Partway up Beacon Rock — the trail's engineering underfoot: rock, cement, and some seventeen concrete-and-timber bridges bolted straight to the cliff where the natural ledge ran out.
Look down at what you're walking on for a second, because it's half the wonder of this place. One moment you're on solid rock, the next on a little strip of cement, and then — here's the good part — you step out onto a bridge: a slab of concrete or a plank of timber, bolted straight to the side of the cliff, carrying you across a gap with nothing but air beneath your boots.
There are something like seventeen of these little viaducts and bridges on the way up, threaded between the fifty-odd switchbacks. When Henry Biddle and Charles Johnson built this trail, they couldn't find enough natural ledge to make a continuous path — so where the rock simply ran out, they built the trail out into empty space. Every one of these bridges is a spot where the mountain said 'no trail here,' and two stubborn men said, 'watch us.'
Keep a hand near the rail as you cross them, and take a second to appreciate what's holding you up: a hundred-year-old idea, still carrying hikers out over the void, one bolt and one plank at a time.
Photo: Steven Pavlov · CC BY-SA 4.0
