Originally Posted by
David Bierbaum
Sigh. For the life of me, I never saw that machens road crossing the railroad tracks to the machens trailhead, all the previous times I've looked there. I'd always hoped that I could get to the machens trailhead by crossing the clark bridge from the confluence trail, then taking the west alton trail (which was too overgrown to get through, the last time I tried to ride it from one end to the other) then finding a suitable route from west alton to the machens trailhead. Yet now that I googlemapped it, there it is, running right over the tracks and to the trailhead, such as it is.
Either my eyes are blind, or my brain is on vacation in the Bahamas, (in which case, I'd kind of like to be where my brain is, just now...) for me to have missed that. I previously thought the machens trailhead just buried you in the middle of floodplain farm fields.
Yeah, its pretty sketchy at the end of the trail! I pretty much use the rought on Robows map to 67 into alton. From there I just get on the trail by the river, and ride down to Collinsville(I go to an event called Archon ever couple of years, its a comic/nerd fest, and its this weekend, so I am missing it this year). One year I did go down to the chain of rocks bridge. I like the 67 route better.
I took that west alton trail once, and man, is it overgrown! Was standing ten feet from it at the end of 94 and could not find it. Called a buddy, dropped him a pin and had him look for it on google maps. He told me to walk ten feet to your right idiot, and hung up. Still makes fun of me about that. I actually walked the trail because the spiders were so damn big, and every four feet. Then there was a major washout at that campground. All in all it was sort of fun.