It kinda feels like we woke up from a bad dream. We are actually riding our bikes these days — instead of pushing them. The ID/MT border is done — we are well into Montana, for good!
Today we managed over 40 on-CDT miles. And it wasn’t all that hard. That hasn’t happened for quite a while.
snow in August – oye!
We woke up to the cold and dewey world. It sprinkled overnight, too.
The climbing along American Creek eventually turned to a closed snowmobile trail — overgrown with little sign of summer use. “Oh boy,” I thought, remembering how difficult the Union Pass area CDT was. Just like Union, there were no CDT signs or blazes. No one cares about the trail here.
The GPS waypoint said, “follow dry streambed” where we turned off the snowmobile trail. Oh boy. Then we pushed bikes up the very steep ATV track we found near the Hungry Hill mine. I kept remarking it was still easier than pushing up Fleecer Ridge (northbound) on the divide.
look close, there are two Ez’s in this photo
Some questionable beta led us to Larkspur Spring, which I’m not sure is all that great or important of a water source. There was water in many other places. But we did get some clear spring water out of the deal.
Once we regained the divide, the CDT became an ATV trail. It wasn’t your typical ATV trail – this one had switchbacks and eschewed fall-line silliness!
Awesome. Some of the easiest on-divide travel yet ensued. We were loving it. We contoured around Burnt Mountain (not burned at all!), ate lunch, then continued the gluttony with a 1500 foot bench cut descent. It was just as good as singletrack — flowy, super fun and winding its way through large boulders.
sharing. what a novel concept — well done MT Trails assc!
1500 feet more descending brought us to I-15 where we met two divide tourists — Gail and Gary. She remarked that when they were young and went on their first bike tour, they worked picking fruit and other odd jobs as they traveled — not on computers like we are so lucky to be able to do in 2014. They were fun to talk to.
We cranked out some steep miles on the divide route, eventually hopping onto recent trail that was rumored to be constructed to sustainable (or bike) standards. From what we have seen so far, that seems to be very much true.
“This reminds me of mountain biking!”
Wait, it is mountain biking! Phew. I feel like we deserve a break and some blissful trail after all we’ve pushed through. Looking forward to more of it tomorrow, and a relatively early arrival into Butte where we will plan the last leg of our journey to Canada! It finally feels like it is in reach, though there are still several hundred miles to go.
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