Frisco Highline Trail

April 4,2009

Hittin the Frisco

Riders are:
Diana, Johnnie, Jim, Laurie and John

                                                           Story by: John Wente

In 1884, the original track for what was to become the Frisco Highline route was laid by the Springfield and Northern Railroad. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman rode the Frisco Highline from Springfield to Bolivar, MO to dedicate a statue of Simon Bolivar, the town’s namesake. (The way the locals pronounce it, it rhymes with Oliver.) President Truman also used this as an opportunity to polish his whistle stop campaign style for his run for re-election (which he of course won). Passenger service was discontinued on the Highline route only 6 years later.

 

    In 1991, Burlington-Northern, which had absorbed Frisco, filed to abandon this corridor and two years later, Ozark Greenways, a nonprofit trail organization, bought the rail banked corridor from the Burlington Northern, then salvaged and sold the old rails and ties to pay for it. Over the next 12 years, Ozark Greenways, along with the towns along the trail, developed the mostly crushed limestone-surfaced Frisco Highline Trail.

 

    On April 3, 2009, John & Diana Lerma, Jim & Laurie Allshouse and I loaded our bikes and gear and headed to Springfield to experience the Frisco Highline Trail first hand. Saturday dawned a cool and partly cloudy day with a strong south wind, but since we were headed mostly north, it was a welcome wind. The forecast was for the wind to change overnight to northwest, so we anticipated a tailwind both ways. J

 

    To add a little comic relief to the trip, I left my cycling shoes at home and didn’t reveal this fact until Saturday morning. So Jim ran me to Walmart where I purchased a set of platform pedals and wrenches to install them on my bike. That was good for a few laughs. Jim decided I must now be referred to as “Clarence Jr.”.

 

    The trail is about 35 miles from the trailhead in Springfield to the trailhead in Bolivar, but we pedaled our loaded bikes from our hotel to the nearest trail/road intersection, a distance of about three miles. We also took a detour of about a mile each way to have lunch in Walnut Grove, about halfway up the trail. Our maps showed that the road going into Walnut Grove is part of the Trans-American Trail (an on-road across the nation route developed and mapped by Adventure Cycling Association—formerly Bike Centennial).

 

    When we reached Bolivar, we found the trail came to a dead end at a very busy four-lane superhighway. Fortunately, we knew the approximate location of our hotel and, with Jim navigating, found it to be only about a mile and a half along smooth, no-traffic roads and on the “right side” of that busy highway. Our total distance, motel to motel, was right at 39.5 miles. Doesn’t sound like much, but with loaded touring bikes on a gravel trail, we were pretty much bushed at the journey’s end.

 

    The first portion of the trail was nicely packed, finely crushed limestone, exactly like the Katy Trail that runs across Missouri east to west from Clinton to St. Charles. However, later on, we encountered sections of the trail that had been covered in coarse gravel that tortured our hands, arms, shoulders and posteriors. (This is definitely not a trail suited to skinny-tired road bikes.) We also discovered that the last 12 miles or so going into Bolivar were up hill. Granted, railroad grades are quite gradual, but grinding along for mile after mile at 6-7 mph takes its toll, especially on a gravel trail with a loaded bike.

 

    We watched the weather reports carefully Saturday night and decided we’d best make an early departure Sunday morning to get ahead of a strong cold front that was blowing in and threatening to drop the temperatures into the lower 30s. The temperature was hovering around 50 when we departed Bolivar at 7:20 AM, but it began dropping as we pedaled southward with a 25-30 mph wind blowing from the west. Fortunately, most of the trail is lined by trees and brush, so we were mostly protected from the wind, but the dropping temperatures sure got our attention.

 

    Walnut Grove once again provided rest and sustenance on our return journey. After hot drinks and snacks, we pedaled on southward and soon discovered that sections of the trail we had thought to be mostly flat were in fact uphill! We finally figured out that the Little Sac River is about mid way and (duh) you go down to the river and then back up. So, whichever way you ride the trail, the second half will be mostly up hill. By the time we reached Springfield, the temperature was in the upper 30s, but the wind chill must have been in the (brrrrr) 20s.

 

    Probably the most interesting thing about this trail is that there are 16 trestles (bridges) all in the northern half of the trail. The longest and most spectacular is the one crossing the Little Sac River.

 

    While the riding was tougher than we had expected, and the weather turned out very much on the cool side on Sunday, it was still a good trip. For me, any time I can bicycle with good friends, it’s a good time. J

 

 

Here is some pictures from the weekend.

 

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