The Palouse offers many opportunities from beautiful scenery to multiple trails to explore the outdoor environment. One of these opportunities is the Latah Trail.
The Latah Trail is a trail that spans 16 miles from Moscow, Idaho to Troy, Idaho. On the trail, people are able to partake in many activities, including biking, inline skating, fishing, horseback riding, walking and cross country skiing.
The Outdoor Program at the University of Idaho will be hosting a road ride event on Oct. 8 where participants will take an evening bike ride on the Latah Trail. The bike ride will also go off onto other roads off the Latah Trail like Lynville and the Orchard Loop. Unlike other events, the bike rides allow more participants that can range anywhere from four to 10 people and sometimes even a bit more.
“We have the ability to take a few more folks on these bike rides because there’s no travel,” Trevor Fulton, director of the Outdoor Program, said. “We leave from the Student Recreation Center, and we come back. We have some safety protocols in place where we’re asking participants to bring facial coverings in case we group up part way along the trail, but when you’re riding your bike we’re spread out so we can go in a larger group.”
The road ride will focus primarily on riding the trails rather than teaching students how to ride. Students will be able to grasp knowledge about the trail they are riding on if they wish to come back and ride the trail on their own. The Outdoor Program has offered two bike rides, a mountain bike ride and a gravel grind bike ride, where participants were able to ride bikes on different terrains. For the road ride, participants will be riding on asphalt following the trail. Two Outdoor Program staff members will go on the trip with the rest of the riders being students.
On the road ride, students will be able to stop and enjoy the scenery as they are riding through the Palouse.
“The Palouse is spectacular,” Sandra Townsend, Outdoor Program coordinator, said. “You are definitely going to see wildlife, and it’s very spectacular especially going to fall right now with the leaves changing, it’s beautiful. We call them moments of appreciation. If we see a spectacular sunset, we’re not going to ride past it.”
On the bike rides, Townsend has seen a mixture of people participating with differing abilities across the board.
“They’re definitely not competitive and that’s not the point of the rides at all,” Townsend said. “It’s about getting to know other people, the point of these rides is to identify one or two other folks who ride at your pace, and who you enjoy riding with. Ideally, as much as I want them to come on our rides again, they can go out with the folks they meet on our rides, and they don’t need to go through our program anymore. They can just talk with themselves and organize their own rides which is awesome. I love that.”
Armin Mesinovic can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @arminmesinovic.