Life On The Trail The Centennial Trail Attracts A Diverse Group Of Recreation-Minded People
Take your pick. You can come wearing a swimsuit, riding a bicycle, or paddling a canoe.
Some even arrive atop Mr. Ed.
All are welcome along the Centennial Trail, that path o’ fun that cuts a swath right through the Valley on its way to Coeur d’Alene. And somehow everyone seems to coexist pretty peaceably.
To see how an asphalt ribbon can become a recreational melting pot, simply pick any warm weekend. Stake out your section of trail, apply blowtorch-proof sunblock and just hang out. Bring a picnic if you want - but don’t feed the natives. They’re friendly, but you might give the runners a side stitch.
Last Saturday offered perfect weather for this more sedentary of Centennial Trail activities: people watching. In the morning, it was temperate enough to coax folks out of their houses and into their RollerBlades, but hot enough to keep the People Watcher from joining them.
Stop No. 1 on Saturday’s Centennial Trail sojourn was the Minnehaha Rocks on Upriver Drive. One of the rock faces is 85 feet high. Here, geology met insanity.
Christopher Hutto was rappelling down the side of a rock, showing a first-timer the ropes (pardon the pun).
“Drop at least 10 feet down,” he said to Ryan Holder, 18. “If you don’t drop down far enough, you’ll crack your head on the ledge.” Ouch.
Holder jumped up and down against the rock. He let go of the brake, and shot down the rope. He did just fine.
Not far off, a different breed was going up the rock face. These people had no rope.
A teenage girl and three twentysomethings gingerly felt for even the smallest rock protrusion. They wedged their soft-soled shoes into any exploitable crag, passing spray-painted love messages on the way.
Is it scary?
“It was at first,” said 25-year-old Lisa Breen after returning to terra firma. “I thought, ‘I could fall - and if I fall, I’ll die.”’ Yikes.
Across the street, a runner with a Marine-style haircut stops. Apparently reaching his halfway point, he stares down at the asphalt for a second, turns around and heads back.
A little later, Nick and Deb Bauer haul their canoe out of the river. Nick was training for a national-level canoe racing event in Syracuse, N.Y. He had two weeks to go.
Deb, his wife, was no slouch as a training partner. She’s an accomplished cross-country skier who also uses the trail to train without snow. She uses a pair of roller skis.
A few blocks away at Boulder Beach, Chris Panas and his twin 8-year-old sons were laying a blanket on the sand.
“We’ve gone all the way to Idaho on our bikes,” Panas said of his family’s use of the Centennial Trail. “It’s great and I get to stay fit. It keeps me lookin’ lean and mean for a guy that’s almost 50.”
Next to him, a group of grade-school-aged kids charged their mountain bikes into the river. They said they knew it would rust their chains, but it was too much fun to care.
Farther eastward, a different legion of boys on two-wheelers was heading toward Argonne.
It was Boy Scout Troop 140 from Pasco. “We’re getting our cycling merit badges,” said Scoutmaster Richard Mathews. They came to the Valley by car to explore it by bike.
“Is there a restroom around here?” a Scout asked Mathews.
“No,” he replied.
Preferring solitude to traveling in a troop, an elderly man was walking a little dog along the trail. When wished a nice day, he said, “Every day is a nice day when you’re still breathing.”
Maybe he should give a good lecture to the rock-face types.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo