out of oxygen. This did not happen and the tunnel helped save their lives.

After a few hours of “rough riding” we were back to our bullet ready for our next adventure.

3 Replies to “Another amazing bicycle ride…The Route of The Hiawatha”

I’ll bet this will be your most exhilarating bike ride in all your travels!.
Very remarkable1

Glad you were told how many feet you would drop in case things went bad. Actually seems like a cool ride. Glad the timing worked out that you could do it.

Biking in the dark, through a tunnel- you guys continue to keep things interesting!

Sad to hear about the fatal wildfire- if I remember correctly, Collin spent some time as a forest firefighter?

Very cool that you heard about this from a fellow at the campground, and were able to just get up and go there the next day! Spontaneous decisions like this are really cool to hear, especially for someone who still has to abide to a daily schedule, ha ha!

As always, great to hear about your travels. Love and miss you guys.

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