We had never tried any rail-trail cycling outside of Canada so we decided to check out a popular one south of the border.
We decided to visit the weekend before the official opening so there was still a bit of snow. When the trail is officially open for tourism, it can get quite packed so it would be nice to avoid the crowds – in fact, we were the only ones on the trail!
The full trail is 24km long featuring 10 old railway tunnels and 7 trestle bridges. The largest tunnel is St. Paul Pass Tunnel – a straight shot 2.7km through a mountain crossing the state line from Montana to Idaho in the process.
Sometimes in the off-season, the St. Paul Pass tunnel is sealed off (this wasn’t the case for our off-season visit).
One disadvantage of an off-season visit is the shuttle service isn’t running. This requires some logistics juggling, or it isn’t very difficult to just bike back and forth the full 48km.
