I drove down to Moscow Idaho to ride the Latah Trail and the extension through Troy down Bear Creek Canyon.
The Latah Trail starts right at the edge of Moscow Idaho the home of the University of Idaho. A bike trail continues west through Moscow and on to Pullman Washington. Both towns are in the area known as the Palouse Prairie, one of the premier wheat growing regions in America.
The Palouse Prairie is in both Washington and Idaho. On our side of the state line it covers large parts of Latah and Benewah counties as well as a small corner of Kootenai County. Moscow is the largest town in the Idaho portion of this region of rolling hills and pretty farmland.
The first seven miles of the trail parallels State Road 8 on an old railroad grade south of the highway mostly through rolling farmland.
On the way, the trail crosses over several small bridges that were built to give farmers access to there fields. There is one short section were it appears that the local governments could not secure the railroad right-of-way so the trail had to be routed down the hill to the highway and along that road until it rejoined the original alignment.
The trail slopes up to a tunnel under State Road 8 and them continues another mile paralleling the highway through a landscape that slowly becomes more forested.
The underpass looked fairly new. A bridge over the old rail road had to have had a lot more clearance.
The four mile section of the trail between the underpass with State Road 8 and the City of Troy is very scenic.
A local road is crossed on what is obviously a replacement bridge.
Along the way there are still various signs left over from the trails days as an active railroad. According to interpretive signage, the railroad used to connect Moscow to Lewiston in a round about way. Moscow is about two thousand feet higher in elevation than Lewiston.
At eleven miles, the trail hits the zero mile mark at a little park as you enter Troy. Troy is a very pleasant small Idaho farming and lumber town. A one mile long connection trail continues towards Bear Creek Canyon, but it’s just as easy and more scenic to pedal through downtown.
On the south end of town there is an interpretive sign showing the four mile long extension of the Latah Trail down Bear Creek Canyon. This part of the trail is relatively new and wasn’t here the last time I biked the route.
There were several old steel frame bridges over Bear Creek along this section. The creek was barely flowing this time of the year.
The last four miles of the trail descended steeply into the canyon. The area felt extremely remote and I saw not a single other person on the trail either going out or coming back.
It was a warm and hazy day. The skies were full of high level smoke from a wildfire in Montana. At least I couldn’t smell the smoke, but blue skies would have been nice.
All in all the Bear Creek Canyon extension of the Latah Trail was very nice with smooth pavement, no road crossings and lots of scenery.
It did however come to an abrupt end. The grade down to this point was steep enough that you could coast all the way. That meant only one thing. It was going to be a climb back to town.
Four miles back to Troy, another mile through it and then two more uphill and it was nice to see this sign. This is the high point of the line. After this it was mostly downhill all the way to Moscow.
Now I was almost back to the town it’s residents purposely mispronounce the name of just to be weird. Being Idaho’s college town that’s not the only thing they do to be different in Moscow. It was surprising how hard online information from the managing agencies is to get especially as this is the home of the University of Idaho. I did a little research and am still not certain who the managing agency is.
Right at the trailhead I found a tiny piece of history imbedded in the pavement of the side street.
I ended up pedaling 32 miles on this trail. The main drawback from my point of view is that it is a ninety minute drive from my house. The Palouse is beautiful and Bear Creek Canyon remote. There is a six mile gap in this old rail line due to a washout and a private land ownership issue before another public trail, the five and a half mile Ed Corkill Trail between Kendrick and Juliaetta picks it up again.
