7/23
We awoke somewhat late to sample the free breakfast downstairs at the Super 8. And sample it we did–until our stomachs reached the bursting point. We left the hotel amazingly before checkout time of 11am to seek out the bike shop, the Outdoorsman.
We went in and asked for new housing and cable for Paula’s front shifter which is now so stuck up that her thumb is killing her. The guys in the shop really went out of their way for us. The first guy grabbed her bike and said he’d replace the cable/housing right away. He then offered us new grips (well, newER grips) for free to replace Paula’s nearly disintegrated ones.
He was done within 10 minutes and Paula’s bike was shifting butter smooth. We purchased a new camelbak bladder for Paula and another spare derailleur cable then were out the door after some big talk about the route, other cyclists and the owner/brother of/son of owner Levi, who is 9th in the Tour right now (I am not following it so I wouldn’t know). But we were so happy to get such extraordinary treatment from a shop. They said that they cater to the divide riders doing the whole thing, and they usually will see everyone since they are the last bike shop until Pinedale, Wyoming.
It was lunch so we ordered up a garden pizza from next door Papa John’s. I definitely miss Pizza on this route. Too many burger/steak joints for me. While we ate a touring cyclist pulled up and asked where we were heading. He was also going to Canada, but on the roads. He was from Spain and had been riding from Sao Paulo, Brazil for the last 2.5 years. Wow.
Pizza in our bellies, we headed out to continue the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route by… well, riding on the freeway, what else? We climbed 6 miles on the freeway shoulder towards the continental divide. The shoulder was wide and cars were going slow on the steep grade, but it still sucked. We saw rain moving in towards the pass as we neared it.
Then, our side of the freeway was closed–yipee we get the whole thing to ourselves! This was good because the weather proceeded to pound us into oblivion. It started out a weak drizzle, as always, then turned into soaking rain and eventually hail. There were puddles 6 inches deep, and we were riding in the middle of two lanes of perfect condition freeway. Everything was getting drenched, but we rode on determined to make the Woodville exit underpass for some cover. By the time we reached it the rain had essentially let up, but we enjoyed the break anyway.
The sun peeked so we hopped on to ride 10 miles or so of paved frontage road. For once we had a tailwind, so we cruised along drying our wet gloves and shoes out as we went. The frontage road turned into a “non-maintained cattle access trail” that was actually quite nice. It dove around in the trees for a while and included a few short granny gear climbs.
Into the town of Basin we were chased by a few dogs, then we headed up Cataract Creek road for some excellent climbing. The creek was true to its name–plenty of tiny waterfalls to marvel at as we climbed. I could climb on this type of road all day. The steep sections didn’t even seem to phase us. We just kept plowing away at it.
At one point we took a wrong turn (this section on the map is difficult to follow and it doesn’t help to be going backwards on it) that cost us a mile and 300 feet of elevation gain. But it lead us to a nice view of the valley we had been climbing, so all was not lost.
Later on we stopped to be confused at another road intersection when a motorcycle rider approached us. He was doing the divide, looking for his buddy ahead (we hadn’t seen anyone) and had one buddy stuck behind. He said the next 15 miles were nasty and not rideable. We knew there were 2 miles of rough stuff on the Lava Mountain trail, but 15? I didn’t think he knew where he was or what he was doing.
Sure enough, we rounded a corner and turned onto the Lava Mountain trail. The first pitch was very, very steep and strewn with boulders. I dove right in, scrambling for traction wherever I could. My eyes scanned left and right for a passage through the boulders at the top, but nothing was revealed to me. Still scanning I finally lost my purchase and my foot found its way to the ground.
Pushing the bike/bob through the boulders I then saw that there was no line through it. Without a bob and with a much larger/gnarlier tire, yes, it was rideable. But we had other problems at the moment. I actually was able to ride it out from here, and it was delightfully technical.
Unlike Fleecer ridge, we actually had an advantage on the North to South riders. Though much of our trek through the Lava Mountain trail was uphill, most of it was downhill. There were some really fun sections of roots, rocks and ruts. It would have been challenging without a bob. With it my senses were on full alert and I felt as challenged as I ever have on a bike.
Now, we were really mountain biking. If only the route had more sections like this interspersed with the washboardy flat roads.
We came out unscathed (though my bob scratched and slammed more that a few boulders), then took a nicely surfaced dirt road into Park Lake, where we found dozens of campers all around. Kids were running and screaming everywhere. But we’ll only be here shortly. It does feel good to camp again, but I do hope that things will quiet down. A big family just pulled in and set up camp about 50 feet from us. So much for campground courtesy. We are listening them debate about tent placement now. No, a little bit closer to us please! Please?
53 miles, 4800 feet of climbing
7/24
The weather was hot and dry today, but we climbed our legs off anyway. It turned out to be a very rough day in many respects.
We were up early taking down camp, slowly getting ready to head out. We pulled out at 8:30am while our neighbors (camping far too close for my comfort) hadn’t even stirred yet. We grunted back to the route (the campground was a mile off it) then cruised downhill through cold morning air.
There was a truck parked in the road and to the uphill side I could hear a chainsaw. An older man and woman were cutting something, but I could not figure out exactly what they were doing. Suddenly I saw something moving very close to me. It was a section of log that they had cut and it was heading right for me! Three quick pedal strokes moved me safely beyond it, but it kept rolling into the road. It was large enough that it would have knocked me over and probably broken something on my bike. Why these morons were cutting wood above a public road is something I’ll never know. I hope they didn’t have a permit because we saw a forest service truck head up a few miles later.
