Scott's GDMBR 2004 Journal, Page 4/4
7/19
We got some rain overnight–just enough to wake us up, but not soak everything. The air was clear and fresh making for a beautiful morning. Above on the high cliffs to the south the clouds were flying low, obscuring portions of the mountain while leaving others crystal clear.
We were ready to roll around 8, but spent quite a bit of time talking to the Bruce clan again in the morning. Around 9 we headed out, feeling good.
The mental exhaustion from yesterday’s rail trail had not lifted, unfortunately. Today’s road was awesome through the remainder of the wildlife refuge, but soon we were on a no-name, bumpy dirt road through endless ranch lands. On one hand it was awesome because there was nothing in the valley, which generally meant no traffic and buildings, but we were back in ranch country. This means fences on both sides, huge herds of stinky cattle and our favorite: cattle guards. The valley was wide open: no trees and flat. The road wandered around but never really did anything interesting. A few rollers were steep enough to get me on my toes, but mostly I was just bored. Thus, the mental frustration. I can’t wait to get back in the mountains for some real climbs. These flats are killing me.
Before we turned off to the no-name ranch road we were on a bit of a busy one: logging trucks passed us on their way to a mill site just outside the refuge. I think they did make a small effort to slow down when they saw us, but the road was simply not wide enough for those trucks. As we were about to crest a roller I saw a truck cresting the other side. I gave him a wave and a look of amazement (at his speed), barely having enough room to stay on the road as he passed with a big dust cloud. I pedaled maybe 200 feet before I heard Paula yell. I turned around to see her on the ground with the dust cloud of the logging truck continuing down the road. I dropped my bike and ran back, thinking she had been hit since she wasn’t getting up.
The truck had not hit her, but neither had he stopped to see if she was alright. She had been standing up while pedaling and was forced off into the soft gravel on the side of the road. Because she was standing and pedaling and not expecting gravel her bike slid out from under her. She got a handlebar to the chest and a bit of a bump on her knee, but was otherwise OK. The best part was how the logging truck just kept driving. Important business, I’m sure.
The next truck by (not logging, with an ATV in the bed) did stop to ask if we were ok. He asked if the logging truck had hit her and when I said, “no he was just driving too fast and too close” he shrugged and drove off. My love of motor vehicles and their senseless drivers continues to increase daily, whether I’m riding the divide or through the streets of Tucson. Automobiles–is there anything they can’t do? They sure can kill people, and I am just grateful that we both got out OK.
The road with the logging trucks did not last long, fortunately, and for the rest of today’s ride we maybe saw 3 vehicles (who slowed for us). Some days the miles fly by unnoticed, other days you count them off. I was definitely counting them off today. And they only totaled 57, but that was more than enough for me.
The Mountain View motel and RV was super as expected. The manager, Will, was very nice to us. We got a good, clean room, and a how shower. The cafe across the street served us up some quality food. We were missing only two things: headphones for Paula’s mp3 player (I broke them picking up her bike, not knowing she had the player in her handlebar bag) and a book for Paula to read. Will helped us out on both counts: trading Paula for her book and giving her some very old but working headphones. We’re all set to go.
57 miles, 2600 feet of climbing
7/20
Rest in Lima. Paula’s knee was hurting upon walking in the morning, so we decided to take our second day off. It was, as usual, a difficult decision to make, but in the end we were quite happy with it.
Burger, steak and fry places are getting old. We found frozen pizzas and an oven to cook them in at the small Exxon shop. The employees got to know us well after our 5th or 6th trip to eat pizza and junk food. I spent time catching up with things on the internet, posting pictures and reading about all manner of things. One thing I read was the dispatches from the great divide race. The result was the inspiration to hammer out some solid efforts during the last fourth of the GDMBR.
7/21
Beautiful riding weather today, and we definitely took advantage of it. The day started with 6 miles of pavement on the I-15 frontage road out of Lima, Montana. We then took a left onto the Big Sheep Creek / Medicine Lodge backcountry byway, a dirt road in the mountains.
Washboard! But it soon dissipated to a nice dirt surface and remained that way until we hit pavement again. We climbed gradually at first (ugh more flats), then it didn’t matter whether it was flat, climbing, washboarded, whatever. The scenery was more than enough to keep me motivated and riding happy.
At first the hills were straight out of Salmon, ID and the North Fork area (not surprising since they are essentially on the other side of the divide from here). I was reminded of my summer backpacking in the Bighorn Crags for the forest service. Perhaps the best part of the ride of Big Sheep creek was the wildlife. We saw herds of deer, foxes, the usual chipmunks and gophers, and many, many unique birds. The area is not heavily ranched, neither is it heavily traveled, so it was prime for wildlife sightings.
Perhaps the second best part was the creek. It flowed along with us up the valley, with a soothing sound and deep moss covered shores. The third best part (perhaps) was the canyon itself and the geological formations. The slopes are very steep and the canyon narrow. Although it was nearly ten o’clock we were riding through shade most of the way up. Impressive cliffs adorned the sides. In a word, spectacular.
I turned my cyclometer to ‘max speed’ and my GPS to the menu page and just rode, staring at the scenery.
Eventually the canyon opened out into a wide open plain with views of nearly treeless mountains on all sides. It was still nice, but the road went straight and was too flat. My legs are still aching for a good climb.
It seemed like it was hot, or going to be so, but it never warmed up. We wanted to eat a sandwich but couldn’t find a shady spot to stop. We rode 45 minutes more before we found some cliffs with a singletrack leading to them. Once we stopped and made our tuna sandwiches we found ourselves eating in the sun instead of the shade. It’s a cool Montana July, I guess. We were only at 7500 feet or so.
The super weather held. Yesterday saw numerous hailstorms near Lima (and all around). Today we only had sweet mountain clouds to shelter us from the sky. It wasn’t hot, but when riding (or climbing) it’s almost always nice to not be in the sun.
After lunch we dropped down a bit and then, finally, a solid climb to the Medicine Lodge/Sheep Creek divide (7920 feet). My granny gear was tickled to be back in service once again. We crested fairly easily then began a long, gradual descent to our next paved road. At some point along the descent I switched my cyclometer to trip miles and was shocked to see 60. It didn’t feel like we had ridden 30 let alone 60.
We turned west on the highway into a strong headwind to pedal the 4 miles to Grant, looking for some lunch. The first place we visited, the Horse Prairie Hilton wasn’t too inviting. The cook said they were nearly out of everything and were probably not going to be in business too long. He talked us out of eating there essentially. On the other side of the road was the Canvas Cafe. We got a nice lunch including a good dinner salad and an excellent fruit (Waldorff) salad with a Turkey sandwich. While we ate an old rancher came in to order his ‘usual’ of a burger (the waitress told us that is what he always gets). Apparently she hardly knows him despite his regular visits. She said that he talked more to us than he has to anyone. We asked him about the road, some of the ranches back that way and some other things. He has a couple of ranches on the road we were just on. He’s not fond of a rich guy named “Leon” who owns an over-the-top ranch we saw and whose house supposedly has the largest window in the world in it. He seemed to like cyclists (they always wave, he says), and has offered them rides before (though usually they refuse).
The lack of storms, cool temperatures and our high energy levels convinced us to roll out for some more miles. In minimum we would ride to Bannack state park to camp (12 miles) and perhaps all the way to Elkhorn Hot springs (36 miles).
The 12 miles to Bannack dissappeared before we knew it. The next 7 were a bit of a drag, literally, as we turned west, once again on pavement, into the wind. But then we had only 14 left through the town of Polaris, with some uphill to Elkhorn Hot Springs. When I say some uphill I mean a killer climb–and it was at the very end of the day as we rolled into our 103rd mile. Super duper granny gear (at least on 100th mile legs it was), and as we climbed the trees reappeared–thick and tall ones. The air was brisk with the sun behind the mountains and the cool air from the creeks all around.
We climbed the final 0.7 miles into the hot springs area at around 9 pm. To our surprise the restaurant was still open and they had outstanding food. Paula got a veggie melt sandwich to die for and I ate spagehetti with an impressive salad bar. We got a tiny room (the energy for setting up camp was spent climbing those last hills) then hit the sack.
106 miles, 6650 feet of climbing
7/22
I’ve been looking for a challenge on this trip since, oh, Colorado. Today I found what I was looking for, with plenty of extra challenge to spare. Despite some epic sections and conditions we managed to put in some serious miles and arrive in Butte safe and sound. Today’s effort can only be described as heroic. I can say that since it really wasn’t mine; it was Paula driving us up and over the final climb to the Continental Divide and into Butte.
We started with a soak in the hot springs at Elkhorn since the cafe owners were a half hour late opening. The room at the lodge didn’t have a shower, but the springs sufficiently recharged us. We ate a full breakfast, then somewhat lethargically packed up our stuff to head out. Our tires were spinning by 10, climbing 1000 feet to the top of the Pioneer Mountains byway on dirt. We felt good despite the steep grade; I think we were happy not only for the climbing but also the dense trees and good dirt surface.
We reached the top and rolled onto pavement. We descended a bit before seeing a sign for Crystal Park. People were digging for amethyst crystals here, so we stopped to have a look around. We didn’t take our trowel, but Paula did look where the water had washed off previous dig sites. She found several large crystals in about 5 minutes. Some people who had been digging for a while said they were bigger than anything they had found.
The ensuing 30 miles of pavement to Wise River were extremely developed for a national forest. There is a campground or picnic area every mile or so it seemed and trails going everywhere. We saw some cars with bikes on them. The ensuing 30 miles of pavement were also wrought with headwind. It’s often worse to be going downhill into a headwind than uphill. There was a strong wind blowing up the canyon, and it pretty much stayed with us for the rest of the day.
There was a brief section that was steep enough that the wind was not a factor, and the two paved switchbacks were straight out of Mt. Graham’s Swift Trail. I still wonder how bad this summer’s fire there will be.
In the town of Wise River we didn’t have time for a full lunch so we just stopped at the Mercantile for gatorades and candy. We knew the task before us was sure to be an arduous one: Fleecer Ridge. Southbound riders had without question told us to take the paved alternate around Fleecer. I usually responded, “Thanks for the warning, but you don’t know me.” We haven’t taken any alternates yet, so why now?
