Riding the Route of the Hiawatha in Northern Idaho!

A few weeks ago we spent a week exploring southern Idaho, the Sawtooth Mountains, and Boise. And after a little bit of time back in our former home of Washington, we are reuniting with Idaho for a quick adventure in the northern part of the state. We unfortunately only have one day to explore and have decided to visit the area around Wallace, Idaho, a cool mining town for a fun outdoor activity. So the reason we chose to spend our one day here in the Wallace area is because we heard of this really cool bike trail called the Route of the Hiawatha. It's a 15 mile long trail, that's one way, with 10 tunnels and 7 sky high trestles. It's supposed to be so epic that it was named a Hall of Fame trail by the Rail to Trail Conservancy. Since we don't own bikes, the normal way we would do this is we go to this spot called Lookout Pass. They're the people that run the trail. We'd rent bikes from them, we'd then drive the rental bikes to the trailhead, which is about 15 minutes away. We'd ride down the trail, it's downhill, it's like a 2% grade the whole way down, and then we'd take a shuttle back up the mountain for about 40 minutes. But we didn't feel super comfortable being on a shuttle with a bunch of people right now. So instead we decided to rent e-bikes from Spoke House e-bikes in Wallace so we can ride the bikes downhill like normal bikes and then use the power to get ourselves back up the hill without taking the shuttle. We've never rode e-bikes before so it should be pretty fun. The only problem is we have to get them there in our van. Okay, so here's our plan to get our bikes there. We'll have our bed still in bed mode and we lay down most of our towels to cover the bed. Kona's gonna help. She really wants to ride on one but it's not gonna happen today. It's okay. But yeah, they should be fine. We'll probably lay one down and then the other one will kind of overlap a little bit. Should be fine. If it doesn't work, I think we have a plan B. And if not, maybe we'll just ride them from here. So we have bike number one on the bed and then bike number two in our hallway. To the person that commented on our van tour and said that our van was an epic fail because we didn't have room for bikes, look at us now. That was a bit more complicated and a little tough to get these in here. We had to lay one on the bed as you can see. That was easier than this other one. We put it kind of in the hallway but had to like lift it over the kitchen counter. But we got everything in here and we're ready to go. And Stu who owns the bike shop let us borrow these pads to put on the sides of our cabinets. That way the bike doesn't mess them up. So thank you Stu. We're just gonna hope for the best. We have a 30-minute drive to the East Portal trailhead. That's where you actually start the bike ride and we get our tickets and stuff there. So we're just gonna hope we can make it without any damage. All right we made it to the trailhead. Got the bikes out which was actually easier than putting them in for some reason. There's no damage in the van so that's a win. Something that's really interesting about this trail is you start in Montana and then you mostly ride through Idaho. So we're in Montana right now and what makes this kind of tricky and something that we didn't even realize till the other day is that the trail opens at 8 30 a.m pacific time which is what the time zone is in the Idaho side. But we're in Montana which is mountain time so technically it opens at 9 30 a.m mountain time. So just keep an eye on your your clock on your phone and just make sure you know what time zone you're in. It was definitely very confusing. I think it's almost 9 a.m mountain time so we have like about 30 minutes till the trail actually opens. All right we'll give you a little rundown of the bike from what we can remember. So it's kind of like a regular bike but it also has power as well so we're going to use it as a regular bike going downhill. So it might feel a little different because it's a lot heavier than a regular bike but it's got gears like a mountain bike so you can change and go up and go down to give you a little more assistance there. It also has a headlight up on the front right here because we'll be going through several dark tunnels so that'll be really helpful there. But we're also going to wear headlamps on our helmets because we hear that the tunnels are super pitch black and dark and a little cold too so they suggest bringing a light jacket. There's also this screen that's kind of where we can see I guess how fast we're going how many miles we've gone. This bike's already gone 885 miles that's super cool and how much power it has and this PAS is like how much assistance we're getting from the bike so when we're going uphill we're going to put it all the way at five. It also has this um I forget what Adam what is it called a throttle I guess like oh like a moped so maybe not as intense sounding but that'll be helpful when we're going uphill later. Okay to access the trail you can either pay at lookout pass or right here at the head of the trail it's 13 bucks a person. We're officially in. A quick little history lesson for you the route of the Hiawatha is the site of a former railroad route on the Milwaukee Road that goes through the Bitterroot Mountains. The railroad opened in 1909 but in 1910 a huge forest fire ripped through the area unfortunately destroying many towns. After the fire the railroad struggled with many hardships including bankruptcy before the final train passed through in 1980 and the line was abandoned and in 1998 the former railroad opened to the public and is now a popular biking trail. Off we go here we go so excited. First up we are going through a 1.7 mile completely dark tunnel. It's kind of chilly right now huh? It's really cold already. And I say it gets really cold in this tunnel so St. Paul Pass Tunnel. Ready? This is awesome. Oh my gosh this is kind of creepy. Yeah it's really creepy. Oh it's really creepy it's so cold. Yeah I heard you you can hear the water on the sides. The water running down the