Mark’s Great Duluth Alley Rally Urban Mountain Biking Route: A Review
My friend Mark got stir-crazy waiting for mountain-biking trails to open this spring, so he created this Duluth, Minnesota, back-alley bike route that climbs and plummets more than 1,300 feet in about 10 miles.
Mark was excited when he told me about the Duluth Alley Rally bike route he created.
“You gotta come up here,” he said. “I’ve created a back-alley route that climbs 1,000 feet in 10 miles.”
Whoa, I thought to myself. I regularly ride up a hill on the Northeast corner of Wausau, Wisconsin, where I live. That uphill stretch is a little less than a mile, and it’s a fantastic test of my legs, lungs and will. It’s hard, but doable; a sweet-spot challenge that leaves you full of adrenaline and feel-good endorphins, but also allows you to live a regular life for the rest of the day.
The Wausau climb is only 300 feet. What would 1,000 feet feel like, I wondered? I was in.
One of Mark’s many remarkable qualities is that he is a bike-route-making genius. We started cycling together in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the early ’90s, and he found these incredible routes through the urban areas that totally changed my perspective about riding bikes in big cities. And he always found top-notch coffee shops or breakfast joints to stop at too boot.
But as he described this new Duluth route, I picked up a completely different vibe. Instead of groovy and meandering, he talked about steep downhills — “Disc brakes are must!” he declared — and pot-holed strewn alleys that would swallow up bikes and riders whole. “You got to ride a mountain bike,” he said.
It was clear that this would not be a recreational ride like our Twin Cities outing would be, but a dangerous downhill gonzo blast, the kind you see on YouTube where riders jump on and slide down rails, or blast up a flight of stairs.
I was dubious about just how bad the alleys could be, but I decided that before I made any judgements about whether Mark was exaggerating, I would take his advice. My one mountain bike had disk brakes, but the rear one was squishy despite getting serviced, and it was uncommonly heavy. I got a new to me used mountain bike, a Rocky Mountain Growler, which by the name alone, seemed like it could handle the Alley Rally challenges.
We set a time, Saturday morning, April 27.
I wasn’t sure at all that I would enjoy this ride. I need to stress here that I love cycling in all its forms, my least favorite is mountain biking, and the downhills are my least favorite part of mountain biking.
The weather did not bode well for our ride. A fog hung over Duluth, gray, misty and a little chilly, mid-40s. And the drive up the hill to get to Mark’s house and ride starting point was scary, the Honda CRV seemed to groan at the incline. Yikes.
Aesthetically, on a map at least, the ride was downright homely. The route line turns and twists over and over. It looks like a long piece of yarn that a kitten played with.
On the ground in real life, it offers a cool perspective.
We started with a soft uphill ride to the route’s highest point. We couldn’t really get great views of Lake Superior, but they were there. And almost immediately we got into the first down hill.
Mark tried to explain the downhills before we set off, using a language that he created for the ride. He’d say something like, “Go down this single, then take an immediate left, then a quick right, and then shoot down the double.”
Singles were one-block stretches of alleys, doubles were two, etc. I think the longest alley stretch was a quadruple.
But most of the downhill runs were short, punchy and rough. Mark loves those kinds of conditions, and he approached these stretches like a teen at a skateboard park. He caromed off inclined driveways, bombed through rough stretches and did short jumps off of curves.
He designed the downhills segments to be interesting, he said. He wanted turns and what the kids today call “features.”
Herein lies the difference between Mark and I and our riding styles and philosophies. Out-of-control downhill bombing scares the bejesus out of me. It is not my idea of fun. For Mark, that’s everything.
That said, the downhills weren’t paralyzing scary for me, but I couldn’t ever really relax and enjoy them to the fullest. For one thing, there are tons of unsigned intersections, and I would brake hard for each one to make sure I don’t get hit by one of the Toyota 4-Runners everyone in Duluth seems legally bound to drive.
The downhill alley segments also offer up a real profile of life in Duluth, and I loved the backside aesthetic, at least as far as I could take in the views. I’m not being sarcastic here; alleys are just the coolest.
There’s also plenty of opportunities for wildlife viewing if you are so inclined. Duluth is a great birding city; but again, I was concentrating, so I didn’t notice anything extraordinary there. But I know cool birds like to hang out in Duluth.
You likely will see deer, I reckon. We did. We rode through a herd of them on our first descent. I again braked hard, because some crossed in front of us, others stood pat and calmly watched us ride by.
And I’m sure, if you rode this route regularly at dusk or dawn, you’d spot some coyotes, and maybe run into a bear or two, hopefully not literally.
As we made our way up a slope, Mark pointed out some extraordinarily sumptuous robber-baron era mansions, which, I presume are architecturally and maybe even historically significant. A lot of these homes are now bed and breakfasts, Mark said. They looked like they would offer terrific overnight experiences, maybe a little bit too fancy for me.
I wish could explain where all this was in detail. One of the shortcomings of the Alley Rally is that it is incredibly complicated. It would be impossible for me to duplicate it without Mark. If I had a fancy bike computer, I could download the route from my Stava account, and then allow the computer to guide me through it.
But I can say it wasn’t too long after the mansion segment of the course, we made our way to Lake Superior shoreline, and rode for a short, but super enjoyable time. It was, I think, the only time in the 10-mile, hour and a half ride that we weren’t breathlessly slogging up a hill, or breathlessly screaming down one.
As we rode away from the lake, we were confronted with a long, long, long stretch of straight uphill climb. Am I weird to think, that besides the lakeside stint, this was the best part of the whole journey?
Mark sure doesn’t like it. He even suggested that we park at vehicle down by the lake, and drive up the hill. Blasphemy!
This uphill stretch was not only the longest, but also has to be the steepest of the ride. Around halfway up, I began to question whether I would make it. Around three-quarters up, I began to question my entire existence.
When I did make it, with Mark shortly behind, an overwhelming sense of victory washed over me, mixing with the sweat and back-alley grit. This was another rush of endorphines and endocannabinoids, which John Hopkins Medicine describes as “biochemical substances similar to cannabis but naturally produced by the body.”
While still under the influence of this euphoria, I declared Mark’s Great Duluth Alley Rally a triumph! Two thumbs and both big toes up! Let’s do it again!
Then, as I drank some water, and took a shower and sat on a couch, I felt contented weariness settle in my soul. Great ride, man, great ride.
