Moose Mountain Motoring - NOT
By Eric
The Rabbit Trail is dead. Long live the reroute!
No one showed for the Tuesday Night MTB Ride. Surprising, really, given that it was raining, cool, and windy at the start. So, while I was waiting for no one to show, I started formulating a plan.
When no one showed, I drove to the intersection of McCall and Old Murphy Dome Road, where the trail-ish section of OMDR starts. I rode down it to the Fort Knox power line. The road was a bit slippy and slimy, but I didn't push it too hard. No crashies!
My reason for heading to the power line was to see if it would be a good reroute for this ride. We used to head down from OMDR on the Rabbit Trail, an old game trail used long ago by Rocky Reifenstuhl for one of his races and more recently (but still several years ago) by the Sluicebox 100, a multi-sport 100-miler. Over the years the trail has gotten harder to find. Very few people use it. And a few trees had fallen across it. We cleaned it up once, but more trees had fallen since then. How many? I didn't know. But last year on this ride, Dean and I (the only two riders) tried to take the Rabbit Trail from OMDR and stopped after the third downed tree after just a couple of hundred feet.
After looking at satellite images, I theorized that we could use the power line as a reroute, since the Rabbit Trail comes out onto the power line a ways down the hill. But I didn't know if any trail existed down the power line. Now was the time to find out! (Our only other option for the ride is to head out to and then down Spinach Creek Road. Mucho boring for MTBers.)
Well, I can report that the power line is a great reroute. There really isn't much of a trail. There are bits of trail here and there. I mostly followed the track left by someone else through the grass. But it was easy to ride. The base is mostly even. No big surprise divots. I only had to walk my bike through one short area. (Which I'm happy to say is a bit swampy!) Otherwise, it was mostly fine all the way down to where the Rabbit Trail comes out onto the power line.
I turned around there and started to head back up when my little gray cells got a little idea. I started to wonder if the whole Rabbit Trail was in bad shape or just the part at the top. How would I know unless I tried?!
So, I headed up the Rabbit Trail. The lower part is through a black spruce forest. I should have turned around after about the fifth area of downed black spruce trees. (Sometimes there was one tree across the trail; sometimes there were three or four criss-crossing each other.) But I started to think: "Maybe, it's just the black spruce section." (Unfortunately, there was no one there to talk sense into me.)
Well, it's not just the black spruce section. There are other trees across the trail higher up. Those trees are fewer in number, but larger in size. I spent a lot of time bushwhacking around trees or lifting my bike over them. I tried to ride only once. I got it about three pedal strokes before I was off the bike.
And then I started to lose the trail. No one has been using that trail, so the grass has started to grow, concealing the trail. I kept losing it and then re-finding it. But I knew I was getting close to the upper end, where it exits onto OMDR.
Then I couldn't find the trail. I looked and looked, but couldn't find anything that resembled any kind of path through the woods. Still, I knew I was within a quarter-mile of OMDR, so I bushwhacked. I bushwhacked over, around, and through brush and downed trees. I said a word a lot that I won't repeat here. It kind of helped. I scratched my legs on branches and rose bushes. I smacked my pedals (flats with grippy studs on them) against the back of my calves over and over. I was soaked, less from the rain than from pushing through wet brush. But, still, I was having a great time. I was on an adventure! And I wasn't worried about being lost. I knew I just had to keep going uphill.
Then I saw a break in the trees up ahead. I knew it had to be OMDR! I pushed and shoved and cursed my way to the line of alders. Normally, I would hate to bushwhack through a line of alders, but I knew what was on the other side. Nirvana! I viewed the alders as my friends! Twisted, cruel, evil friends, but still friends! I shoved and cursed (and fell) my way through the alders, and suddenly I was out on OMDR. Hooray!
I finally noticed that it wasn't raining anymore. Must have stopped a while back. The streams running down OMDR were now just a trickle compared to what they had been at the start. But it was still windy. I was glad I had to bike uphill to my truck. I wanted to keep warm. As I biked back toward my truck, I passed the Rabbit Trail entrance after less than 100 feet of biking. So close!
But I did it! I verified two things: The reroute is do-able. The Rabbit Trail is kaput! Sometimes you just gotta be stupid!