Keeping an eye out for rolling logs, we found ourselves climbing in granny gear, which felt good, but we knew granny was going to get more than its fair share of use today. In 2 hours we had ridden the 21 miles to Helena and went for some grocery shopping. After we walked out with a heavy bag I asked myself, just why do we need all this food when we plan on making it to Lincoln today? We just can’t resist it, I suppose. Food is our energy source and what keeps us moving. In a huge supermarket like this everything looked sooo good.
We ate as much as we could outside the store, then headed out for yet more paved miles on a busy road. The shoulder was huge, so we were safe, but it is still not pleasant. I won’t miss these sections of the great divide when we’re done. Now we were traveling west so we had a decent tailwind as we climbed gradually for the turnoff to Priest Pass.
As soon as we turned off onto the dirt it felt like someone opened an oven on us. We were climbing in granny gear with zero shade and at 1pm. I immediately started worrying about our water situation, and everything we had had long passed into the ‘acid hot’ category.
Soon enough we hit some trees, so we rode on the wrong side of the road to catch pieces of shade. It was bearable, but tough. As we climbed we watched several mountain bikers zip by us, some waving, others just cruising by. I surmised from their gear that they were indeed on the GDMBR but must have a support vehicle. Only the last two riders (of the ten total) stopped to talk to us. They did have a SAG vehicle and had just started in Lincoln–yesterday. We were currently riding longer in 1 day (and with our gear) than they were doing in 2 days. They were fairly amazed, but we told them the previous days had been more difficult. This wasn’t so bad…. yet.
2000 feet of climbing later (relentless granny gear) we reached the top and a break: downhill which of course meant evaporative cooling (wind). It was cooler near the top, of course, but not cool enough, and soon after the descent we lost the trees.
At some point I stopped to get my waterbottle of gatorade out of my camelbak. I failed to zip it up and either didn’t put my tights back in at all, or they fell out somewhere in the next 5 miles or so of up and down. I didn’t realize this until after the next downhill when my waterbottle and jacket fell out of the camelback. I rode back to the top of the hill (0.5 miles or so) to search for the tights in vain. When you travel as light as us you don’t really have a spare pair of pants. So now all I’ve got are my rain pants which are pretty horrible for riding or relaxing around camp.
I had just about settled down from losing my tights when we started having route difficulty. So far it hasn’t been much problem to follow the narratives and maps backwards. But this is an area (Continental Divide Crossing #2 for the N-S riders) where it seems even N-S riders get lost. For us it was nothing short of a disaster. We could not figure out where we were or which of several unmarked roads we were on. The maps are really lacking in this spot, with unlabeled roads and poor descriptions of the turns.
So it came to pass that we put in 500 feet or so of extracirricular climbing, up to the wrong crossing of the continental divide. It did give us a nice view and a windy spot to cool down, but it was making me furious. The problem was that this crossing was nowhere near the end of the day for us. The real challenge was the final 2000 foot climb that waited for us after this crossing. I was tempted to throw my bike on the ground when I got to the top to see the road going the wrong way, but instead I found a log to pick up and slam against the ground. It just wasn’t turning out to be a good day, and much doubt remained about whether we’d make it to Lincoln or not.
Eventually we got straightened out and back on course for some fun descending back to the hot valley of 4700 feet. There we turned north to start our final climb of the day. It was similar to preist pass except that we didn’t have the pavement to get us started by a few hundred feet. It was all granny gear all the way. Our legs spun the pedals tirelessly. I was amazed by Paula’s strength as well as my own.
2 miles (and 1000 feet) from the top we saw two N-S riders camped. They invited us to join them, but we said we were determined to make it to Lincoln. They were amazed when we told them how far we had come and wished us well. It was indeed very tempting to stay and camp there: a nice stream and GDMBR riders to talk to…
The very top of the climb nearly killed us, but eventually, as it always does, the downhill came and we coasted free… for a while. Things got a bit nasty and very scenic. Nice star wars like forest on a narrow trail. Steep sections and deep ruts. Technical enough to keep us occupied. Then we hit a few stream crossings that actually were a bit of a challenge in our drained state. I thought for sure Paula wasn’t going to make one, but she rode out of it like a pro.
The worst part of the ride was the final miles into Lincoln. The sun had set and the road seemed to strech on forever. It was downhill slightly, but still as slow as molasses. We felt lucky we were riding it so late since we only got passed by one truck. We coughed on that one truck’s dust for the next 3 miles; I think this road wins for “dustiest piece of crap road” along the entire route.
The two GDMBR riders camping told us the restaurant in town closed at 9pm. We rolled in at about 9:45 to a red neon OPEN sign directly in front of us. The casino/restaurant was open. They served us up filling garden burgers and fries. It was almost too good to be true. But then the cleaning woman told us that we probably wouldn’t be able to get a room since there was some big wedding in town tomorrow. It did seem like there were a few too many people around for Lincoln, even on a Saturday night. Sure enough all of the hotels had no vacancy. We cursed a bit at our timing and were not enthusiastic about setting up camp at an RV lot in the dark.
But it actually turned out well. It was $10 for a tent spot with 2 showers and the bathrooms were quite nice. The highway zoomed by with its noise but the real problem was the bar down the street that had live music blasting until 1 am. We took our time with the showers and camp setup, then when the music stopped we slept like the dead.
86 miles, 8699 feet of climbing (ouch)
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