A Ride down Lookout Pass

[Casey Jones]

Okay...second time I try this. Phone photos were just too huge in native format. Now, with some editing, maybe this can work.

Lookout Pass, for those who haven't followed the conversation...is the old Milwaukee Road (Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific) right of way that crossed clear into Tacoma. Lookout Pass was the crossing of the Bitterroot Range, which makes up the western border of Montana.

It's Rails to Trails now, and a ski operator has the franchise to run it as a summer attraction. The trail is graded, with informative signs; water is staged; there's trail rangers patrolling for flat tires or old duffers who're having issues (there are a lot of us). They'll rent bikes at the trailhead, or clamp-on kids' Buddy Bikes if you don't own one but don't want little Johnny rolling along on his own bike.

Anyway...I'm re-learning digital photography, now that digital cameras have given way to smartphones. Let's see how Take 2 unfolds.

Here's the introductory plaque in the parking lot of the ski lodge...the bike trailhead is five miles away, but this is where you might come for information:

 

[Casey Jones]

Hmmm....smaller than I expected; but you can click and read it.

From there...the 9000-foot-long tunnel which is at the trailhead. Here's the East Portal...


EDIT. I see now I was adding photos the wrong way.

 

[Casey Jones]

Out of that pitch-black tunnel, you're on a carved ledge, now paved with gravel. To the right, a long way down.

 

[Joe King]

Is that a bridge in the center of the 2nd pic?

 

[Casey Jones]

You ride on...this day, it was actually quite crowded. A hot August day in the mountains - the tunnels, IIRC, six of them, offered some break from the heat.

But it's seismically active. Tunnel 23 actually shifted in the middle, after an earthquake, long after the railroad was gone. Forest service crews cut a trail around it for the bike path; but, without collapsing, the tunnel floor and sides shifted up about eight feet relative to one another. It's closed now...fence on one side; just the barricade on this side.

 

[Casey Jones]

A number of informational placards. About two-thirds were worth reading, but after the first couple, I stopped even trying to photo them.

A lot of them were for railroad nerds...I mean diehard fanboiz, stuff that I didn't really care much about, as a former railroader. But some of the historical perspectives were interesting.

 

[Casey Jones]

Is that a bridge in the center of the 2nd pic?

It is. And we got down there, eventually.

But, as I mentioned, the flow was really busy that day. The sides of the bridge are off-limits with cones and tape, so there's no passing. The bridge is safe; the handrails - installed much later by NFS crews - not so much.

So, no photos off that bridge.

 

[Casey Jones]

On the other side, you have a wall of rock. You're basically scaling the side of a mountain. If you did it a century ago, you'd be in a loco filled with superheated steam and a coal fire, and all that kept you from rolling down the mountain was the judgment of men you never knew...some of who didn't live to see the job finished.

 

[Casey Jones]

Okay...in no particular order...the rest...

This is coming out of a very-short tunnel, with a crude snow shelter still attached.

That's my trusty steed with the saddlebags...

 

[Casey Jones]

Looking down, same area...over the edge. Not a good place if you have vertigo.

 

[Casey Jones]

One view of the skyline, along the trip. Not sure how far down I was.

It's more breathtaking than the camera communicates.

 

[Casey Jones]

Plenty of natural springs. Those readers who do mountain hiking or hunting, know how prolific they are.

There were springs gushing through the rock walls of the first, long tunnel...it wasn't lined; that was a 20th-century development in more-recent tunnels. They let the water flow...and it was, no doubt, a mess in winter.

But here, washing down from higher elevations, ONTO the roadbed (and culverts to carry it past) was a pleasant (superficially, anyway) waterfall.

 

[Casey Jones]

You're never far away from a way to take a flying leap...

 

[Casey Jones]

I think I got them all. Editing them turned into a righteous mess, with multiple resizes...

 

[Fatrat]

Interesting...

 

[Casey Jones]

So. I completely screwed up the photo attachments.

Now that everyone interested has looked...now I have the glossy full-screen images.

 

[Bottom Feeder]

WOW!
I timed it just right! I got here after the retake.
Lottsa nice photos KC, musta been great just you and the bike, no window in between, sounds of the wilderness…
good on ya
BF

 

[Joe King]

So. I completely screwed up the photo attachments.

Now that everyone interested has looked...now I have the glossy full-screen images.

They show up. They just have to be clicked on.

Usually I get an option to either post a thumb nail or full size when including a pic in a post.

It's on the small image of the pic after it uploads.
I'm not 100% sure, but I'm thinkin' that if you don't pick one or the other, it defaults to thumbnail.

No biggie. Everyone still got to see 'em.

They look great. Wish I could ride that. Be nice to have something like that just down the road.



Were you able to figure out if your chain has a quick link or not?

If the chain that's on it now is the original chain when it was new, it may not have one.
....but you won't know for sure unless ya look. If it has one, the chain comes apart easy. So it's worth looking.

You'll have look at the links in your chain til you see it, if you got one. Make a mark or completely wipe the first link you look at so if you go all the way around you'll know when to stop looking.

In a pinch, I've just gone to the power sprayer car wash and used that to clean stuff off my chain. If ya ever do that, have some rags and paper towels handy to wipe the chain down good and dry it and then apply lube.

 

[Casey Jones]

Were you able to figure out if your chain has a quick link or not?

If the chain that's on it now is the original chain when it was new, it may not have one.
....but you won't know for sure unless ya look. If it has one, the chain comes apart easy. So it's worth looking.

You'll have look at the links in your chain til you see it, if you got one. Make a mark or completely wipe the first link you look at so if you go all the way around you'll know when to stop looking.

In a pinch, I've just gone to the power sprayer car wash and used that to clean stuff off my chain. If ya ever do that, have some rags and paper towels handy to wipe the chain down good and dry it and then apply lube.

It's outta site, and lower in my to-do list.

See...I'm really cramped for space. And there's no covered parking in this apartment complex. Anyone who has a bike has to either have a storage unit - we have five within six blocks, strange neighborhood - or else store the bike indoors.

All the local storage places are rented full. Seems odd, but people can't get enough of them. I have one that was close to my old apartment; used it as a motorcycle garage. Now it's full of other crap, including stuff I'm looking to sell.

And the bike. Spring and fall, I'll keep the bike in my front room...that partly worked because the bike was new and clean. I've owned it three years, never rode it in the rain. Or on a dirt trail, until last week.

But this time of year, my sliding patio door has an air-conditioner adapter panel in it. Not easy to get the bike in there. AND it's been so hot, riding it seems insane.

(Although less so now that the air-conditioning took a dump, in my microcar...)

So...sometime in the next couple of days I have to drive out to the airport, get the bike out, and start looking.

I never thought of the power-wash answer. It's the motorcyclist in me - you do not, repeat NOT, use a power-sprayer on an M/C chain. That's a sure way to lead to inner corrosion and failure in short order. But a bicycle chain has such lower stress and demands on it; and frankly, with maybe 200 miles use a year, it's gonna wear out quickly anyway. So...yeah, just spray it down good, let it dry, and next day lube everything. If water gets in the crank bearing set, that's solved easily with grease repacking.

Difference between 100 rotations a minute and 8000 rpm, ya know.

I should a thought of that. Problem as good as solved.

 

[Casey Jones]

They look great. Wish I could ride that. Be nice to have something like that just down the road.

The beauty of being a retired old goat, is, you can just load up the truck and come to a place like this...and just DO it.

With your experience, I'd try to make it part of a bigger event. See if you could take the trail down the mountain another 25 miles or so, maybe with a group. In fact, absolutely with a group - you get off this closed course, you no longer have rangers ready to help with flats, etc. But you get eight experienced riders, and split up the gear, and when something happens, you have it all and you're only delayed half an hour.

To the west you have Wallace, a picturesque old lumbering town. Not a ghost town, it was never abandoned. Like Missoula, it transformed from logging to railroad terminal and crew services, to tourism. Wallace, like I said, had the last stoplight on Interstate 90, until the viaduct was opened in the early 1980s. And it was a pleasant stop.

To the north, Glacier; to the south, Yellowstone. To the west, used to be, the lovely weather and scenery of the Coast. Now, I'd stay clear...but it might be worth organizing a trip around.