The prelude to Fleecer was very nice, except for the howling wind in our face. At times the trees provided shelter, but it was brief. As the Jerry Creek road turned to switchback we rode off into the Fleecer Ridge trail–an overgrown, narrow quad track into the trees. The warmup was a real treat; finally some challenging trail after seemingly 500 miles of mellow bumpy roads. A rock garden led to a creek crossing and a steep pitch that I cleaned without much trouble. As I rode closer to the steep section my head danced on fire with a million thoughts. How far to the steep section? Is it at all rideable? How steep *is* it? Some people claimed they rode down it–how bad can it be? If there is traction will I just run out of juice midway? I had dreams of riding the whole thing with Bob in tow. I really had no idea what to expect. I could understand anything from beyond the most ridiculous hill I’ve ever walked up with a bike to something I’d have no problem riding.
After the steep pitch I rolled across a meadow then turned my head to the right. !!!!!
Ok, this is going to be hard. I put my head down and plowed straight into it with whatever momentum I could muster. I made it maybe 100 feet from where it gets ridiculously steep. Traction is the biggest problem: loose rock the biggest thief.
I stayed where I was until Paula turned the corner to see how pathetic my attempt was. Then I walked my bike to the bottom, unhooked the Bob, and readied myself for another futile effort. I burned my legs up getting some momentum only to lose it 10 feet up the hill. I made it maybe 50 feet higher than with the Bob, which was still nowhere near the top of the pitch we could see. I have neither the ability, strength or concentration necessary to clean this hill.
OK, so now what? There was no way to push my Bike+Bob up it, but we decided to deal with that later. Let’s get Paula’s bike+gear up first. I pushed from behind while she steered and pushed on the handlebars. The first pitch was only a fraction of the super steep climb; maybe a fifth of it. We stopped at least a dozen times just to regain our breath. Our calves and achilles tendons screamed at us. We didn’t know which was better: stay on the rocky “trail” or push the bike over small sage brush off on the side. We tried both but neither suited our fancy; they were both impossible.
Halfway we took off the panniers and tent to divide the weight. I carried her bike while she hauled the panniers up. A half hour later we reached a spot where I thought I *might* be able to ride again, or at least be able to sort of, kind of, push a loaded bike up. Little did we know that we were only halfway up the entire climb.
So we walked back down, slowly and carefully, marveling at how high we now stood above the valley and my bike/bob waiting for its turn down in the meadow. It was beautiful up there. It was depressing to be going back down after working so hard to get up.
Paula decided to try the Bob bag on her back, leaving me with an emtpy bob/bike to haul up the mountain. This plan worked well–she was climbing much faster than I was. Even empty the trailer got stuck and turned all over the place. I mostly took the new trail blazed by cyclists and motorcycles on the south side of the real trail. Again we stopped to rest a dozen or more times on the ascent. But finally we reached our other gear where we sat to regain some calories. We enjoyed a PB&J sandwich in the cool breeze and warm sun, sitting exhausted and drained.
I stood up to surmise the remaining climb (or what little I could see of it). Perhaps rideable? In went the Bob bag and all our other gear. I hopped on for some wishful thinking and fully loaded riding, all the while worried that we were again going to meet with another impossibly steep section.
Such a section never materialized, but the climb was still steep, loose and very difficult. Despite what I thought were drained legs, I found myself riding the hill out to the top–a solitary fence on top off the hill. Each time I’d crest a horizon/rise I’d see that the climb was nowhere near finished. But I was determined to reach the top without faltering.
The hike-a-bike brought us 0.3 miles and gained 600 feet. The remainder of the climb was 0.6 miles gaining 500 feet, for a grand total of less than a mile and 1100 feet of climbing. It took us an hour and 45 minutes total, including the short stop for a sandwich and two trips on the 0.3 mile section.
It wouldn’t be an epic ride without a solid hike-a-bike, now would it?
We rolled down a short downhill, one not nearly as difficult as the other side, then met with a rancher and his cattle. He did tell Paula “good job” for having made it over the hill, and he asked me if I had seen any cattle on the trail.
I found some trail booty on the way up: a full and brand new waterbottle from a shop in Butte. Dave, the college age son of Bruce, who we met at Red Rock Lake campground, had said he lost his waterbottle on Fleecer. I found it near the top (I walked back down to grab it and cheer Paula to the top). This worked out well: weight we didn’t have to haul up, and water we didn’t have to pump later in the day. It proved to be just enough to get us to Butte. But I get ahead of myself, we’re nowhere near Butte at this point.
Downhill gravel roads.. ah, we earned this downhill. We were both still reeling from Fleecer, and I was certain we would camp at Beaver Dam campground, midway down the descent. But Paula would not hear of it. She was certain we could make it to Butte, doing what we originally planned for 3 days in just 2. Between us and Butte we had a big descent to I-15 at 5500 feet, then a steep climb up to the continental divide at 7300 feet. It was already 6:30pm and there was a chill in the air. I was definitely ready to stop, but I also could not say no.
At some point during the hike a bike some sort of fly bit me twice between my fingers and on both hands. They immediately started itching and swelling–even the neighboring fingers. This was not good. I took a good dose of ibuprofen to keep the swelling down, but it had me worried. If my hands were going to completely swell up it was going to be better to be in town where I could get some medical attention, so the decision to keep going did make some sense.
We rolled past a nice campground where a warm sleeping bag and good food could have been had. Instead we fought a headwind on the gradual descent to I-15, but somehow we were not exhausted. It’s a good thing we weren’t, because the climb to the divide was much steeper than expected and featured the worst wind of the day. It was an epic climb after everything we had already done. I stopped to grab a break from the wind and watched Paula climb tirelessly away from me. I was impressed.
1200 feet of granny gear/wind climbing later we found ourselves in the trees and away from the wind. We crossed a divide that we thought was continental and cruised downhill into yet another windswept valley void of trees. We thought we were on the downhill run into Butte. 18 miles to Butte the sign said, 2 miles to Moose Town. 18 miles and 1500 feet to drop! We made it!
Not so. The next 3 miles took 45 minutes and extraordinary effort to cover as the road continued to climb and drop alternately, and all with terrible winds. 2 trucks passed us, both drivers giving us confused and sympathetic looks. At last we crested 7300 feet and saw a real downhill unfolding down the valley.
The 14 miles into Butte were still not easy, but we were rewarded with an electric sunset over densely wooded ridges. I felt lucky to be out there experiencing it, and we were riding high on the accomplishment of completing a very difficult day. Before we could see the Butte city lights it was dark, and for once we found both of our lights and they both were working properly. In the dark I think we missed a turn from the actual “route” description. But highway 2 brought us exactly where we needed to be: an open Taco Bell and a Super 8 motel.
85 miles, 7200 feet of climbing, highest TopoFusion “difficulty index” to date.
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’s 9pm. 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 to 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 every ounce 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 extracurricular 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 priest 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 stretch 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)
7/25
We were up and moving quickly. We walked into town to find breakfast and hopefully some tights. Breakfast was good and filling. As we waited a guy with a Bob pulled up. Dave (who we had heard about from the two other GDMBR riders, Matt and Steve) about crapped his pants when Paula said, “hey dave!” as he walked in the door. He sat with us as we ate, exchanging the usual trail talk stuff. It was good timing to meet him while we were eating anyway.
We walked down to the general store and were shocked to find polar tech (good material) tights, and they were half off - $16. We weren’t expecting to find anything better than sweat pants.
It was already getting warm at 11am, and we were still reeling from yesterday’s deathmarch, so we rested at the campground and left around 5pm thinking we were avoiding the heat. We successfully avoided the heat, but like most days on this trip, we didn’t expect the unexpected. We got rain.
We didn’t climb more than 5 minutes in the sun before we were shrouded in clouds. If you had asked me how the evening would pan out at 5pm just as we were leaving I would have said 0% chance of rain. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was still around 90 degrees.
We made some good time and drank little water as we made progress upwards towards Huckleberry Pass. On the final switchbacks we started getting a sprinkle and hearing thunder crashes in the distance. We increased the pace but it was no use. The storm was waiting for us on the other side no matter what speed we climbed at.
The rain gear came out at the top, (the top, by the way, came very easily–the profile is wildly exaggerated for this climb), and we headed down into the rain. The road became wet, then muddy, but we were high and dry in our waterproof gear. It actually felt kind of good for a time (I had a sun headache going) however, it was getting old and I was worried about how the rest of the evening would turn out.
We eventually rolled into open plains on the other side of the pass and the rain lifted. We could see little storms in almost every direction, but especially to the west. Which way were we going? West, of course. They looked harmless enough, but as we pedaled we watched the lighting crack every few minutes. It didn’t look so good.
We reached highway 200 without much incident, then, a familiar sight for us and our late night rides: the sky turned gold. The sun was peeking out below the clouds (it’s now near sunset) turning the Montana landscape into a sea of golden air. It was magnificent, really, but we were getting desperate. To the north (our intended campsite) there was a significant storm. Mostly, the weather was unpredictable. When we reached Ovando we pulled in to Trixie’s restaurant/bar/whatever and inquired about lodging. They called and set up the local bed and breakfast for us, then fed us veggie burgers. So now we are safe and sound out of the thunderstorms and ready for a big day tomorrow: 76 something difficult miles to the Super 8 on the Swan Highway.
When we left Trixies I looked north to where our campsite was. The lightning was still dancing out there and it was very dark. We were 8 miles short of our intended destination, but out of the rain.
36 miles, 2400 feet of climbing
7/26
The breakfast part of the Blackfoot Bed and Breakfast did not disappoint. We filled ourselves with pancakes, bacon and eggs. Not our usual affair, but mighty tasty indeed. Our host was up before us cooking (though usually breakfast is at 7, he made it early for us). We were out the door around 7:30.
As we pedaled the small hill out of town Paula said, “Your Bob wheel is squeaking like crazy.” She was right and not only was it squeaking it was barely rolling. The bearings were totally seized up and there really wasn’t much I could do about it. So I took it off and rolled back to the Blackfoot B&B where the owner (I can’t remember his name) hopped right to it helping me fix it. He was obviously the type of person who likes a good fix-it challenge; he seemed pretty excited about it actually. We got the nuts off and tried shooting grease into it with his grease gun. We couldn’t pop the bearings out or figure out how to get the axle out either, so it was a bit of a bust. The seal came off one side so we greased the bearings up well and made it turn a bit. It will have to do for the final 300 miles to Roosville.
