By Becky Lomax
MILES AND MILES of popular bicycle trails snake around Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. While they all provide a smooth ride, many long parcels parallel Interstate 90—where cyclists spin to traffic’s roaring drone. To break away from the noise corridor, start peddling in Cataldo and aim for the Chatcolet Bridge on a bucolic 35-mile segment of the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes.
On this flat, paved pathway, bicyclists meander through narrow canyons, historic mining towns, farms, cedar forests, and pastoral wetlands en route to Lake Coeur d’Alene. With picnic tables, restrooms with bicycle racks, and interpretive signs, the trail offers more than just a place to spin wheels for exercise. You can bike the day away, stop for breaks, pick up historical tidbits, and sit on benches to watch wildlife—all to the music of bird songs.
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The flat, no-granny-gears-needed path yields high gear spinning. “The trail was so easy to ride that we could look around instead of watching for rocks in front of the tires,” commented one friend. Then she admitted, “But we did have to dodge one dead swan and lots of duck droppings.” Trail signs ticked off the mileage, and as families with tots riding tricycles or dad pulling a wagon appeared, we knew we neared the next of our route’s seven trailheads.
Built on a defunct Union Pacific Railroad line, the path not only serves bikers, walkers, skaters, and cross country skiers, but also provides a solution to an environmental disaster. The railroad constructed the track bed in 1888 with Silver Valley mine tailings. But the retrofitting from rails to trail sealed off these contaminants by using clean soil, gravel, and asphalt. It’s now a much more environmentally sound corridor and rimmed with Oregon grape and serviceberry.
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 Like charms on a bracelet, the Cataldo–Chatcolet stretch links the Chain Lakes waterways, prime nesting for birds. Swans, mergansers, and geese cluster in estuaries; bald eagles nest overhead, great blue herons poke shorelines, and osprey dive for fish. Every brushy or wooded location contains a songster chorus, from red-winged blackbirds to tiny chickadees.
At Lake Coeur d’Alene, the path hugs the shoreline southward to the best of the trail’s 36 bridges and trestles. Accessed via a boulder jetty, the Chatcolet Bridge—the longest at 3100 feet—uses graded ramps to ease the ascent. On the downhill, riders hoot as the ramps turn into whoop-de-doos.
Any paved bike trail is usually a good bet. But here, you’ll hear hawks screech instead of tires.
When you go . . .
From I–90 approximately 27 miles east of Coeur d’Alene, take exit 40 and head north on Latour Creek Road to the first left. Turn into the Cataldo parking area and Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes trailhead. Since Cataldo to Chatcolet has the lowest trail elevation on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, this portion can be ridden April through November. Maps are available online at http://friendsofcdatrails.org
Northwest Travel March/April 2007 |