side of the tunnel. This is awesome. I'm already loving this. This is so cool. Ah water dripping. We made it out. All right we made it through the 1.7 mile tunnel. My hands my fingers are frozen. It was really cold in there and you know you're going you're riding a bike so it's even colder because the wind's blowing on you but the water is dripping from the top and then the water is running down both sides of the of the trail. It's a little muddy in there. We didn't get that muddy but we see other people that have and we've seen photos people can get muddy. I guess it depends on your bike but oh man. It was a really fun start to it though. And then as soon as you come out there's a waterfall right here. All right we made it to our first of seven trestles. And this trestle is about half the height of the tallest one is about 230 or 240 I think I read on the sign. But it's still a little scary if you look down. Okay so the middle part is I guess concrete and like stone cement kind of a deal. It's it's dirt on top but then on the sides is like wood planks with like the the metal railing there. But if you look down between the boards it's just straight down so it's like kind of overhanging the end of it. Kind of scary. We made it to the bottom. It took us less than two and a half hours to go 15 miles and that's with a lot of stops at the beginning. At the end we were kind of cranking up our speed a bit just to try to get done so we can get back to Kona. But it was beautiful. It was so much fun. Yeah it seems like all the tunnels or most of the tunnels in the trestles are the first two-thirds of the trail so this the last part you're just cruising. Cruising through the woods but yeah this is the closest thing I've ever done to mountain biking. It was so much fun. All right let's see how fast this bad boy can go. This is so cool. This is so cool. You don't have to do anything. Oh you just start pedaling and it just gives you so much power. All right we'll see you at the top. All right we made it out alive. You guys, you gotta get the e-bike. It is worth every single freaking penny. That thing is so much fun. We had fun going downhill and like going over everything and stopping but I had just as much fun flying up the mountain with that e-bike. I was going the fastest it would let me go the whole time unless we were really close to people. I thought it only went up to 20 but I got it up to 23, 24 sometimes. It was fun. You feel like you're flying. I've never been on a motorcycle before. It made me want one. It's like a mini one. I mean it basically is one. It's like a little dirt bike sort of but it's like a Tesla motorbike. Really fun. I normally don't feel super I guess confident or safe riding a bike like even on just like flat like sidewalk or road like I've just never felt super confident but I was I was I had Adam the whole time. I was flying. It was so much fun. The biggest one of the day though is I've been wanting to do like mountain biking and she's always kind of been iffy on it and not really but she said on the way down almost when we were through she said I'm I'm ready to do it. Let's do it. So I don't know maybe we'll find somewhere soon to go mountain biking for the first time. That'll be so fun. So on the way we really didn't get that dirty but coming back going through that last tunnel look at my legs and my pants and the downside is all of our towels are being used for the bike so I guess we're gonna do laundry today so we can actually shower later. She said I'm ready to go riding too. And now for the fun part get these bikes back in the van somehow. We successfully got the bikes in the back of the van. We did get a little bit of dirt on our cushions but thankfully we can easily wash that. It's probably like the best case scenario of messing up anything in the van. And just to give you guys an idea of how much this experience costs it's $13 a person to access the trail and regardless if you bring your own bike you bring an e-bike you rent a bike from them you pay that and then to rent the e-bikes we paid $70 a person so it's $10 an hour but we did the all-day package just to make sure that we had enough time and then if we had rented bikes at lookout pass it would have been $50 a person for the bikes and the pass to go on the shuttle. So all in all the e-bikes were a little bit more expensive but I would say it was 1000% worth it. The look on people's faces when we like flew past them on our way up when they were going down they were all like what? One person was like yeah it was so much fun. We just returned our bikes we want to give a huge shout out to Spoke House e-bikes for just existing because that was one of the funnest experiences we've had in a really long time. The owner Stu was great so if you're going to do the route to the Hiawatha we highly recommend doing an e-bike instead of a regular bike. So as we mentioned earlier we're in the town of Wallace, Idaho which is near the route of the Hiawatha and this town is actually billed as the silver mining capital of the world so there's all kinds of museums and tours you can go on but we're trying to stay away from that kind of stuff right now so we'll just give you guys a quick little tour around. It's such a cute town and they're surrounded by mountains it's adorable. And it's home to the center of the universe which we've actually heard of a few places that are home to the center of the universe so we're not really sure what that means if you guys know let us know below but it's at 6th and bank street and we checked it out and we can officially say we've been to the center of the universe. That's gonna do it for our Idaho adventure for now we're so glad we were able to sneak in one more little adventure in northern Idaho so that plus our time a few weeks ago on southern Idaho we absolutely love Idaho and we'll definitely be back. But now we have to head to Missoula because we have no towels to shower so we gotta do some laundry and our van is full of dirt so it was already dirty you know it's extra dirty so we gotta clean the van but next time you guys see us we're gonna be headed to Glacier.