Also, my cyclometer went blank, apparently due to a dead battery, but it may have been the rain since it went haywire for a while too. So I lost my total mileage, but it is working again (Paula’s light uses the same watch battery).
Other than the repair (and the hour delay it caused) today was a fabulous day. We saw some of the best riding of the entire trip, without a doubt. We warmed up on 26 miles from Ovando to near Seeley Lake, where the real fun began. A slow grind of a climb waited for us there. It was getting hot but there was sufficient shade: I actually lost GPS reception for the first time (that I’ve noticed).
We reached the gate on the road where motorized vehicles are not allowed. We took a short break to eat a sandwich here and regain some resolve for the rest of the climb. Now it was hot and the hill steep enough that shade was at a minimum.
The road/trail was everything expected: overgrown, singletrack-ish, beautiful and even challenging in places. Our little bear bells jingled as we hopped over a few downed trees and bumped over some big rocks. It was nothing too serious as we soon found ourselves at the top of the 2200′ climb.
Big downhill, big grins and big cool air. Then, the best part of the day: Morrell Creek. We were both nearly out of water at the top. Morrell was the first source we crossed and it was a good one. I sat in the shade pumping 32 oz after 32 oz of ice cold, crystal clear water into my nalgene. I’d drink half then use the rest to fill up some of our containers. I could have stayed there drinking water all day.
But the fun continued. Not far from the creek we turned off onto another abandoned road, this one much more like singletrack. Yellow and white flowers lined the sides of the trail, whacking into our legs, bikes and even arms. It was beautiful and it just rolled on and on through the woods. Paula absolutely loved all the flowers. It’s one of the best trails I have ever ridden, period.
We rolled past Holland lake, passing on camping with ATVers and motorcyclers, and ran into another N-S rider (we saw a couple from Colorado at about mile 16 today as well). This guy was huge and was doing the whole thing for his 50th birthday, solo.
The road from Holland Lake was a typical GDMBR piece of crap road: wide, dusty and washboarded. Of course it had some traffic too. It made me appreciate the quiet roads of the day even more. On the other side of highway 83 waited more quiet roads and even more flowers to brush through! The days final 18 miles on the west side of 83 were a dream come true. They were mostly flat, it was a beautiful, peaceful evening and only 1 or 2 cars. The ‘road closed’ section here was flowered just like the other one.
This really was some of the best riding along the entire GDMBR. And now all we have is 194 miles to go. I don’t know if we have it in us to finish it off in 2 days, and such an effort would be incredible. Likely we’ll go for three so as to not kill ourselves, but we never really know until we get out there. It will be sad to see it end, but a part of me does want to be done too.
82 miles, 6100 feet of climbing
7/27 to Whitefish, Montana
There was doubt in the air as we cycled more quiet back roads in through the Swan river valley. We were rolling off the final 200 miles of the ride, but did we have what it takes to do it in two days? Since entering Montana the terrain and our pace has been cranked up a notch and we anticipate exhaustion to settle in. Thus far we have been able to keep just out of exhaustion’s reach. As always, we played it by ear, waiting to ’see how we feel’ and see how the terrain, weather and all other variables are cast. Of course, we always feel about the same. 40-50 miles disappear easily, then our bottoms get sore but our legs and minds are ready to ride until or past sunset. So it was today: the backup plan was to stay with Tom Arnone at 75 miles but instead we rolled in to Whitefish at 97 miles–nice and late.
We thoroughly enjoyed today’s 50 miles of quiet, smooth, soft, car-free backroads. I can’t say enough about them, really. This is definitely bear country, so we do ride with a cautious eye (ear, actually), but if anything this only makes you more aware of yourself and your surroundings. The fact that there is a bit of danger coming around a downhill corner is a part of doing this ride. I’d much rather go down fighting with a bear than run over by a pick-me-up truck pulling a horse trailer. I think the likelihood of the latter is much higher than the former.
We made a brief foray into the Mission Mountains, climbing to near 5000 right above Swan Lake. A few steep pitches (N-S riders told us it was a “honk” of a hill), but nothing too serious. From the top of this climb we rolled out a huge downhill into the town of Ferndale (which we renamed Fernando) where we began an extended session of Tarmack rolling. But first we had a few miles of GDMBR “piece of crap” dirt road to suffer through. I am actually, after 2300 miles, finally, and I’m sorry to admit it, starting to almost tolerate the paved sections. The worst moments of the trip are spent on the piece of crap roads, getting dusted by truck after truck and swerving around trying to find the washboard-free sweet spot on the road.
Our pavement took us through the town of Swan River where we stopped to scarf massive quantities of junk–ice cream, candy bars, whatever suited our fancy. Outside a couple of the locals asked about our trip and could not believe we had ridden from Mexico. They were two of the most excitable people we have met. They told us we should write a book, call the newspaper, have a party, etc. Perhaps not, but their enthusiasm helped us put it together to roll out 40 more miles before nightfall.
In the middle of those 40 we were fortunate to take a break at Tom Arnone’s house. He’s listed on the map as someone who offers water and a cabin to GDMBR cyclists. We had heard that he was a serious cyclist and just an interesting guy to talk to. This rumor turned out to be true; we stayed a bit too long talking to him. He makes his own frames including a tandem that he is going for master’s national champion on. The first thing he did was offer us cold water, which was exactly what we needed. It was too bad that we couldn’t stay with him that night, but we really needed to move on to Whitefish in order to lay siege to the last section of the GDMBR. 110 miles for the final day sounded a bit more reasonable than 130. The evening was beautiful and we were feeling good, so we just kept pedaling through the rural Montana country. I could really get used to these flat roads lined with trees; the trees are insurance against headwinds. We still had a bit wind in our faces when heading north in the few treeless areas, but for the most part it was a pleasant cycle all the way in to Whitefish.
We arrived around 9:45 with just enough time to order in a cheese bread/pizza order at Stageline Pizza. The woman at the motel told us it was close–three blocks, but we ended up walking about a mile before we even saw the pizza place. It was getting very late for a long walk, but we broke it up by eating our food at a table on the way back. We couldn’t really figure out Whitefish. Tourists? Locals? Outdoors? Where are all these people going? Glacier?
We hit Dairy Queen on the way back for even more indulgence. We had to get the calories in somehow and ice cream was about the only thing we could successfully eat more of. We went to sleep quite tired, but I was charged and ready to go. I could barely sleep. Anticipation. Excitement. Nervous energy, but mostly just energy. This is it–the final push to Canada. Can we do it or will exhaustion finally rear its head and pull us down with it? Is it wise to trade our camping gear in favor of speed? If something goes wrong (and very little has thus far) we will not longer have the option of camping on the side of the road. We pretty much have to make it to the end. Failure is not an option.
97 miles, 6700 feet of climbing
7/28 to Roosville and Fin
Up very early despite not setting an alarm, I quickly swung into action. My body was begging to lay in bed for hours, but the energy got the best of me–I couldn’t handle even lying with my eyes open. I just had to get up and start going. I moved Paula’s rear rack onto my bike, went through our gear to decide what to take and made several trips to the free breakfast downstairs. A hour later Paula started to stir and joined in on the preparations.
It was quite the project to switch gears in the middle of a trip. Suddenly we didn’t have the big bob full of gear (and with a wheel that barely rolls) that we could rely on should anything go wrong. But we were able to reduce things to a moderate ditty bag full of clothes and a camelbak full of other gear. We passed on the water filter, figuring we could make it to Eureka (90 miles) without recharging our supplies.
As we were about to leave I added some PSI to my rear tire since it was now going to have a bit more weight on it. After I took the pump off I realized that I didn’t grab any of our spare tubes (all buried at the bottom of the bob bag). I had to borrow the key for the motel’s tool shed once again to grab some tubes, but not having a spare could have been disastrous. I was nervous as we pedaled through whitefish that I was forgetting something equally as important.
But soon the focus turned to the riding. We rolled around spacious Whitefish lake, being treated to some nice views. The first climbs yielded smiles of satisfaction as we felt our bikes accelerate free of most of our gear. The difference was notable, but not exactly huge. We still had a long ride ahead of us and a fair amount of climbing. Our bikes were not going to pedal themselves to Canada simply because they now weigh 40 pounds less. But it was a very nice change, especially for me to not feel like I was driving a limo. I started the slow process of retraining my muscles and balancing systems to stand and pedal without the Bob attached to my bike. The first few standing sessions were, as expected, difficult and frightening. I’ll never get over how strange it is to expect your bike to do one thing but to receive stimuli otherwise.
We climbed from 3000 to 4000 then leveled off for quite a few miles. Then we climed to 4500 to eat lunch at upper whitefish lake. At lunch I laughed at how much the adventure cycling maps had exaggerated the little hills we had just come down / gone up. I still wonder if they are purposely exaggerated so that newbies on the route don’t think it’s all downhill from Red Meadow lake to Whitefish.
We continued the assault, maintaining significantly faster climbing speeds than with loads. We soon found ourselves at Red Meadow pass and the beautiful lake. Here were two riders who started just the day before. They were fresh with new energy, but already drained from the climbs. They were debating about going in to Whitefish or camping at Red Meadow. They were floored when they found out we 1) started in Mexico 2) were going to finish in 39 days and 3) were riding to Roosville the same day. They called us genetic freaks. I don’t agree with this (almost anyone could complete such a trip if they commit themselves to it), but the flattery did help us ride with a bit more steam through the rest of the day.
We needed as much steam as we could get for North Fork road, which awaited us at the bottom of a descent that was freshly laden with bear scat. I added a couple manually initiated jingles of my bell to the already incessant ringing caused by the rocky road. And it must have worked because we didn’t see any bears. Right? Hah.
Ah North Fork road. Can you say piece of crap? How about double crap? It’s hard to believe that there is something worse than a heavily washboarded road, but we found ourselves experiencing it. North Fork road is wide, dusty, and extremely rough. You can keep some decent speed but the imbedded rocks are very unforgiving. We came away feeling beat up. I had a flashback to riding the rail trail in Idaho (which crushed me into oblivion). It’s a different kind of exhaustion and it was definitely creeping in. But we pushed through it and turned off to climb to Whitefish divide on a happily less traveled road.
