For the week of December 3 - 9, 2003

Fox Creek
bridge finished

New trailhead to service
Fox Creek next summer

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

With the installation Tuesday of a new, 80-foot-long foot bridge over the Big Wood River, hikers and bikers will have a new access point to the Fox Creek-area trails when the snow melts next spring.

Among the first people to cross a new bridge over the Big Wood River at Fox Creek, Henry Kallis of Roscoe Steel & Culvert Co., which made the bridge, looks back and admires his handiwork. Express photo by Willy Cook

The bridge is part of a new trailhead being built by the U.S. Forest Service and Blaine County on the east side of the Big Wood, across from the Fox Creek confluence.

The Fox Creek-area trail system, which includes Chocolate Gulch, Oregon Gulch, North Fork and Fox Creek trails, provides recreation opportunities to more than 20,000 hikers, mountain bikers, runners and equestrians each year.

The new trailhead is about six miles north of Ketchum about a half mile west of Highway 75.

Brian Cameron, project superintendent, said the bridge abutments are "well designed and beefy" for a foot bridge.

"That sun of a gun will be here for a long time," he said.

In part, the Fox Creek bridge and new trailhead are the results of an effort to alleviate traffic at the Forest Service’s Chocolate Gulch trailhead, about a mile upstream. Because the Chocolate Gulch area has very limited parking, trail users parked in homeowners’ lawns and along streets during busy weekends.

 

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