Where the pavement ends
Harriman Trail serves up enjoyable experience
When the Sun Valley area’s granny gear climbs and technical
single track bike trails have your muscles knotted up, or if you’re new to the sport
of off-road bicycling, the Harriman provides an easy and fun fix.
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
The Harriman
Trail is never more than a quarter mile from state Highway 75—and oftentimes much
closer—but it’s got a wild, remote feel.
Rubber studded tires glide easily on the dirt and gravel surface of the
18-mile-long, eight-foot-wide path, which connects Sawtooth National Recreation Area
(SNRA) headquarters with Galena Lodge. Lodgepole forest fragrances drift on the wind, and
easy riding gives one the chance to look at Mother Nature’s spectacles or to talk
with friends.
When the Sun Valley area’s granny gear climbs and technical single
track bike trails have your muscles knotted up, or if you’re new to the sport of
off-road bicycling, the Harriman provides an easy and fun fix.
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The trail is the product of a partnership between the SNRA and the Blaine
County Recreation District, and construction began in 1996.
The trail began with a pledge from the Mary W. Harriman Foundation in
1991. The initial gift was extended by partners in both the public and private sectors,
according to a Harriman Trail information pamphlet.
According to the Harriman master plan, the trail is designed to embrace
the elegant and classic feel of Sun Valley’s origins and the natural beauty of the
SNRA. It is named after Averell Harriman, Sun Valley resort’s founder.
On Friday afternoon, Elkhorn residents Bruce Vasko, 62, and M.J. Burns, 54,
wound their way north toward Galena Lodge on the northern section of the trail. They were
obviously enthusiastic about the addition of the trail to the valley’s overflowing
buffet of recreation opportunities.
"It’s a great trail," Vasko beamed. "It’s the
best workout, best views, best flowers," he added of the northern section’s
boons.
Burns said she enjoys the social benefits of riding on a wide trail.
"It’s unique. It’s just so unique. We like it because
it’s wide open, and we can ride beside each other and talk," she said.
But getting places can be a challenge, the pair agree, because of the many
opportunities for investigation and discovery along the way.
"The first time we went, we didn’t get much riding done, because
we were on so many side roads, just exploring," Vasco said.
Indeed, the trail crosses countless old logging and dirt roads winding
their way into the Smoky Mountains.
Bennie, and Mickey Knodel, 69 and 67 years old, respectively, Twin Falls
residents who work as campground hosts at the Boulder View Campground each summer, were
found near the campground walking a section of the Harriman. They worked to post a fallen
Harriman Trail direction sign.
"We want to make it nice for everybody," Mickey Knodel said.
"It’s just so beautiful up here."
The pair agreed that the trail is growing in popularity, though they
aren’t particularly fond of the added traffic to the Boulder View Campground.
"We have people going through camp all day long," Mickey Knodel
said.
The Boulder View trail section is one of few on the Harriman that remains
to be completed. For the time being, the trail goes straight trough camp and around an
outhouse on a narrow spur that connects the area with the historic Easley Hot Springs.
And the hot springs, Mountain Express reporters discovered, are an
ideal spot to soothe some aching mid-ride muscles.
Easley was first established as a bath house and stage stop in the
mid-1880s, explained Susan Mann, Easley and Cathedral Pines camp manager.
Mann, 50, explained that the actual hot spring rises to the earth’s
surface beneath the cabin’s northern deck. The water then flows directly into a
swimming pool at around 94 degrees.
The Easley cabin is operated under a permit from the Forest Service by the
Idaho Baptist Convention, explained Mann, who lives at the cabin year-round
"The bike trail has not caught on yet here," Mann said,
"but we get people who have known about us for years and years."
Harriman project coordinator Cathy Baer said in an interview that the
trail is 99 percent complete.
The stretch in the Easley area is awaiting construction of a bridge across
the Big Wood River, and a section north of Murphy’s Bridge will be resurfaced. Those
projects will begin this fall, she said.
Aside from those finishing projects, Baer said the trail will be worked over
in its entirety with a calcium chloride solution that will harden the surface. Thus far,
the trail has been treated with the solution between SNRA headquarters and Baker Creek,
making that section the easiest for novice bicycle riders.
Baer said she is encouraged by the feedback she’s gotten about the
trail this summer.
"We have encountered lots and lots of mountain bikers on the trail
who tell us how grateful they are to have a place that isn’t radical single track
that gives them the opportunity to get out on their mountain bikes in a beautiful mountain
vista landscape," she said.