I loved this climb. We passed by huge rolling creeks, through beautiful burn areas and grabbed astounding views to nearly all directions, including Glacier National Park. I almost did not want the climb to end. I did want to get to the other side since we were racing the sun to Roosville, but I did not want this perfect climb and perfect day to end. I tried to live in the moment, to its fullest, but the top of the climb came after some effort and it was time to roll on. At the very top Paula found a metal “1″ sign that had fallen off a marker. She took it as our trophy for the trip, placing it on her bike’s stem. We sang “we’re number one” at Whitefish divide, where we felt like the trip was essentially over. Only 30 some-odd miles of downhill and flat pavement stood between us and final success: Canada.
It pretty much went like that, though the downhill was rougher than expected and our bear bells nearly drove us insane. Once we hit the pavement we detached them for good and coasted down a long downhill from 5000 to 2500 feet. We rolled into Eureka in Euphoria–we were going to make it as planned. We checked into the Creek Side motel, threw our extra gear in the room then headed out to enjoy the last 10 miles to the border.
The sun was setting the sky afire, which was a fitting end to our trip. We have enjoyed so many late evenings pedaling away as the fireworks develop all around us. Usually we are quite tired and at the end of a long haul into some town or campsite. Today was no different, except that this was the last long haul.
We coasted triumphantly down the hill to the border crossing at Roosville. At the Canadian inspection station we found no one willing to hear our story. Our bikes didn’t trigger whatever alerts the guards to come out, so we just rolled over to the Welcome sign to take a photo. “HEY! What are you doing? Get over here!” “Sorry, sir, no one came out, and we are just going right back to the USA anyway.” The guard wasn’t very amused, nor was he impressed with our story. Oh well. We took a quick photo then stood in a 20 minute, 3 car line at the US border. The lady was very thorough but thankfully let us go with only a few questions and a “be careful out there.”
We took highway 93 back (more direct) since we knew that lady would keep most of the cars back at the border. Before we knew it we were back in Eureka eating victory subway sandwiches and eating ice cream.
111 miles, 7500 feet of climbing
7/29
Last night at 9:10pm we crossed the Canadian Border at the port of Roosville. The trip took 38 days and about 12 hours. It is bittersweet ending, but we couldn’t be happier: the trip was a success beyond our expectations. I am somewhat at a loss for words, so I’ll just go with some numbers (from the GPS data–yes I was able to get a tracklog of the entire thing):
38 days, 12 hours total time 65.88 miles per day average Lowest day: 0 miles Highest day: 125 miles
2569.50 mi (871.55 mi uphill, 953.16 mi downhill, 740.23 mi flat) 191691 ft total ascent (191634 ft descent) - 5.3 % ave uphill grade, 4.8 % ave downhill grade 11 days 1:59:06 moving time (9.6 mph average speed, 37.2 mph max speed)
7/29
Awake late. Mentally the trip is over. Now, our minds are allowing our bodies to be tired and say ENOUGH! Given permission, our feeble bodies jumped on the opportunity. We are now paying our longstanding debt in exhaustion. The motivation to ride 60 miles from Eureka back to Whitefish was not forthcoming. We asked a few people if they knew anyone heading that way, but eventually we sucked it up and headed back out on the road. It was a ride that I thought was going to miserable, but it actually started off quite nice. We were on the side road (on the GDMBR), floating free of traffic and enjoying a nice day. I was still riding my bike with my favorite person on the planet. Things couldn’t have been better really.
We turned back on to highway 93 where we had a decent shoulder to ride on. The traffic was pretty thick, but manageable because of the space we had. We passed the turn off for the Whitefish Divide climb–the GDMBR and went into new territory.
At one point we passed a huge lumber mill. There were so many logs and processed boards stacked up that it almost did not look real. It looked like something out of a movie–computer generated. Big cranes moved around and grabbed logs to move them along. The stacks of logs went on as far as I could see. Pretty incredible.
Unfortunately the fun came to a halt around 20 miles from Eureka. Our shoulder completely disappeared. We’re talking 2 inches between the white line and the guard rail. This is not good. We rode together, trying to maintain our wits, but the lumber trucks and semis were too much for us. We rode 6 miles and witnessed a near accident (Log truck passing us in the other lane nearly hit a motorcycle going the other way, had it been a car it would have been ugly) and were nearly a part of 2 accidents ourselves. If anyone was going the other way the logging trucks have no choice but to clip and blast us. It was not safe. I began to worry, honestly, that we were not going to make it off this road alive. It was not a matter of being able to pedal the miles–we easily could have.
We were only halfway and fearing our safety, so we did what all good cyclotourists do when they are stuck: we stuck out our thumbs. Being first time users of the windswept thumb, we were not sure what to expect. Of course what we got was nothing.
Feeling pathetic we decided to hop on and hope for the best. We put on our helmets and told ourselves we’d try one more group of potential rides. Our thumbs were high but it was no use. We started riding. Ugh.
Wait, there was a truck pulling off ahead. Could it be?
30 minutes later we were sitting in Al’s truck, just outside of Whitefish, enjoying the snarl of traffic backed up by construction. Fresh slurry was everywhere and the exhaust was enough to poison a whale. I was so thankful to be riding in his truck instead of fighting for my life and health on 93. He said he and his wife often pickup hitch-hikers in Glacier, but that he had just seen a movie about a hitch-hiker killing his ride the other day. Based on that we decided not to kill him, though it was mighty tempting. He works in construction (though more real estate these days) and was headed to his hangar/plane in Kalispell. He dropped us right off at our motel. We were ecstatic and very grateful. I almost felt that he had saved our lives.
27 miles, 1500 feet of climbing
7/30, 7/31
Travel to Eugene, Oregon by Amtrak. A long ride, but a new experience for us. You get plenty of room and can walk around, eat, and look out the train. It’s more quiet than a plane, but more bumpy of a ride. Sleep did not come easily despite my very drained state. I’d call it a couple of cat naps, not sleep.
8/1
I made an attempt at riding a bike today, but it failed about as miserably as it possibly could. First, Amtrak “forgot” to put my bike on the train, so I had to borrow a bike (thanks to Richard Sweet who loaned me one of his) in order to ride. Alan’s friends were doing a ride on the Alpine trail and although it was a shuttle ride (ugh) I was going to come along anyway. After many delays and many miles driving (double ugh) we finally started riding. R. Sweet’s bike is setup motorcycle style (front and rear brakes reversed), which although I knew about, could not retrain my brain in time. The first little downhill stretch saw me grabbing a world full of brake, jerking me off the seat and stretching my hamstring out of whack. It didn’t help that they were super powerful disc brakes either. Immediately I had excruciating pain in my hamstring, but I continued rolling downhill hoping that it would go away. The first few short climbs led to further mishap. I cannot explain it, but my legs completely refused to ride. I don’t know if it was cramping, soreness, tendonitis, a blood clot–who knows. But the pain in (eventually) both of my quads and calves was beyond intolerable. I could not ride. Stopping only helped a bit. So I limped, barely able to walk, back to the cars. The pain did not subside after quite some time. I tanked gatorade after gatorade and ate cliff bars. Finally I just took a nap because sitting was too painful. I was out for an hour and half, waking up to slightly less pain and the newfound ability to move around. The rest of the crew eventually drove back up to retrieve the shuttle vehicles and we headed back to Eugene.
8/2
Walking, pinball, more walking and another attempt at a ride today. Today’s attempt was much more successful than yesterday’s, but my legs are still telling me not to ride. But the temperature is so cool, the trees so tall and dense, and my time here in Eugene limited. So Alan and I rolled out for his short ride: the Ridgeline trail. I got a good warmup through city streets, and thoroughly enjoyed being back on my bike again. It felt so familiar, like I belonged on it, belonged riding. Eugene is an awesome city for riding and Al’s route to Ridgeline was very unique. To access Ridgeline Al takes a very steep trail from Amazon Creek. I kept things as slow as I could and likely should have defaulted to walking, but the challenge got the best of me. Riding slow was not an option. I ended up cleaning the steep climb, after which my legs threw a small fit. Fortunately Ridgeline was fairly mellow for a bit, so I spun it out and avoided a complete meltdown.
The GDMBR has definitely deprived me of real mountain biking. This was a great return. Switchbacks, a few rocks, roots, and a feather light bike to ride (seemingly so at least). And all through an amazing canopy of trees. I am so jealous of Al’s standard, after work ride. We need something like this in Tucson. Or at least I do.
I actually felt better after riding than I did before. Sleepy, hungry, but the pain in my legs was getting better. I ate anything I laid eyes on, then slept like a rock.
8/3
Lethargic morning, but eventually I mustered enough energy to get out for another ride. Al picked a real hoot of a ride for today: Hardesty Mountain / Eula Ridge. This is exactly my kind of ride. From the beginning we were climbing in granny gear. Not just granny gear, but nose of your seat, hold on for dear life style of granny gear. Energy stores were not exactly at maximum capacity for me, but as we climbed I felt better and better. From 900 feet we climbed away through dense trees that rarely let a ray of sunshine through. About halfway up I thought it was raining, hearing drops falling from the trees above. Soon we were riding through the clouds parked on the ridgeline. The moisture from the clouds had collected on the trees giving the appearance of rain. The climbing continued.
Switchbacks, some very difficult and requiring more than a few bunny hop turns to navigate. Despite rarely a technical mile during the past 2 months, I did surprisingly well. Al climbed much stronger in front of me. I could not have stayed with him if my life depended on it. I was trying to exert minimal energy, but once again the challenge got the best of me and I rode far beyond what I should have. In 5 miles we climbed 3200 feet, with all of it just within the tolerances of rideability. Now that’s what I call a climb.
At the top it was cool and moist. We rolled down the Eula ridge trail. There were many a steep section. My skills were not quite up to the task, so I walked some sections, then Leif’ed Al into walking a few himself. My excuse, of course, was my near bald (and semi-slick to begin with) tires that were picked for the GDMBR, not real mountain biking. Still, it was an awesome downhill run that seemed longer than what we had climbed up. The walking I did downhill sent my legs into hoytsville (I now suspect it is cramping), so I rode a bit more downhill than I probably would have.
Back on the highway we took a dirt road that parallels a railroad track, then hopped back over it just before a train came and stopped on it.
Later in the day we went to the coast to play in the water and watch the various creatures that live there. For one who rarely sees the Ocean it’s always a nice experience–for a day.
13 miles, 3300 feet of climbing
8/4
Travel to Tucson (by plane). Back to the heat. Back to real life.
