Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Wolf Creek/Trail#544, Bigfork, Montana

Getting There
From Bigfork, drive north on 35. Take a right at 83 at the gas station (first stop light outside of town). Take a left onto Foothills road? at the Echo lake cafe/school/gas station corner. Take a right on 5292, and head up the Jewel Basin road (follow the signs for the Jewel Basin). As you're climbing, you will see a trailhead and parking area on your right, with an old gravel pit on your left that is commonly used for a shooting range. Park there, the singletrack starts off the right side of the road. 

The Route
Start climbing. Follow 544 till the split/junction with the supposed trail 354 (which in actual fact, doesn't exist) and then turn around and head back down (about 6 miles each way for a total of 12). I suggest turning around because if you continue its a steep steep hike a bike for a very long ways. Pick up the Swan Lake Ranger District map for more info.

All About the Trail
Super-exposed corner
The trail in question has a good bit of everything: some amazing, stone-laden bench cut singletrack with awesome views of the valley, some intense, super-exposed corners, loamy deep woods singletrack, stream crossings, and a lot of rocks... which makes for a tricky climb to the top.When I say a lot of rocks, I definitely mean it.  This is easily the rockiest trail I've ridden in Montana, and ranks somewhere in the top 3 rockiest that I have personally ridden in the whole nation.  Therefore, technical is the name of the game! The gnarly climb is rewarded with a gnarly descent... that's how it usually goes.  

Flathead Valley and Lake, Montana

1 comments:

Anonymous,  July 5, 2013 at 1:08 PM  

Great intermediate level ride, not as technical as Greg leads you to believe. His recomended turn around point is a solid recomendation...However, I might suggest turning around at the Wolf Creek or where you see his vista photo.

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Greg Heil is the Editor in Chief for Singletracks.com. He's been writing and publishing online since before blogging existed.

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