Fish Lake Trail

Thought I'd post a couple of picture of the Fish Lake Rail Trail where I often ride. It is a 130 mile long rail bed that starts in Spokane and heads South/West to the Columbia River. It's official name is Columbia Plateau Trail State Park. Only 4 miles of the trail are paved with the remainder in gravel or railroad ballast.

The trail head for the paved part is two miles from my house, so an out and back ride gets me a quick 12 miles with near perfect conditions. This is great when I don't have a lot of time and need to get in a quick and hard ride.

As you can see, the railbed was cut through basalt rock. In some areas, the walls of rock go straight up on both sides of the trail.

I've meet up with all kinds of animals through here, most memorable being the time I caught up to a deer that had nowhere to go. So he just had to run along in front of me until he found a low area to escape.

I often scare up ducks who are lounging in the creeks that run on either side of the trail. They tend to fly for quite a distance right in front of the bike at about my head level, before finally flying up out of the way. Duck Butt!

There has been talk of paving the 10 mile section between here and Spokane, and then linking it up with the Centennial Trail. The Centennial Trails is a Really Beautiful paved rail trail that follows the Spokane River 36 miles to the Idaho border, and then follows Lake Coeur d' Alene for probably another 20 miles. (Most of my half marathon coming up in a few days will be on this trail)

North Idaho has some fantastic Rail Trails. In fact, a couple of years ago, a friend took me mountain biking on a trail that had something like 10 tunnels and 15 tressels. I think it was 15 miles long and all down hill! That excursion is what really got me into cycling and now, triathlon. I've got some cool photos from that ride. I'll post them one of these days.