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7/19
We got some rain overnight–just enough to wake us up, but not soak everything. The air was clear and fresh making for a beautiful morning. Above on the high cliffs to the south the clouds were flying low, obscuring portions of the mountain while leaving others crystal clear.
We were ready to roll around 8, but spent quite a bit of time talking to the Bruce clan again in the morning. Around 9 we headed out, feeling good.
The mental exhaustion from yesterday’s rail trail had not lifted, unfortunately. Today’s road was awesome through the remainder of the wildlife refuge, but soon we were on a no-name, bumpy dirt road through endless ranch lands. On one hand it was awesome because there was nothing in the valley, which generally meant no traffic and buildings, but we were back in ranch country. This means fences on both sides, huge herds of stinky cattle and our favorite: cattle guards. The valley was wide open: no trees and flat. The road wandered around but never really did anything interesting. A few rollers were steep enough to get me on my toes, but mostly I was just bored. Thus, the mental frustration. I can’t wait to get back in the mountains for some real climbs. These flats are killing me.
Before we turned off to the no-name ranch road we were on a bit of a busy one: logging trucks passed us on their way to a mill site just outside the refuge. I think they did make a small effort to slow down when they saw us, but the road was simply not wide enough for those trucks. As we were about to crest a roller I saw a truck cresting the other side. I gave him a wave and a look of amazement (at his speed), barely having enough room to stay on the road as he passed with a big dust cloud. I pedaled maybe 200 feet before I heard Paula yell. I turned around to see her on the ground with the dust cloud of the logging truck continuing down the road. I dropped my bike and ran back, thinking she had been hit since she wasn’t getting up.
The truck had not hit her, but neither had he stopped to see if she was alright. She had been standing up while pedaling and was forced off into the soft gravel on the side of the road. Because she was standing and pedaling and not expecting gravel her bike slid out from under her. She got a handlebar to the chest and a bit of a bump on her knee, but was otherwise OK. The best part was how the logging truck just kept driving. Important business, I’m sure.
The next truck by (not logging, with an ATV in the bed) did stop to ask if we were ok. He asked if the logging truck had hit her and when I said, “no he was just driving too fast and too close” he shrugged and drove off. My love of motor vehicles and their senseless drivers continues to increase daily, whether I’m riding the divide or through the streets of Tucson. Automobiles–is there anything they can’t do? They sure can kill people, and I am just grateful that we both got out OK.
The road with the logging trucks did not last long, fortunately, and for the rest of today’s ride we maybe saw 3 vehicles (who slowed for us). Some days the miles fly by unnoticed, other days you count them off. I was definitely counting them off today. And they only totaled 57, but that was more than enough for me.
The Mountain View motel and RV was super as expected. The manager, Will, was very nice to us. We got a good, clean room, and a how shower. The cafe across the street served us up some quality food. We were missing only two things: headphones for Paula’s mp3 player (I broke them picking up her bike, not knowing she had the player in her handlebar bag) and a book for Paula to read. Will helped us out on both counts: trading Paula for her book and giving her some very old but working headphones. We’re all set to go.
57 miles, 2600 feet of climbing
7/20
Rest in Lima. Paula’s knee was hurting upon walking in the morning, so we decided to take our second day off. It was, as usual, a difficult decision to make, but in the end we were quite happy with it.
Burger, steak and fry places are getting old. We found frozen pizzas and an oven to cook them in at the small Exxon shop. The employees got to know us well after our 5th or 6th trip to eat pizza and junk food. I spent time catching up with things on the internet, posting pictures and reading about all manner of things. One thing I read was the dispatches from the great divide race. The result was the inspiration to hammer out some solid efforts during the last fourth of the GDMBR.
7/21
Beautiful riding weather today, and we definitely took advantage of it. The day started with 6 miles of pavement on the I-15 frontage road out of Lima, Montana. We then took a left onto the Big Sheep Creek / Medicine Lodge backcountry byway, a dirt road in the mountains.
Washboard! But it soon dissipated to a nice dirt surface and remained that way until we hit pavement again. We climbed gradually at first (ugh more flats), then it didn’t matter whether it was flat, climbing, washboarded, whatever. The scenery was more than enough to keep me motivated and riding happy.
At first the hills were straight out of Salmon, ID and the North Fork area (not surprising since they are essentially on the other side of the divide from here). I was reminded of my summer backpacking in the Bighorn Crags for the forest service. Perhaps the best part of the ride of Big Sheep creek was the wildlife. We saw herds of deer, foxes, the usual chipmunks and gophers, and many, many unique birds. The area is not heavily ranched, neither is it heavily traveled, so it was prime for wildlife sightings.
Perhaps the second best part was the creek. It flowed along with us up the valley, with a soothing sound and deep moss covered shores. The third best part (perhaps) was the canyon itself and the geological formations. The slopes are very steep and the canyon narrow. Although it was nearly ten o’clock we were riding through shade most of the way up. Impressive cliffs adorned the sides. In a word, spectacular.
I turned my cyclometer to ‘max speed’ and my GPS to the menu page and just rode, staring at the scenery.
Eventually the canyon opened out into a wide open plain with views of nearly treeless mountains on all sides. It was still nice, but the road went straight and was too flat. My legs are still aching for a good climb.
It seemed like it was hot, or going to be so, but it never warmed up. We wanted to eat a sandwich but couldn’t find a shady spot to stop. We rode 45 minutes more before we found some cliffs with a singletrack leading to them. Once we stopped and made our tuna sandwiches we found ourselves eating in the sun instead of the shade. It’s a cool Montana July, I guess. We were only at 7500 feet or so.
The super weather held. Yesterday saw numerous hailstorms near Lima (and all around). Today we only had sweet mountain clouds to shelter us from the sky. It wasn’t hot, but when riding (or climbing) it’s almost always nice to not be in the sun.
After lunch we dropped down a bit and then, finally, a solid climb to the Medicine Lodge/Sheep Creek divide (7920 feet). My granny gear was tickled to be back in service once again. We crested fairly easily then began a long, gradual descent to our next paved road. At some point along the descent I switched my cyclometer to trip miles and was shocked to see 60. It didn’t feel like we had ridden 30 let alone 60.
We turned west on the highway into a strong headwind to pedal the 4 miles to Grant, looking for some lunch. The first place we visited, the Horse Prairie Hilton wasn’t too inviting. The cook said they were nearly out of everything and were probably not going to be in business too long. He talked us out of eating there essentially. On the other side of the road was the Canvas Cafe. We got a nice lunch including a good dinner salad and an excellent fruit (Waldorff) salad with a Turkey sandwich. While we ate an old rancher came in to order his ‘usual’ of a burger (the waitress told us that is what he always gets). Apparently she hardly knows him despite his regular visits. She said that he talked more to us than he has to anyone. We asked him about the road, some of the ranches back that way and some other things. He has a couple of ranches on the road we were just on. He’s not fond of a rich guy named “Leon” who owns an over-the-top ranch we saw and whose house supposedly has the largest window in the world in it. He seemed to like cyclists (they always wave, he says), and has offered them rides before (though usually they refuse).
The lack of storms, cool temperatures and our high energy levels convinced us to roll out for some more miles. In minimum we would ride to Bannack state park to camp (12 miles) and perhaps all the way to Elkhorn Hot springs (36 miles).
The 12 miles to Bannack dissappeared before we knew it. The next 7 were a bit of a drag, literally, as we turned west, once again on pavement, into the wind. But then we had only 14 left through the town of Polaris, with some uphill to Elkhorn Hot Springs. When I say some uphill I mean a killer climb–and it was at the very end of the day as we rolled into our 103rd mile. Super duper granny gear (at least on 100th mile legs it was), and as we climbed the trees reappeared–thick and tall ones. The air was brisk with the sun behind the mountains and the cool air from the creeks all around.
We climbed the final 0.7 miles into the hot springs area at around 9 pm. To our surprise the restaurant was still open and they had outstanding food. Paula got a veggie melt sandwich to die for and I ate spagehetti with an impressive salad bar. We got a tiny room (the energy for setting up camp was spent climbing those last hills) then hit the sack.
106 miles, 6650 feet of climbing
7/22
I’ve been looking for a challenge on this trip since, oh, Colorado. Today I found what I was looking for, with plenty of extra challenge to spare. Despite some epic sections and conditions we managed to put in some serious miles and arrive in Butte safe and sound. Today’s effort can only be described as heroic. I can say that since it really wasn’t mine; it was Paula driving us up and over the final climb to the Continental Divide and into Butte.
We started with a soak in the hot springs at Elkhorn since the cafe owners were a half hour late opening. The room at the lodge didn’t have a shower, but the springs sufficiently recharged us. We ate a full breakfast, then somewhat lethargically packed up our stuff to head out. Our tires were spinning by 10, climbing 1000 feet to the top of the Pioneer Mountains byway on dirt. We felt good despite the steep grade; I think we were happy not only for the climbing but also the dense trees and good dirt surface.
We reached the top and rolled onto pavement. We descended a bit before seeing a sign for Crystal Park. People were digging for amethyst crystals here, so we stopped to have a look around. We didn’t take our trowel, but Paula did look where the water had washed off previous dig sites. She found several large crystals in about 5 minutes. Some people who had been digging for a while said they were bigger than anything they had found.
The ensuing 30 miles of pavement to Wise River were extremely developed for a national forest. There is a campground or picnic area every mile or so it seemed and trails going everywhere. We saw some cars with bikes on them. The ensuing 30 miles of pavement were also wrought with headwind. It’s often worse to be going downhill into a headwind than uphill. There was a strong wind blowing up the canyon, and it pretty much stayed with us for the rest of the day.
There was a brief section that was steep enough that the wind was not a factor, and the two paved switchbacks were straight out of Mt. Graham’s Swift Trail. I still wonder how bad this summer’s fire there will be.
In the town of Wise River we didn’t have time for a full lunch so we just stopped at the Mercantile for gatorades and candy. We knew the task before us was sure to be an arduous one: Fleecer Ridge. Southbound riders had without question told us to take the paved alternate around Fleecer. I usually responded, “Thanks for the warning, but you don’t know me.” We haven’t taken any alternates yet, so why now?
