Mile Creek is another section of the Continental Divide Trail in the Island Park, ID area. It is tucked in the western flank of the Henrys Lake Mountain Range at the border of Idaho & Montana. The review on Trailforks said that grizzlies move through this trail all the time and have even been seen at the trailhead so we were nervous. Our out and back ride was 13.2 miles with 2686′ of climbing up to 9506′!
Mile Creek starts with a long straight singletrack across a dry meadow before turning onto the CDT and entering the green creek area. Rushing water, aspens, and fir trees provided some great shade on a warm 85 degree day. Before very long the switchbacks start. I think the previous record for number of switchbacks we have ridden this year on a trail was 38 but this ride has 53!!! The trail tread isn’t technical and rocky like Sheep Lake but several of the switchbacks are loose and gravely so require strong effort to get up them all. We stopped a lot to look back down all we were climbing.
The awesome part is that this trail is all downhill on the way back! After snapping a photo of the Continental Divide sign we flew back down the switchbacks. This trail could be combined with others in the area for a longer ride but we’ve been trying to not have very many sufferfest rides. Of the two, I liked the climb up Sheep better and hell, I’ll take the descent down either of these. SO FUN!
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