The Doug Ryder Reports

Chapter 17: An Exploration of the Many Fine Trails On and Around Chena Ridge

This week we explored Chena Ridge. There were only six of us on this ride and we managed to stick together for the whole two hours. Usually it takes us three hours to do this ride and more often than not, the group gets split up. Not this week.

We met up at Dave Kramer’s house and got going a little after 7:30. We decided to do the usual route down behind Dave’s house along the ditch trail which comes out on the subdivision road below Knightsbridge. We went up that road to the section line along Niilo Koponen’s property, took that all the way down. We (sort of) got lost trying to get over to Roland Road. Once there, we went up Chena Hills Drive over to the trail that eventually comes out on Pickering.

However, that trail is now a subdivision road (what a difference a year makes!) and we slogged along through it while I told the tale of my trip down the power line in my dad’s car back in 1990 (the car that later caught on fire – Ed.), before all this development happened. We climbed up the road until we came out on Ridgepointe, went up that to Chena Ridge, crossed same, and went in search of the FE ditch, which Dave Leonard promised us was just over the hill.

We found it, after descending Moonshine Run and going down a section line. We also found an old section of timber framing that once held some kind of valve, evidence of mining in decades past. This was at the bottom of the north side of the ridge. From there, we cruised off to the east and eventually came out on Montana Drive. The trail dead-ended at the end of Montana and so we backtracked a bit, took a power line up by Dave Leonard’s house, and then he took us up along the easement back over to the other side of the ridge.

From there it was a quick ten-minute ride down the power line, over Old Chena Ridge Road, and down Knightsbridge to the cars. Burnside and I did our little sprint and I won (just barely) followed moments later by the rest of the crew. All in all, a great ride over an excellent trail system that is being encroached by increasing development.

Total time: just over two hours. Total distance: between 11 and 12 miles. Worst climb: up from Montana back to the top. Best descent: down the section line next to Niilo’s property. Percentage of time spent pushing/porting the bikes: perhaps 20. Percentage of time spent having fun: greater than 90.

That’s my report for this week. See ya next week!

Liam Wescott

a/k/a The Doug Ryder

FCC Historian