Bike and Hike on the Trails of Ketchum

Yesterday we rode north on the Wood River Trail.  It goes across this bridge.  It’s a Pegram bridge, one of eight that survive today.  It was built in 1884 at the Snake River Crossing in Ontario, OR.  In 1917 it was removed from that location and placed here.  Pegram bridges have the advantage of being easily taken apart and reassembled somewhere else.

This is an art installation.  It’s visible from ID75.  It’s also impossible to tell what it is.  The piece is called Spur.  It was commisioned in 2016, and was originally installed at Craters of the Moon National Monument.  Using LIDAR, the artist digitally mapped a lava tube, and based his sculpture on the tube’s shape.  From my perspective, this thing is just sitting out in a field, but this is where the Ketchum Arts Commision chose to site it.  It’s more art that does not speak to me.

Just up the trail there is a huge pile of dirt.  Why is there a huge pile of dirt here?

Why have two bull dozers spent days making trenches in the dirt?  It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the trenches are about six feet deep.  This really needs an interpretive kiosk.

It was a pleasant ride.  We rode to the end of the trail, where it stops at Hulen Meadows.  We then proceeded further north on ID75.  There is a very wide shoulder, and there is not much traffic heading north this time of year.

On the way back we stopped to gawk at the work being done on the side of the road.  The river is close to undercutting ID75.  We asked the workers who was winning, the river or the armoring, they said at the moment it was the river.

Today we hiked the Fox Creek Loop.  This is one of the trailheads that connect to the loop.  It’s under water.  It’s under a lot of water!  That’s one of the foot bridges that has been undermined.

Parts of the trail are flat and nice for mountain bikes.  However, there is a really steep section that climbs the side of the canyon.  I can’t comprehend riding it in either direction.  It’s kind of a bummer, it starts out with such promise for the bikes, but becomes fatal in short order.

We kept walking, thinking we would see a turnoff to the Lake Creek Trailhead.  We never did.  I don’t know if we didn’t go far enough or what.  Anyway, we ended up turning around and going back.   We really wanted to know what’s at the other end of this part of the trail.  From my perspective, this is mountain bike heaven.  Tiny rolling rises, very few rocks, no scary exposure, just scenic dirt goodness.

Later we saw a couple of riders who told us where the other end is.  We will be going there tomorrow to check it out.

It’s just lovely here, is it not?