The prelude to Fleecer was very nice, except for the howling wind in our face. At times the trees provided shelter, but it was brief. As the Jerry Creek road turned to switchback we rode off into the Fleecer Ridge trail–an overgrown, narrow quad track into the trees. The warmup was a real treat; finally some challenging trail after seemingly 500 miles of mellow bumpy roads. A rock garden led to a creek crossing and a steep pitch that I cleaned without much trouble. As I rode closer to the steep section my head danced on fire with a million thoughts. How far to the steep section? Is it at all rideable? How steep *is* it? Some people claimed they rode down it–how bad can it be? If there is traction will I just run out of juice midway? I had dreams of riding the whole thing with Bob in tow. I really had no idea what to expect. I could understand anything from beyond the most ridiculous hill I’ve ever walked up with a bike to something I’d have no problem riding.
After the steep pitch I rolled across a meadow then turned my head to the right. !!!!!
Ok, this is going to be hard. I put my head down and plowed straight into it with whatever momentum I could muster. I made it maybe 100 feet from where it gets ridiculously steep. Traction is the biggest problem: loose rock the biggest thief.
I stayed where I was until Paula turned the corner to see how pathetic my attempt was. Then I walked my bike to the bottom, unhooked the Bob, and readied myself for another futile effort. I burned my legs up getting some momentum only to lose it 10 feet up the hill. I made it maybe 50 feet higher than with the Bob, which was still nowhere near the top of the pitch we could see. I have neither the ability, strength or concentration necessary to clean this hill.
OK, so now what? There was no way to push my Bike+Bob up it, but we decided to deal with that later. Let’s get Paula’s bike+gear up first. I pushed from behind while she steered and pushed on the handlebars. The first pitch was only a fraction of the super steep climb; maybe a fifth of it. We stopped at least a dozen times just to regain our breath. Our calves and achilles tendons screamed at us. We didn’t know which was better: stay on the rocky “trail” or push the bike over small sage brush off on the side. We tried both but neither suited our fancy; they were both impossible.
Halfway we took off the panniers and tent to divide the weight. I carried her bike while she hauled the panniers up. A half hour later we reached a spot where I thought I *might* be able to ride again, or at least be able to sort of, kind of, push a loaded bike up. Little did we know that we were only halfway up the entire climb.
So we walked back down, slowly and carefully, marveling at how high we now stood above the valley and my bike/bob waiting for its turn down in the meadow. It was beautiful up there. It was depressing to be going back down after working so hard to get up.
Paula decided to try the Bob bag on her back, leaving me with an emtpy bob/bike to haul up the mountain. This plan worked well–she was climbing much faster than I was. Even empty the trailer got stuck and turned all over the place. I mostly took the new trail blazed by cyclists and motorcycles on the south side of the real trail. Again we stopped to rest a dozen or more times on the ascent. But finally we reached our other gear where we sat to regain some calories. We enjoyed a PB&J sandwich in the cool breeze and warm sun, sitting exhausted and drained.
I stood up to surmise the remaining climb (or what little I could see of it). Perhaps rideable? In went the Bob bag and all our other gear. I hopped on for some wishful thinking and fully loaded riding, all the while worried that we were again going to meet with another impossibly steep section.
Such a section never materialized, but the climb was still steep, loose and very difficult. Despite what I thought were drained legs, I found myself riding the hill out to the top–a solitary fence on top off the hill. Each time I’d crest a horizon/rise I’d see that the climb was nowhere near finished. But I was determined to reach the top without faltering.
The hike-a-bike brought us 0.3 miles and gained 600 feet. The remainder of the climb was 0.6 miles gaining 500 feet, for a grand total of less than a mile and 1100 feet of climbing. It took us an hour and 45 minutes total, including the short stop for a sandwich and two trips on the 0.3 mile section.
It wouldn’t be an epic ride without a solid hike-a-bike, now would it?
We rolled down a short downhill, one not nearly as difficult as the other side, then met with a rancher and his cattle. He did tell Paula “good job” for having made it over the hill, and he asked me if I had seen any cattle on the trail.
I found some trail booty on the way up: a full and brand new waterbottle from a shop in Butte. Dave, the college age son of Bruce, who we met at Red Rock Lake campground, had said he lost his waterbottle on Fleecer. I found it near the top (I walked back down to grab it and cheer Paula to the top). This worked out well: weight we didn’t have to haul up, and water we didn’t have to pump later in the day. It proved to be just enough to get us to Butte. But I get ahead of myself, we’re nowhere near Butte at this point.
Downhill gravel roads.. ah, we earned this downhill. We were both still reeling from Fleecer, and I was certain we would camp at Beaver Dam campground, midway down the descent. But Paula would not hear of it. She was certain we could make it to Butte, doing what we originally planned for 3 days in just 2. Between us and Butte we had a big descent to I-15 at 5500 feet, then a steep climb up to the continental divide at 7300 feet. It was already 6:30pm and there was a chill in the air. I was definitely ready to stop, but I also could not say no.
At some point during the hike a bike some sort of fly bit me twice between my fingers and on both hands. They immediately started itching and swelling–even the neighboring fingers. This was not good. I took a good dose of ibuprofen to keep the swelling down, but it had me worried. If my hands were going to completely swell up it was going to be better to be in town where I could get some medical attention, so the decision to keep going did make some sense.
We rolled past a nice campground where a warm sleeping bag and good food could have been had. Instead we fought a headwind on the gradual descent to I-15, but somehow we were not exhausted. It’s a good thing we weren’t, because the climb to the divide was much steeper than expected and featured the worst wind of the day. It was an epic climb after everything we had already done. I stopped to grab a break from the wind and watched Paula climb tirelessly away from me. I was impressed.
1200 feet of granny gear/wind climbing later we found ourselves in the trees and away from the wind. We crossed a divide that we thought was continental and cruised downhill into yet another windswept valley void of trees. We thought we were on the downhill run into Butte. 18 miles to Butte the sign said, 2 miles to Moose Town. 18 miles and 1500 feet to drop! We made it!
Not so. The next 3 miles took 45 minutes and extraordinary effort to cover as the road continued to climb and drop alternately, and all with terrible winds. 2 trucks passed us, both drivers giving us confused and sympathetic looks. At last we crested 7300 feet and saw a real downhill unfolding down the valley.
The 14 miles into Butte were still not easy, but we were rewarded with an electric sunset over densely wooded ridges. I felt lucky to be out there experiencing it, and we were riding high on the accomplishment of completing a very difficult day. Before we could see the Butte city lights it was dark, and for once we found both of our lights and they both were working properly. In the dark I think we missed a turn from the actual “route” description. But highway 2 brought us exactly where we needed to be: an open Taco Bell and a Super 8 motel.
85 miles, 7200 feet of climbing, highest TopoFusion “difficulty index” to date.
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’s 9pm. 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 to 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 every ounce 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 extracurricular 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 priest 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 stretch 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)
7/25
We were up and moving quickly. We walked into town to find breakfast and hopefully some tights. Breakfast was good and filling. As we waited a guy with a Bob pulled up. Dave (who we had heard about from the two other GDMBR riders, Matt and Steve) about crapped his pants when Paula said, “hey dave!” as he walked in the door. He sat with us as we ate, exchanging the usual trail talk stuff. It was good timing to meet him while we were eating anyway.
We walked down to the general store and were shocked to find polar tech (good material) tights, and they were half off - $16. We weren’t expecting to find anything better than sweat pants.
It was already getting warm at 11am, and we were still reeling from yesterday’s deathmarch, so we rested at the campground and left around 5pm thinking we were avoiding the heat. We successfully avoided the heat, but like most days on this trip, we didn’t expect the unexpected. We got rain.
We didn’t climb more than 5 minutes in the sun before we were shrouded in clouds. If you had asked me how the evening would pan out at 5pm just as we were leaving I would have said 0% chance of rain. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was still around 90 degrees.
We made some good time and drank little water as we made progress upwards towards Huckleberry Pass. On the final switchbacks we started getting a sprinkle and hearing thunder crashes in the distance. We increased the pace but it was no use. The storm was waiting for us on the other side no matter what speed we climbed at.
The rain gear came out at the top, (the top, by the way, came very easily–the profile is wildly exaggerated for this climb), and we headed down into the rain. The road became wet, then muddy, but we were high and dry in our waterproof gear. It actually felt kind of good for a time (I had a sun headache going) however, it was getting old and I was worried about how the rest of the evening would turn out.
We eventually rolled into open plains on the other side of the pass and the rain lifted. We could see little storms in almost every direction, but especially to the west. Which way were we going? West, of course. They looked harmless enough, but as we pedaled we watched the lighting crack every few minutes. It didn’t look so good.
We reached highway 200 without much incident, then, a familiar sight for us and our late night rides: the sky turned gold. The sun was peeking out below the clouds (it’s now near sunset) turning the Montana landscape into a sea of golden air. It was magnificent, really, but we were getting desperate. To the north (our intended campsite) there was a significant storm. Mostly, the weather was unpredictable. When we reached Ovando we pulled in to Trixie’s restaurant/bar/whatever and inquired about lodging. They called and set up the local bed and breakfast for us, then fed us veggie burgers. So now we are safe and sound out of the thunderstorms and ready for a big day tomorrow: 76 something difficult miles to the Super 8 on the Swan Highway.
When we left Trixies I looked north to where our campsite was. The lightning was still dancing out there and it was very dark. We were 8 miles short of our intended destination, but out of the rain.
36 miles, 2400 feet of climbing
7/26
The breakfast part of the Blackfoot Bed and Breakfast did not disappoint. We filled ourselves with pancakes, bacon and eggs. Not our usual affair, but mighty tasty indeed. Our host was up before us cooking (though usually breakfast is at 7, he made it early for us). We were out the door around 7:30.
As we pedaled the small hill out of town Paula said, “Your Bob wheel is squeaking like crazy.” She was right and not only was it squeaking it was barely rolling. The bearings were totally seized up and there really wasn’t much I could do about it. So I took it off and rolled back to the Blackfoot B&B where the owner (I can’t remember his name) hopped right to it helping me fix it. He was obviously the type of person who likes a good fix-it challenge; he seemed pretty excited about it actually. We got the nuts off and tried shooting grease into it with his grease gun. We couldn’t pop the bearings out or figure out how to get the axle out either, so it was a bit of a bust. The seal came off one side so we greased the bearings up well and made it turn a bit. It will have to do for the final 300 miles to Roosville.
