Autumn Interlude, Part 3: The Bennettville Trail

October 10, 2017

Autumn Interlude, Part 3: The Bennettville Trail

The Bennettville Ride (as it is called in the guidebook) has all the look and feel of a hiking trail - skirting lakes and tarns, high peaks all around, stunted trees, giant trees, grassy meadows, and free-flowing streams. In fact, and though there was periodic evidence of knobby tires passing along, I would have to guess that most people who traverse the trail do so afoot (as the mrs. and I chose to do), rather than awheel. Never-the-less it is mountain bikeable along its short length.

The only problem with this trail is figuring out where the trail head is. The book, which admittedly contains twenty year old information, notes that it is marked by an old iron boiler. Boilers being large things, that is what I looked for with no luck; there was this little piece of rusted machinery at a roadside pullout, but it was hardly a boiler. Anyway I settled on an ever smaller turnout just down the road, still opposite Tioga Lake, from which I noticed a backpacker starting out on a backcountry journey on our first pass. With a section of crumbling asphalt and dirt (old Tioga Pass Road perhaps) which connected to the correct pull out as well as the trail we sought, it all worked out fine.

The trail is only a mile and half in, mile and half out, but it packs a whole lot into that short distance. It quickly passes a series of small tarns, rambling along alpine slope and through piney forest. Eventually a spectacular waterfall comes into view, followed by the mine tailing, the remains of iron machinery strewn about and finally, the two wooden structures that remain from the old mining town.

Bennettville is an interesting place, a failure in every sense of the word - after boring into the mountain's rock for two thousand feet, purchasing the finest of mining equipment, even building a road over which to haul that equipment - in the middle of winter no less - the townspeople never found a spit of silver, and the mine's investors finally gave up with naught but a neat tunnel to show for their money.

If you look beyond the most obvious of what remains of Bennettville, you will notice the stone foundations of other buildings, broken glass, nails, plate shards, broken ceramics, and bits of metal all about the area. People have made little collections of what they have picked up, decorating boulders, and laid out on the floors of the two wooden structures (barn and assay office).

I hate to ever say "forget about the bike" but this is one instance that it just seems easier to go by foot. All the same, it is good to know that you could go by bike.