Fairbanks – Circle Mail Trail, Mile 24

Posted by John on June 12, 2017

Saturday, June 11, 2017, a beautiful day and a lot cooler than the 90 degree weather we’ve been having for the past few days.

This was the 2nd Snow Travelers summer ATV ride for the year. Only three of us showed up and I figured that was due to folks either not wanting to deal with the forecasted rain or else they were sitting on the banks of the river(s) staying cool.

Kerrey, Dean and I started out from Kokomo Creek and the Fairbanks Creek Rd. junction, of course it’s all dirt at this point and the smoothest part of the ride. I figured we’d head to Sorrel Creek, about 20 miles down the trail and try to figure out how to get to the top of the ridges from there. So we spent a few hours riding and exploring the valleys on our way and after a few wrong turns made it to Sorrel Creek. I hadn’t been in this neck of the woods for at least 7 years and there were changes of course, more moose camps than I remember, hum, maybe I need to consider that for this year’s moose hunt.

After exploring around Sorrel Creek we figured out that we needed to back track a mile or two and take the trail that went up, turns out it’s a trapper line and a nice easy ride up to the top of ridges.
We made it about a mile past the Historical Fairbanks-Circle Mail Trail post 23. For those of you unfamiliar with the trail, this was the original route used back in the day to get mail from Fairbanks to the gold diggings in Circle and those old bays who ran this route were some tough dudes, especially considering they did it all on horseback or shanks mare. Some steep hills to go up and down.

At 3:00 PM we made it to where we turned around at the 2731 foot elevation of the trail and my fuel gage was showing ½ a tank of gas left. But the view was spectacular, we could see the U.S. Creek Rd that is at 57 mile of the Steese Hwy, probable a good 5 to 10 miles to the north-west.

Anyway, for those who missed it, it was a great 61 mile ride and an excellent day, no rain and sunshine with a bit of wind on the ridge tops. The video is the top of the ridge we turned around at and then headed back down to the valleys.