Also, my cyclometer went blank, apparently due to a dead battery, but it may have been the rain since it went haywire for a while too. So I lost my total mileage, but it is working again (Paula’s light uses the same watch battery).
Other than the repair (and the hour delay it caused) today was a fabulous day. We saw some of the best riding of the entire trip, without a doubt. We warmed up on 26 miles from Ovando to near Seeley Lake, where the real fun began. A slow grind of a climb waited for us there. It was getting hot but there was sufficient shade: I actually lost GPS reception for the first time (that I’ve noticed).
We reached the gate on the road where motorized vehicles are not allowed. We took a short break to eat a sandwich here and regain some resolve for the rest of the climb. Now it was hot and the hill steep enough that shade was at a minimum.
The road/trail was everything expected: overgrown, singletrack-ish, beautiful and even challenging in places. Our little bear bells jingled as we hopped over a few downed trees and bumped over some big rocks. It was nothing too serious as we soon found ourselves at the top of the 2200′ climb.
Big downhill, big grins and big cool air. Then, the best part of the day: Morrell Creek. We were both nearly out of water at the top. Morrell was the first source we crossed and it was a good one. I sat in the shade pumping 32 oz after 32 oz of ice cold, crystal clear water into my nalgene. I’d drink half then use the rest to fill up some of our containers. I could have stayed there drinking water all day.
But the fun continued. Not far from the creek we turned off onto another abandoned road, this one much more like singletrack. Yellow and white flowers lined the sides of the trail, whacking into our legs, bikes and even arms. It was beautiful and it just rolled on and on through the woods. Paula absolutely loved all the flowers. It’s one of the best trails I have ever ridden, period.
We rolled past Holland lake, passing on camping with ATVers and motorcyclers, and ran into another N-S rider (we saw a couple from Colorado at about mile 16 today as well). This guy was huge and was doing the whole thing for his 50th birthday, solo.
The road from Holland Lake was a typical GDMBR piece of crap road: wide, dusty and washboarded. Of course it had some traffic too. It made me appreciate the quiet roads of the day even more. On the other side of highway 83 waited more quiet roads and even more flowers to brush through! The days final 18 miles on the west side of 83 were a dream come true. They were mostly flat, it was a beautiful, peaceful evening and only 1 or 2 cars. The ‘road closed’ section here was flowered just like the other one.
This really was some of the best riding along the entire GDMBR. And now all we have is 194 miles to go. I don’t know if we have it in us to finish it off in 2 days, and such an effort would be incredible. Likely we’ll go for three so as to not kill ourselves, but we never really know until we get out there. It will be sad to see it end, but a part of me does want to be done too.
82 miles, 6100 feet of climbing
7/27 to Whitefish, Montana
There was doubt in the air as we cycled more quiet back roads in through the Swan river valley. We were rolling off the final 200 miles of the ride, but did we have what it takes to do it in two days? Since entering Montana the terrain and our pace has been cranked up a notch and we anticipate exhaustion to settle in. Thus far we have been able to keep just out of exhaustion’s reach. As always, we played it by ear, waiting to ’see how we feel’ and see how the terrain, weather and all other variables are cast. Of course, we always feel about the same. 40-50 miles disappear easily, then our bottoms get sore but our legs and minds are ready to ride until or past sunset. So it was today: the backup plan was to stay with Tom Arnone at 75 miles but instead we rolled in to Whitefish at 97 miles–nice and late.
We thoroughly enjoyed today’s 50 miles of quiet, smooth, soft, car-free backroads. I can’t say enough about them, really. This is definitely bear country, so we do ride with a cautious eye (ear, actually), but if anything this only makes you more aware of yourself and your surroundings. The fact that there is a bit of danger coming around a downhill corner is a part of doing this ride. I’d much rather go down fighting with a bear than run over by a pick-me-up truck pulling a horse trailer. I think the likelihood of the latter is much higher than the former.
We made a brief foray into the Mission Mountains, climbing to near 5000 right above Swan Lake. A few steep pitches (N-S riders told us it was a “honk” of a hill), but nothing too serious. From the top of this climb we rolled out a huge downhill into the town of Ferndale (which we renamed Fernando) where we began an extended session of Tarmack rolling. But first we had a few miles of GDMBR “piece of crap” dirt road to suffer through. I am actually, after 2300 miles, finally, and I’m sorry to admit it, starting to almost tolerate the paved sections. The worst moments of the trip are spent on the piece of crap roads, getting dusted by truck after truck and swerving around trying to find the washboard-free sweet spot on the road.
Our pavement took us through the town of Swan River where we stopped to scarf massive quantities of junk–ice cream, candy bars, whatever suited our fancy. Outside a couple of the locals asked about our trip and could not believe we had ridden from Mexico. They were two of the most excitable people we have met. They told us we should write a book, call the newspaper, have a party, etc. Perhaps not, but their enthusiasm helped us put it together to roll out 40 more miles before nightfall.
In the middle of those 40 we were fortunate to take a break at Tom Arnone’s house. He’s listed on the map as someone who offers water and a cabin to GDMBR cyclists. We had heard that he was a serious cyclist and just an interesting guy to talk to. This rumor turned out to be true; we stayed a bit too long talking to him. He makes his own frames including a tandem that he is going for master’s national champion on. The first thing he did was offer us cold water, which was exactly what we needed. It was too bad that we couldn’t stay with him that night, but we really needed to move on to Whitefish in order to lay siege to the last section of the GDMBR. 110 miles for the final day sounded a bit more reasonable than 130. The evening was beautiful and we were feeling good, so we just kept pedaling through the rural Montana country. I could really get used to these flat roads lined with trees; the trees are insurance against headwinds. We still had a bit wind in our faces when heading north in the few treeless areas, but for the most part it was a pleasant cycle all the way in to Whitefish.
We arrived around 9:45 with just enough time to order in a cheese bread/pizza order at Stageline Pizza. The woman at the motel told us it was close–three blocks, but we ended up walking about a mile before we even saw the pizza place. It was getting very late for a long walk, but we broke it up by eating our food at a table on the way back. We couldn’t really figure out Whitefish. Tourists? Locals? Outdoors? Where are all these people going? Glacier?
We hit Dairy Queen on the way back for even more indulgence. We had to get the calories in somehow and ice cream was about the only thing we could successfully eat more of. We went to sleep quite tired, but I was charged and ready to go. I could barely sleep. Anticipation. Excitement. Nervous energy, but mostly just energy. This is it–the final push to Canada. Can we do it or will exhaustion finally rear its head and pull us down with it? Is it wise to trade our camping gear in favor of speed? If something goes wrong (and very little has thus far) we will not longer have the option of camping on the side of the road. We pretty much have to make it to the end. Failure is not an option.
97 miles, 6700 feet of climbing
7/28 to Roosville and Fin
Up very early despite not setting an alarm, I quickly swung into action. My body was begging to lay in bed for hours, but the energy got the best of me–I couldn’t handle even lying with my eyes open. I just had to get up and start going. I moved Paula’s rear rack onto my bike, went through our gear to decide what to take and made several trips to the free breakfast downstairs. A hour later Paula started to stir and joined in on the preparations.
It was quite the project to switch gears in the middle of a trip. Suddenly we didn’t have the big bob full of gear (and with a wheel that barely rolls) that we could rely on should anything go wrong. But we were able to reduce things to a moderate ditty bag full of clothes and a camelbak full of other gear. We passed on the water filter, figuring we could make it to Eureka (90 miles) without recharging our supplies.
As we were about to leave I added some PSI to my rear tire since it was now going to have a bit more weight on it. After I took the pump off I realized that I didn’t grab any of our spare tubes (all buried at the bottom of the bob bag). I had to borrow the key for the motel’s tool shed once again to grab some tubes, but not having a spare could have been disastrous. I was nervous as we pedaled through whitefish that I was forgetting something equally as important.
But soon the focus turned to the riding. We rolled around spacious Whitefish lake, being treated to some nice views. The first climbs yielded smiles of satisfaction as we felt our bikes accelerate free of most of our gear. The difference was notable, but not exactly huge. We still had a long ride ahead of us and a fair amount of climbing. Our bikes were not going to pedal themselves to Canada simply because they now weigh 40 pounds less. But it was a very nice change, especially for me to not feel like I was driving a limo. I started the slow process of retraining my muscles and balancing systems to stand and pedal without the Bob attached to my bike. The first few standing sessions were, as expected, difficult and frightening. I’ll never get over how strange it is to expect your bike to do one thing but to receive stimuli otherwise.
We climbed from 3000 to 4000 then leveled off for quite a few miles. Then we climed to 4500 to eat lunch at upper whitefish lake. At lunch I laughed at how much the adventure cycling maps had exaggerated the little hills we had just come down / gone up. I still wonder if they are purposely exaggerated so that newbies on the route don’t think it’s all downhill from Red Meadow lake to Whitefish.
We continued the assault, maintaining significantly faster climbing speeds than with loads. We soon found ourselves at Red Meadow pass and the beautiful lake. Here were two riders who started just the day before. They were fresh with new energy, but already drained from the climbs. They were debating about going in to Whitefish or camping at Red Meadow. They were floored when they found out we 1) started in Mexico 2) were going to finish in 39 days and 3) were riding to Roosville the same day. They called us genetic freaks. I don’t agree with this (almost anyone could complete such a trip if they commit themselves to it), but the flattery did help us ride with a bit more steam through the rest of the day.
We needed as much steam as we could get for North Fork road, which awaited us at the bottom of a descent that was freshly laden with bear scat. I added a couple manually initiated jingles of my bell to the already incessant ringing caused by the rocky road. And it must have worked because we didn’t see any bears. Right? Hah.
Ah North Fork road. Can you say piece of crap? How about double crap? It’s hard to believe that there is something worse than a heavily washboarded road, but we found ourselves experiencing it. North Fork road is wide, dusty, and extremely rough. You can keep some decent speed but the imbedded rocks are very unforgiving. We came away feeling beat up. I had a flashback to riding the rail trail in Idaho (which crushed me into oblivion). It’s a different kind of exhaustion and it was definitely creeping in. But we pushed through it and turned off to climb to Whitefish divide on a happily less traveled road.
