I've been walking on the railroad (part 4)

Courtesy Photo Engels enjoyed this view of Lake Chatcolet while crossing it on live tracks.

by William Engels Wsu Professor
| December 19, 2016 1:00 PM

MILWAUKEE ROAD — The most providential act of kindness I received on the hike occurred as I was crossing the bridge at Marble Creek on day 4, resigned to begin a 13-mile hike along Highway 50 into Avery.

I’d been dreading this stretch where, I’d been told, the corridor was appropriated in highway construction.

“How are you doing?”

I looked behind me. An early middle-aged man, long-haired, mustachioed, cigarette between his fingers on the steering wheel, had slowed his car to a stop on the bridge. He volunteered directions for an alternate route to Avery: scenic, shaded, graveled, and seldom-traveled Old Sieberts River Road on the other side of the river.

Later, whenever I glanced over at the shadeless, busy highway under the torrid afternoon sun, I was sure I’d been talking to an angel on that bridge.

I began crossing trestles – steep, sweeping metal bridges for which the Milwaukee Road was famous – while still in the Coeur d’Alene Reservation on my first afternoon. There were two, both offering views of Chatcolet Lake far below.

They were on the live tracks acquired by the Potlatch Corporation, a Spokane-based lumber company, which I would follow for about 20 miles into St. Maries on the first day. I crossed adjoining Benewah Lake on a long bridge.

It was Sunday. So the train wouldn’t run today. Yet, I couldn’t help picking up my pace a bit and listening for a whistle. It was the time of day when the train normally passed and there was precious little room for stepping aside.

A mother osprey, nervous for a different reason, chirruped piteously from her nest atop one of the piers as I passed. Tall trestles were a feature of the Hiawatha Trail, the popular section of the corridor in the Bitterroot Mountains between the St. Joe and St. Regis rivers.

So were tunnels, with more of them in this section than in any of a comparable length on the entire Chicago-Tacoma route. Most were a brief escape from the bright sunlight and heat, but the St. Paul Pass Tunnel near the end of this stretch was 1.7 miles long, the longest I’d encountered after the 2.3-mile Snoqualmie on my 2011 hike.

For the first 10 minutes or more, on the morning of day 5, I had the entire tunnel to myself. Then the glow of headlamps from a pair of women bicyclists approaching from the opposite end appeared, gradually grew, and passed me.

It was a bit eerie, my headlamp lighting up outlandish 1908 vintage hardware on the walls, the acrid diesel smell in the chilly air, yellow sludge