I’ve portaged a canoe, hauling it on my shoulders across land between one lake and another, but I never portaged a bicycle until yesterday on the Great Western Trail just north of Martinsdale, Iowa. Fortunately, we didn’t have to haul our bikes far – just lift them up and between the branches of a tree that had fallen across the trail, completely blocking it. The trail was rough in general, with fallen twigs and branches, thanks to a ferocious storm in the wee hours of Sunday morning that downed trees all over the metro and caused power outages.
We should have taken this into consideration when we choose a trail to ride on a few hours later.
The good news is after we portaged our bikes, we encountered a truck on the trail – a rare and jarring sight – that appeared to be public works of some sort. An hour later, on our ride back to Martinsdale, the fallen tree was gone and we breezed right through – no further portaging required. Impressive service!
All this made me wonder if there is a trail hot line you can call to find out the condition on a trail – or to report a problem like a fallen tree.
TakeBetsywithyou 