Rabu, 11 Maret 2015
treadwell ditch
Another trip report here.I tried this one last week, and it turned out to be kind of a disaster. I told someone about if after and she said, Oh yeah, everyone tries riding the Treadwell Ditch Trail once.
The problem is, the trail sounds sweet. It follows a ditch (an inglorious name for a pretty neat piece of engineering) that was cut into the mountains and brought water from various streams from one end of Douglas Island to the other for mining operations 100 years ago. Its basically a dozen miles of downhill singletrack.
I started at the beginning, which you can access by slogging through some mud off the road to Eaglecrest. The forest is rich and green and wild, even if you can still hear cars on the road. I saw a bear climb into the woods about 40 yards away, and three porcupines over the course of the day. The trail was gently downhill, as I expected, but was not very rideable. I probably dismounted 75 times or so, and crashed about a dozen times, at one point grabbing hold of a sapling as I flipped over the handlebars and into a patch of devils club. (I still have the needles in my hand.)
The number and diversity of obstacles was almost laughable -- roots, rocks, wash-outs, avalanches, downed trees, a landslide, log bridges, collapsed bridges, foot-numbing streams, snow, and mud. I think thats it. I rode for about six hours and gave up above the town of Douglas when I reached Paris Creek without a bridge and no visible route up the other bank.
Id like to say there are nice sections worth riding, but the trail pretty much stunk, at least for biking.
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