I loved this climb. We passed by huge rolling creeks, through beautiful burn areas and grabbed astounding views to nearly all directions, including Glacier National Park. I almost did not want the climb to end. I did want to get to the other side since we were racing the sun to Roosville, but I did not want this perfect climb and perfect day to end. I tried to live in the moment, to its fullest, but the top of the climb came after some effort and it was time to roll on. At the very top Paula found a metal “1″ sign that had fallen off a marker. She took it as our trophy for the trip, placing it on her bike’s stem. We sang “we’re number one” at Whitefish divide, where we felt like the trip was essentially over. Only 30 some-odd miles of downhill and flat pavement stood between us and final success: Canada.
It pretty much went like that, though the downhill was rougher than expected and our bear bells nearly drove us insane. Once we hit the pavement we detached them for good and coasted down a long downhill from 5000 to 2500 feet. We rolled into Eureka in Euphoria–we were going to make it as planned. We checked into the Creek Side motel, threw our extra gear in the room then headed out to enjoy the last 10 miles to the border.
The sun was setting the sky afire, which was a fitting end to our trip. We have enjoyed so many late evenings pedaling away as the fireworks develop all around us. Usually we are quite tired and at the end of a long haul into some town or campsite. Today was no different, except that this was the last long haul.
We coasted triumphantly down the hill to the border crossing at Roosville. At the Canadian inspection station we found no one willing to hear our story. Our bikes didn’t trigger whatever alerts the guards to come out, so we just rolled over to the Welcome sign to take a photo. “HEY! What are you doing? Get over here!” “Sorry, sir, no one came out, and we are just going right back to the USA anyway.” The guard wasn’t very amused, nor was he impressed with our story. Oh well. We took a quick photo then stood in a 20 minute, 3 car line at the US border. The lady was very thorough but thankfully let us go with only a few questions and a “be careful out there.”
We took highway 93 back (more direct) since we knew that lady would keep most of the cars back at the border. Before we knew it we were back in Eureka eating victory subway sandwiches and eating ice cream.
111 miles, 7500 feet of climbing
7/29
Last night at 9:10pm we crossed the Canadian Border at the port of Roosville. The trip took 38 days and about 12 hours. It is bittersweet ending, but we couldn’t be happier: the trip was a success beyond our expectations. I am somewhat at a loss for words, so I’ll just go with some numbers (from the GPS data–yes I was able to get a tracklog of the entire thing):
38 days, 12 hours total time 65.88 miles per day average Lowest day: 0 miles Highest day: 125 miles
2569.50 mi (871.55 mi uphill, 953.16 mi downhill, 740.23 mi flat) 191691 ft total ascent (191634 ft descent) - 5.3 % ave uphill grade, 4.8 % ave downhill grade 11 days 1:59:06 moving time (9.6 mph average speed, 37.2 mph max speed)
7/29
Awake late. Mentally the trip is over. Now, our minds are allowing our bodies to be tired and say ENOUGH! Given permission, our feeble bodies jumped on the opportunity. We are now paying our longstanding debt in exhaustion. The motivation to ride 60 miles from Eureka back to Whitefish was not forthcoming. We asked a few people if they knew anyone heading that way, but eventually we sucked it up and headed back out on the road. It was a ride that I thought was going to miserable, but it actually started off quite nice. We were on the side road (on the GDMBR), floating free of traffic and enjoying a nice day. I was still riding my bike with my favorite person on the planet. Things couldn’t have been better really.
We turned back on to highway 93 where we had a decent shoulder to ride on. The traffic was pretty thick, but manageable because of the space we had. We passed the turn off for the Whitefish Divide climb–the GDMBR and went into new territory.
At one point we passed a huge lumber mill. There were so many logs and processed boards stacked up that it almost did not look real. It looked like something out of a movie–computer generated. Big cranes moved around and grabbed logs to move them along. The stacks of logs went on as far as I could see. Pretty incredible.
Unfortunately the fun came to a halt around 20 miles from Eureka. Our shoulder completely disappeared. We’re talking 2 inches between the white line and the guard rail. This is not good. We rode together, trying to maintain our wits, but the lumber trucks and semis were too much for us. We rode 6 miles and witnessed a near accident (Log truck passing us in the other lane nearly hit a motorcycle going the other way, had it been a car it would have been ugly) and were nearly a part of 2 accidents ourselves. If anyone was going the other way the logging trucks have no choice but to clip and blast us. It was not safe. I began to worry, honestly, that we were not going to make it off this road alive. It was not a matter of being able to pedal the miles–we easily could have.
We were only halfway and fearing our safety, so we did what all good cyclotourists do when they are stuck: we stuck out our thumbs. Being first time users of the windswept thumb, we were not sure what to expect. Of course what we got was nothing.
Feeling pathetic we decided to hop on and hope for the best. We put on our helmets and told ourselves we’d try one more group of potential rides. Our thumbs were high but it was no use. We started riding. Ugh.
Wait, there was a truck pulling off ahead. Could it be?
30 minutes later we were sitting in Al’s truck, just outside of Whitefish, enjoying the snarl of traffic backed up by construction. Fresh slurry was everywhere and the exhaust was enough to poison a whale. I was so thankful to be riding in his truck instead of fighting for my life and health on 93. He said he and his wife often pickup hitch-hikers in Glacier, but that he had just seen a movie about a hitch-hiker killing his ride the other day. Based on that we decided not to kill him, though it was mighty tempting. He works in construction (though more real estate these days) and was headed to his hangar/plane in Kalispell. He dropped us right off at our motel. We were ecstatic and very grateful. I almost felt that he had saved our lives.
27 miles, 1500 feet of climbing
7/30, 7/31
Travel to Eugene, Oregon by Amtrak. A long ride, but a new experience for us. You get plenty of room and can walk around, eat, and look out the train. It’s more quiet than a plane, but more bumpy of a ride. Sleep did not come easily despite my very drained state. I’d call it a couple of cat naps, not sleep.
8/1
I made an attempt at riding a bike today, but it failed about as miserably as it possibly could. First, Amtrak “forgot” to put my bike on the train, so I had to borrow a bike (thanks to Richard Sweet who loaned me one of his) in order to ride. Alan’s friends were doing a ride on the Alpine trail and although it was a shuttle ride (ugh) I was going to come along anyway. After many delays and many miles driving (double ugh) we finally started riding. R. Sweet’s bike is setup motorcycle style (front and rear brakes reversed), which although I knew about, could not retrain my brain in time. The first little downhill stretch saw me grabbing a world full of brake, jerking me off the seat and stretching my hamstring out of whack. It didn’t help that they were super powerful disc brakes either. Immediately I had excruciating pain in my hamstring, but I continued rolling downhill hoping that it would go away. The first few short climbs led to further mishap. I cannot explain it, but my legs completely refused to ride. I don’t know if it was cramping, soreness, tendonitis, a blood clot–who knows. But the pain in (eventually) both of my quads and calves was beyond intolerable. I could not ride. Stopping only helped a bit. So I limped, barely able to walk, back to the cars. The pain did not subside after quite some time. I tanked gatorade after gatorade and ate cliff bars. Finally I just took a nap because sitting was too painful. I was out for an hour and half, waking up to slightly less pain and the newfound ability to move around. The rest of the crew eventually drove back up to retrieve the shuttle vehicles and we headed back to Eugene.
8/2
Walking, pinball, more walking and another attempt at a ride today. Today’s attempt was much more successful than yesterday’s, but my legs are still telling me not to ride. But the temperature is so cool, the trees so tall and dense, and my time here in Eugene limited. So Alan and I rolled out for his short ride: the Ridgeline trail. I got a good warmup through city streets, and thoroughly enjoyed being back on my bike again. It felt so familiar, like I belonged on it, belonged riding. Eugene is an awesome city for riding and Al’s route to Ridgeline was very unique. To access Ridgeline Al takes a very steep trail from Amazon Creek. I kept things as slow as I could and likely should have defaulted to walking, but the challenge got the best of me. Riding slow was not an option. I ended up cleaning the steep climb, after which my legs threw a small fit. Fortunately Ridgeline was fairly mellow for a bit, so I spun it out and avoided a complete meltdown.
The GDMBR has definitely deprived me of real mountain biking. This was a great return. Switchbacks, a few rocks, roots, and a feather light bike to ride (seemingly so at least). And all through an amazing canopy of trees. I am so jealous of Al’s standard, after work ride. We need something like this in Tucson. Or at least I do.
I actually felt better after riding than I did before. Sleepy, hungry, but the pain in my legs was getting better. I ate anything I laid eyes on, then slept like a rock.
8/3
Lethargic morning, but eventually I mustered enough energy to get out for another ride. Al picked a real hoot of a ride for today: Hardesty Mountain / Eula Ridge. This is exactly my kind of ride. From the beginning we were climbing in granny gear. Not just granny gear, but nose of your seat, hold on for dear life style of granny gear. Energy stores were not exactly at maximum capacity for me, but as we climbed I felt better and better. From 900 feet we climbed away through dense trees that rarely let a ray of sunshine through. About halfway up I thought it was raining, hearing drops falling from the trees above. Soon we were riding through the clouds parked on the ridgeline. The moisture from the clouds had collected on the trees giving the appearance of rain. The climbing continued.
Switchbacks, some very difficult and requiring more than a few bunny hop turns to navigate. Despite rarely a technical mile during the past 2 months, I did surprisingly well. Al climbed much stronger in front of me. I could not have stayed with him if my life depended on it. I was trying to exert minimal energy, but once again the challenge got the best of me and I rode far beyond what I should have. In 5 miles we climbed 3200 feet, with all of it just within the tolerances of rideability. Now that’s what I call a climb.
At the top it was cool and moist. We rolled down the Eula ridge trail. There were many a steep section. My skills were not quite up to the task, so I walked some sections, then Leif’ed Al into walking a few himself. My excuse, of course, was my near bald (and semi-slick to begin with) tires that were picked for the GDMBR, not real mountain biking. Still, it was an awesome downhill run that seemed longer than what we had climbed up. The walking I did downhill sent my legs into hoytsville (I now suspect it is cramping), so I rode a bit more downhill than I probably would have.
Back on the highway we took a dirt road that parallels a railroad track, then hopped back over it just before a train came and stopped on it.
Later in the day we went to the coast to play in the water and watch the various creatures that live there. For one who rarely sees the Ocean it’s always a nice experience–for a day.
13 miles, 3300 feet of climbing
8/4
Travel to Tucson (by plane). Back to the heat. Back to real life.
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