Fueled by 16 ounces of go juice on a Saturday morning last summer I left the house to ride to work on my bicycle at about 6:30 am. I was working as an inspector at the Palmer airport runway reconstruction job and the contractor typically worked half days on Saturday. Went off the clock around 11 am and decided to ride around for a while before heading home. I stopped at Fred's and bought two Fast Breaks and an apple for sustenance, then started biking.

I went looking for some inconvenient truth and don't got no Prius to rally, know what I mean? I ain't Al Gore Junior but I do have a bicycle and the occasional inability to exercise good judgment.

Since I had a mountain bike I figured riding around on the river plain would be fun. I headed out to Kay Marie drive on the Outer Springer and followed the wheeler trail down the bluff and out onto the river plain. I kept following wheeler trails; at first on loose gravel and cobbles with the characteristic undulations of a wheeler trail through any sort of loose soil or rock. That made for pretty slow going. The only vegetation in this area was sparse brush which made for pretty good visibility of the surrounding mountains.

As I continued heading South and West the gravel and cobbles gave way to silt and the brush gave way to trees. I took a turn due South onto a poorly defined trail and ended up riding through several shallow creeks before being turned back to the main trail by a slough. At that point I was still under the impression that I wasn't going to get my feet wet.

An overview of the route courtesy of Google Earth.

The towering mountains to the South provided a pretty good reference to gauge my progress and I could tell I was getting pretty damn far away from home, but for some inexplicable reason I decided that I really wanted to know where this trail went. I knew that I was pretty close to the confluence of the Matanuska and Knik Rivers and that I was headed towards the freeway crossing over the Knik.

Damp silt turned to moist silt turned to saturated silt. I rounded a bend and saw an enormous mud hole stretched out directly in front of me-made the split-second decision that I could make it through and started pedaling. As my tires sunk deeper in the mud I gradually slowed down despite my increased effort until I came to a stop and plopped my feet into the muddy water. So much for keeping my feet dry. I slogged through several similar mud holes before the landscape changed again.

I left the trees behind and emerged on the north bank of the northernmost channel of the Knik. It was a kind of grassy, muddy plain. The wheeler trail was pretty faint through here and the channels of water I had to cross changed in color and, as I would soon find out, got a hell of a lot deeper.

The first little water crossing in that area was probably only about ten feet across, but I couldn't gauge the depth due to the impenetrable turquoise color of the water. I hit it at full speed and before I knew what was happening I found myself completely stopped and standing in knee deep water. There were lots of little channels of obtuse, bluish green water that were deceptively deep for only being several feet across. I usually ended up getting off the bike and wading through.

By now the wheeler trail had completely disappeared but I could see the railroad bridge over the Knik in the distance. This was pretty shocking to me because I didn't even think it was possible to ride from the Outer Springer loop to the Knik river bridges (seeing as how it's through a swamp…) I kept riding through the thin stalks of grass and approached the railroad embankment. I was stopped just short of the embankment, though, by a channel of water that was disturbingly large.

I got off my bike and stared at the channel. I really didn't want to cross it, but I also really didn't want to ride back the same way that I came. Using a piece of driftwood I found, I tentatively waded a couple steps into the water and felt around with my makeshift probe. It was definitely deeper than any of the other crossings, but I figured it was still doable. I waded back out and picked up my bike. Hornets were swarming around me and I tried to push the visions of getting stuck in the muddy silt of the channel bed out of my head. With the driftwood stick in one hand for stability and my bike in the other I charged into the water.

I made it across and hurled myself through an alder thicket and up the railroad embankment. Thankfully, from the railroad tracks I could see an actual trail leading to the freeway about a half mile to the West. I made it to the freeway and rode South a couple miles to the Old Glenn exit and stopped just past the first road cut for a breather. Drank some water, had one of the Fast Breaks, and started heading East on the road.

On the other side of the Old Glenn bridge I stopped again to eat the apple and the other Fast Break. This was at the same area where we had our beginning of summer bonfire, but that's a story for another time. I continued on riding past the Butte and towards Palmer.

By the time I got to Palmer, I was pretty gassed and in a lot of pain. Specifically my ass hurt from the bicycle seat and my shoulders hurt from the weight of my backpack. I stopped by the depot and walked around a little bit trying to psyche myself up to finish the ride. I seem to recall that I got home around 3:00 for a total of 4 hours and 40 miles. Thank goodness there were a couple cans of Moosehead waiting for me there.

FURIOUS OUT!