A ride on the Hiawatha
<p>Bernie Harold, from Centralia, Wash., takes a break Tuesday at one of the viewing points along the trail.</p>
<p>Riders exit the 8,771-foot-long Taft Tunnel during a ride Tuesday under the Bitterroot Mountains at the state line of Idaho and Montana and is the starting point for the Route of the Hiawatha at the east portal.</p>
<p>Markers along the route give the distance from Chicago where the Milwaukee Railroad originated. This is the last original marker left along the trail.</p>
<p>The longest tunnel along the 15-mile route of the Route of the Hiawatha maintains a constant 43-degree temperature.</p>
<p>Trisha Tremper, front, and Lindsey James, from Port Orchard, Wash., ride a tandem bike during their fourth visit to the Route of the Hiawatha.</p>
<p>Riders can either ride the trail back up to the starting point or have a bus shuttle them and their bikes to the beginning of the trailhead.</p>
<p>Chris Barrett, marketing director for Lookout Pass, rides along the Route of the Hiawatha during an outing Tuesday.</p>
LOOK OUT PASS - When the fall comes around here, it comes in a blast.
It starts at the end of August when the mornings are suddenly cold and the light takes a fraction longer to get above the trees each day, but if we're lucky the last of the summer hangs on through September and it can be the prettiest month of the year.
But when it goes, it goes quickly, so if there's anything on the summer check list, now is the time to do it.
The Route of the Hiawatha was on mine.
I was yet to ride it after four years here, so I had to get one in before October when the sun and light shut down until May. Again, if we're lucky. Sometimes it stays away much longer.
"It's the easiest ride," said Christopher Barrett, marking director for Lookout Pass who acted as our tour guide on the sunny, but brisk Tuesday trip. "I've seen guys with one leg do it."
By now, the bike trail that follows the old Milwaukee Railroad is local history, so you know plenty about it. Built at the turn of the last century, the line is a modern-day relic of what made Western expansion possible.
But as you pedal, you come across mile markers dotted along the route indicating the distance from Chicago, and it's hard not to imagine what passengers thought back then as they looked out the window 1,750 miles from the big city and saw the high-arching mountains and the tops of pine tress pointing side-by-side to the sky covering the entire landscape like a rug.
I read somewhere that when Europeans sent explorers to the New World, and the explorers came back with paintings of what they'd seen in the West, the Old World simply didn't believe them.
I imagine it was a little like that on the train ride, too.
It's exactly how the bike ride starts at St. Paul Pass Tunnel on the Montana side.
Right from the get go, Christopher, our guide, put on a hooded sweatshirt and gloves and I knew he knew something I didn't. He did. It gets cold in the 1.7-mile pass.
Actually, they say it stays 44 degrees year round, but it feels much colder with drops of water seeping down the sides of the tunnel and the wind picking up and pushing against your face as you pedal away. And for a while, you never see the end of the tunnel. You have a light, of course, but when you think you see the end of the haul, no wait, that's a pair of headlights coming the other way.
But when it ends, and you ride through the exit into Idaho, the whole mountain side opens up and you can see miles of trees and a sky that must seem to an easterner to go on forever.
As though it were staged, a waterfall blasts down the mountain side as soon as you leave the tunnel. They must know it seems too much, too, because they put photos from the early 1900s of the same waterfall on a nearby plaque where bikers stop to snap pictures and snack.
We're not making this up, we swear, the sign basically says.
Around 13 more miles of trail, at a comfortable 2 percent grade drop with several more tunnels, remain from there.
Every time you pass a mile marker - 1,752 one says - stop and take a look like you're looking out the window. The best part of the dropping trail is that your view is never blocked. Stop and look out at Kelly Creek bridge, 850 feet long and 230 feet high. It'll be waiting below you off to your right. You have all day to enjoy it. But imagine seeing that thing quickly, for the first time, snapping by as the locomotive chugged along.
At the bottom of the trail, bikers wait for a shuttle to cart them and their bikes back up the hill. I was wondering if the others were thinking what I was thinking all down the ride, but I didn't ask specifically.
"You can't beat it," Bob, from California, said about the trek.
"Loved it," said Harold, out of Centrailia, Wash.
About three miles into the ride, my back tire had blown out. We halfway broke the spare when we put it on, so it only inflated some. Christopher, like a champion guide, took the hindered bike from me so I could continue pretending it was 100 years ago with minimal effort.
"My quads are killing me," Christopher said at the bottom of the trail.
The shuttle drops you off on the other side of the 1.7-mile St. Paul Pass so you can ride through it all again before you're done for good. Put on your hooded sweatshirt and gloves, because once you enter, the cold blasts, as though summer were over and winter just around the corner.