All aboard Mendocino’s rail bikes!
CLICK HERE if you are having trouble viewing these photos on a mobile device
Redwoods tower above. The fragrance of fir and mossy undergrowth fills the air. And the iron rails go clickety-clack, clickety-clack as our wheels glide down the line.
We’re on the Skunk Train rail line, which runs from Fort Bragg toward Glen Blair, but the locomotive and cars left long ago. Instead, we’re riding two-man rail bikes through the forest, pedaling through the curves and swooping downhill and up with a humming assist from an e-bike battery, as needed.
Welcome to the newest trend to hit this 19th-century rail line: Track-hugging tandem bicycles — with two seats across, not one behind — premiered last summer. Now the rail bikes are back and retrofitted with vastly more comfortable seats, sturdier gears and a small cargo basket for toting a picnic or jacket.
We’ve taken a preview ride on a rainy weekend in early March and by the time we return to Fort Bragg, we are thoroughly wet, mud-spattered and exhilarated. (On a dry weekend, we are assured, no one emerges looking like us — except for the exhilarated part.)
This Mendocino weekend comes at the end of a week of epic rains — and a winter of deluges. Desperate for blue skies, or at least non-torrential ones, we’ve escaped to this stretch of the Mendocino coast three hours north of the Bay Area and settled into the Brewery Gulch Inn, just off Miss Muffett Drive. (Yes, really.) The plan: hike the headlands, browse Mendocino’s adorable shops and cafes, and ride the rails. And insist repeatedly that that’s not rain, it’s mist. Heavy mist.
We’re sticking to the mist story as we board the bikes for the guided ride. The bikes’ big blue wheels nestle against the iron rails and we pedal madly down the first incline, then slow for a curve and a few pointers from our guide, Richard. That towering spire over there? It’s all that remains of a tree felled by wildfire; it’s now a favorite resting spot for hawks and vultures.
We pedal on. There’s a battery to help you hum along at 12 or 15 miles per hour, if you’d rather not break a sweat, but pedaling is much too much fun to let the battery do all the work. We glide through the forest, cross trestle bridges and snap photos as we glide, eventually arriving at Glen Blair. A once-thriving logging town, it’s now a meadow — and the end of the line.
The Skunk Train used to run the entire length from Fort Bragg to Willits, but a 2013 rock slide in Train Tunnel No. 1, roughly three miles from the Fort Bragg Depot, put the kibosh on that. It wasn’t the first mishap to hit this tunnel. There have been landslides and blockages before, but this one was so catastrophic, they’re still figuring out what to do — and how to pay for it.
Meanwhile, it provides an excellent excuse to hop off the bikes, walk a bit and pepper Richard, our laid-back guide, with questions about flora, fauna, history and how to change the tracks so the train (or bike) goes to the right instead of the left. (Turns out it’s exactly the way model train tracks work. Who’d have thought?) And then the most important question of all: We don’t have to pedal backward to get back, do we?
He laughs. He and his partner lift the bikes and turn them around. And voila. We pedal back to civilization through the mist.
IF YOU GO
Skunk Train Rail Bikes: These guided, pedal-powered two-seaters take you on a one-hour ride along the Pudding Creek Estuary. Rides — $79 per bike, with room for two riders — are available from March to November. Check in at Fort Bragg’s Skunk Train Depot, 100 W. Laurel St., 45 minutes before your ride time for orientation. Order tickets, check schedules and learn more at www.skunktrain.com.