Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail Maps Future

SANDPOINT — Bike trails from Dover to Sagle are beginning to intersect with new sections about to pioneer their ways into Ponderay and, potentially, Kootenai.
All told, those trails will roll up to more than 25 miles of contiguous paved walking and bicycling options for area residents.
A coalition called the Friends of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail currently is working to ensure that the crowning achievement in this public access trail system will be a stretch that runs right along the shore of Lake Pend Oreille.
The coalition, which includes North Idaho Bikeways, Idaho Conservation League, Avista Corporation, the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, Ponderay Economic Development Corporation, Bonner General Hospital, the Kinnickinnick Chapter of the Idaho Native Plant Society and other organizations, was formed in 2008 to create a community partnership of private organizations and businesses, as well as adjoining cities, Bonner County and state agencies.
The Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail would connect at its westernmost point with a trail along Sand Creek now being constructed as part of the Idaho Transportation Department’s Sand Creek Byway project. To the east, plans call for it to run as far as the Kootenai city limits near a former mill site along Hwy. 200.
About two miles of lakeshore property fall within the city of Ponderay, with the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail itself encompassing what proponents refer to as “the middle mile.”
Susan Drumheller, Sandpoint associate for the Idaho Conservation League, has been directly involved in the group’s ongoing work to set the waterfront trail aside for public use, before real estate prices escalate and the chance to act slips away.
“The stars are aligning for this kind of bike path project and we have an opportunity to create a mile or more of safe, community waterfront access,” she said. “Other communities would kill for a gem like this. We can’t blow it.”
The unpaved trail that today snakes along the lakeshore from the Sandpoint Water Treatment Plant to Black Rock in Ponderay city limits has been a favorite “secret walk” for years, but has also been a source of confusion. The people who stroll that trail do so only by the generosity and good graces of the property owners.
In other words, they have been trespassing with permission.
Lately, however, the growing popularity of the waterfront path has created problems as some users wrongly assume it sits on public property. In a few cases, individuals have tromped through an owner’s land and then verbally abused them after being told politely that they were on private property.
One key aspect of building the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail includes acquiring the property and then appealing to an even higher authority — the railroad — for access points to the lakeshore. Except for a de facto trailhead just east of The Seasons development, the only way to get to the water requires scrambling over railroad right-of-way and down the embankment.
“The railroad knows they’ve got a big trespassing problem,” Drumheller said. “People have seen kids dragging their bikes under trains to get to the water. Having safe, controlled access to the waterfront trail would be the solution to all that.”