Fisher Creek. Of all the mountain bike trails in Idaho, this is at the top of my list. As I clip into my pedals and point my front tire down the buff singletrack that snakes through a burned-out forest, I’m all excitement, and have no inkling of what’s waiting for us below.
Despite living in the middle of world-class mountain bike networks right here in the Wasatch, sometimes you just need to get away and experience something new and different. So Mason Diedrich suggested we go to his old stomping grounds in Sun Valley, a place I’ve never been. Mason was keen on showing me around on his favorite rides, like Galena, Greenhorn Gulch, and the famous Fisher Creek up by Stanley.
Fisher Creek
The fastest downhill mountain bike ride of my life. That’s what I took away from Fisher Creek. It’s a 17.8-mile loop that begins at the Williams Creek trailhead off Highway 75 just south of Redfish Lake and the tiny burg of Stanley. The first section is on pavement on the highway shoulder for just over 2 miles to Fisher Creek Road, It’s a bummer of a way to start, but it goes by fast and gives your legs a good warmup.
From the start of Fisher Creek Road, the ride is on double track through summer cabins, then up into the forest. Dilapidated cabins scatter along the road as the green woods transition to swaths of burned trees from a years-old wildfire. At the top of the road, is the start of the singletrack. It goes down from a wooden fence and sign, into an even more heavily-destroyed burn zone.
The trail winds through trees that stick up from the ground like toothpicks. When we rode the loop the second time, a stiff wind knocked some over with a deafening crash by the trail. We were lucky not to be riding by at that particular moment. At the bottom of the first downhill section, the trail flattens out through a large meadow, then climbs up to a high point. This is the start of the second downhill. And this is where it gets really fun. Flowy, tacky and buttery smooth is the best way to describe it, and I’ve never been able to ride so fast without fearing for my life. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a mountain trail where there isn’t a single rock for miles and miles. This ride is Valhalla for mountain bikes.
But near the bottom of the second downhill, we almost literally run into something that gets our hearts pumping more than the trail itself – a black bear. There I am, riding along, when I see something running next to me alongside the trail. In my peripheral vision, at first I think it’s a dog. But when I turn my head, I see a black bear running nest to me, keeping pace despite the fact that I’m bombing down the trail. I freak out, and pedal faster to try and outrun it. A few hundred yards later, and the bear stops following. But Mason is behind me. I stop and turn around, but the bear isn’t in sight. I see Mason coming up and I scream out, “Bear! Bear! Bear! Bear!” Just then, the bear jumps out from a pile of fallen logs and runs right in front of Mason, goes down the trail toward me, then jukes off the path and into a meadow. It was clearly freaked out, but not nearly as much as Mason, who clearly gets an adrenaline rush that no singletrack can provide. Best of all, we had GoPro cameras rolling and we got the entire encounter on video. Check it out:
The rest of the Idaho trip included more trails and tons of fine beer drinking at breweries and (my favorite place) the Powerhouse in Hailey, but all of it paled in comparison to the bear encounter at Fisher Creek.