For my third trip this summer on the Palouse Cascade Trail, I headed west from Rosalia with the goal of making it to Malden. I fell short by a couple of miles. Better to enjoy a sixteen mile round trip than have a miserable twenty miler. Part 1 is under the hiking category as that is how I traveled it.
Rosalia is a small farming town on US-195 about thirty-five miles south of Spokane. The Palouse Cascade Trail crosses the old highway just south of Rosalia on this amazing concrete arch bridge. This bridge is a local landmark and still has the Milwaukee Railroad logo painted on it.
In addition to the old highway, this bridge crossed Pine Creek , a small stream the trail follows all the way to Rock Lake. The new US-195 crosses over the railroad easement just to the east. Rosalia is about twenty miles west of Tekoa, the town I used as my base for my last trip on the trail. The level of engineering used on the bridges give a hint that this was once one of the five transcontinental railroads in the United States.
The trail is a little hard to access from the town. Rosalia does have a small park with restrooms, but the trail is located up a steep slope from the town off of rough gravel roads. Within the first mile, a steep detour bypasses a place where an old bridge was removed over Gashouse Road. This intersection is the only thing resembling a trailhead in the area.
At the intersection their is an interpretive sign. The trail surface alternates between rough gravel ballast and soft sand. I heard the surface is far more challenging west of Rock Lake and Ewan.
The first couple of miles out of Rosalia parallels US-195 and passes though a typical mix of farmland and basalt cuts as it heads north and then northwest.
The trail passes a cemetery just outside of town. There’s one off the trail just east of Tekoa as well.
At Babb Road, the trail passes under the roadway in a newer culvert. I don’t think a train would fit through it. I’m not sure if this “tunnel” replaced a taller bridge or if the road just didn’t go through before the railroad was abandoned.
Evidence of a catastrophic wildfire from a few years ago was evident along the trail. This fire burned down much of the town of Malden and three or four bridges between that town and Pine City. Here I ran into the only other person I saw. This gentleman was nearing the end of a multiday journey that started in Cedar Falls over two hundred miles away. I was impresses. I made it sixteen and was tired by the time I finished.
Here is the first of several bridges over Pine Creek west of Rosalia. It was an impressive piece of engineering.
After the bridge, the trail passed through a couple of impressive cuts trough the basalt.
There are still old telegraph posts along the trail, some of which still had the old glass insulators. This was close to my turnaround point. I was still short of Malden by a couple of miles and the next bridge over Pine Creek was just around the bend. Sometimes a man has to know his limitations.
I saw a couple of coyotes and these white tail deer. Other than that my wildlife was limited to birds.
Most of the route of this trail is bordered by either farmland or cattle ranches. There were a few pieces of abandoned machinery along the way.
The trail passes through open range areas with gates that are the responsibility of the trail user to open and close. The State of Washington requires trail users to register on line so that they understand the rules. This process is simple and can be found here. The bovines did yield the right-of-way to me without argument.
On the way back to Rosalia I took a brief detour off trail to get a different preceptive of the bridge over Pine Creek.
When I got back to Rosalia, I ran into the same fella that I talked to on my way outbound. He was camping at the local park and we shared a couple of beers and traded stories about riding bicycle trails. Not a bad way to finish the trip.
An hour later I was back home after navigating rush hour traffic through Spokane. Between this ride and my two previous trips on the Palouse Cascade Trail I think I’ve seen most of it though eastern Washington. I would really like to explore the section through the Cascade Mountains closer to Seattle. I understand that part is beautiful and more user friendly. That might have to wait until next year.
