Montana

Montana is a big state on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route - 695 miles. Very few of those miles are flat. Montana is one climb after the other, and it quickly feeds you a salty dose of reality. Gunning for an average of 100 miles a day really is going to mean 10-16 hours of solid riding, day after day after day. And what that means for your body and mind, you're still very unsure.

I was chowing down a huge sandwich and several cookies at the Eureka Subway when John Nobile walked up to me looking rather dejected. I didn't recognize him at first because I had only met him briefly at the race start, and, knowing he was aiming to break his own course record, really didn't expect to ever see him again. Plus, cyclists put on their helmets and shorts and they pretty much all look the same. Anyway, after several minutes of awkward questions that revealed that I didn't know who he was when I really should have, he told me he was feeling sick and had blown his knee in Canada and his race was over.

As I finished my lunch, we talked about the route and he decided to put in one more day. I told him I was aiming for Whitefish and he said I could at least make it to Columbia Falls. We decided to ride together to town, and over the course of the day he discovered that the world of the mid-pack Tour Divider, with its leisurely lunch stops, friendly chats with locals and remote blogging over coffee, was actually pretty enjoyable. He decided to stick around a little longer at "tour" pace (i.e. my race pace) and see if he could recover his knee enough to start hammering toward the front.

It worked out pretty well for me - like having a Great Divide coach, along with the added benefit of company during the hard times and friendship during the good. We made a somewhat strange team - him with his "go go go into the night" mentality, me with my "let's stop and stare at this pretty waterfall even if the rain is bearing down on us" mentality. But it worked oddly well. Balance and flow.

We hit our first stretch of snow at Red Meadow Lake. Snow and bears are fairly prevalent in Montana and widely feared by Divide racers, but in my opinion the mud and dogs of New Mexico are much more scary.

And, anyway, those snowy passes take you to misty clear lakes high in the mountains. How could you be grumpy about that?

But I had the advantage of having a great wardrobe for what turned out to be a cold and rainy year throughout. I had my vapor barrier socks to keep my feet warm and dry, two extra pairs of wool socks, full rain gear, a fleece jacket, hat and gloves. I managed to stay warm and relatively happy through the cold rain, while John, who in typical fast-guy fashion traveled light, had to rely on his fast-twitch muscles to get him out of some of the race's chillier situations. (Then I'd stumble into a town two hours later, dripping muddy water, to find him already showered and sipping tea.)

It was handy to have John around for Montana bear country. I think our total count was five bears - two grizzlies and three black bears. Whenever I saw one, I'd slam on the brakes while my heart raced. His reaction was to charge toward them while yelling. Lucky for him, they always ran away.

My favorite climb in Montana turned out to be Richmond Peak - steep gravel up, snowy slog down.

Actually, the real reason it was my favorite climb is because it was peppered by a gorgeous sunset. Moments like these, quiet moments of euphoria amid the labored breaths and sweat-soaked haze of a hard day's effort, are what make ultraendurance rides all worth it.

Then the next day, you wake up and do it all again. And suddenly you find yourself over the next pass, across the next valley, 100 miles down the route, breathing in new climates and soaking in new sunsets.

But there are always more clouds on the horizon.

Looking out from one pass to our next - the much-feared Lava Mountain trail where crazy hillbillies roam and Divide racers get hopelessly lost.

This was a particularly cool pass - Fleecer Ridge. You start up on your choice of eight steep singletrack cuts ...

Grind toward the summit of a high plateau ...

Roll over a faint track lined with wildflowers ...

And then nosedive off the boulder-studded face of a veritable cliff.

People with my technical skills call this "downhill hike-a-bike."

Montana is an easy state in some ways - there are a fair number of service stops at useful intervals, and lots of water. John and I tended to eat almost exclusively from gas stations during this stretch, and my diet soon consisted of four food groups: Snickers Bars, Sour Patch Kids, M&Ms and cheese. I was putting down 4,000-5,000 calories a day of mostly this stuff. You'd think I'd just drop dead of toxic shock, but for some reason I didn't.

Climbing the paved pass out of Wise River. I'll never claim to be a mountain bike snob. I'm really more of a bicycle tourist, and I always enjoyed the paved stretches of the route for their easy speed, smooth rolling and scenery that I actually had the handling freedom to stare at.

But I like touring dirt because of the places it can take me. Plus, the climbs are usually more challenging, the descents more fun, and the days more rewarding.

So many times when I was mired in mud, I'd promise myself I would never ride anything but pavement ever again. But I never actually believed it, even as I stood ankle deep in peanut butter sludge.

Cabin Creek Road. Many of these places in Montana felt so wild and remote, although even more extreme wildness and remoteness had yet to come.

The drop into Lima was a really fun descent. I accidentally riled up a group of four cows and continued to coast behind them as they sprinted wildly down the road for a quarter mile before finally veering off. I felt like I was driving a stampede.

The next day out of Lima was gray skies and solid rain. Our maps said "roads may be mucky when wet."

Mucky seems an unforgivably tame term. Impassable is a better one. There was one half-mile stretch of that horrible road where I couldn't even push my bike through the shallow canal off to the side. I simply had to hoist it as I trampled through the brush - because my feet stuck to the road as badly as my mud-cemented wheels did. Meanwhile, mosquitoes swarmed me as I pumped through the last remaining droplets of bug spray. Miserable, frustrating, temper-tantrum-inducing - these, also, are too-tame terms for such a situation.

The mud can quickly remind us that we have friends in high places.

This last day out of Montana was also the day I was pummeled by a violent thunderstorm. It caught me completely by surprise - ink-black clouds rolled over the mountain and showered me with lightning. One bolt hit so close that I heard no delay between the light and thunder - just a blinding flash of white in my peripheral vision surrounded by a deafening boom. I convinced myself I was within feet of being hit by lightning in this open valley with no shelter. My only solution was to lay into the pedals and sprint with everything I had, mud and all. With hot adrenaline coursing through my veins, I believe I hit some of my high speeds for the trip on that flat, muddy stretch of road.

We crossed into Idaho with nearly 1,000 miles of Great Divide riding behind us - wet, cold, muddy, sore and tired - but for some strange reason, still raring to go.

Canada

I'm not really sure how I can begin to write about such a long and sweeping experience like the Tour Divide. The fact is, right now, I can't. I'm fresh off the route and dealing with the swift realities of the expensive brake work my car needs, how to get myself and that silly car back to Juneau as quickly as possible, the fact that I'm returning to Alaska homeless, single and back to a job that will be much different and likely even harder and more all-encompassing than it was when I left it. And I have to do all of this having been "Great-Divided." I don't think it matters who you are, or why or how you rode this route - it changes you. And in the short term, quite drastically. I've lost about 10 pounds - even my skinny jeans slip down my backside. I still greedily eye the gummy candy sections at gas stations. I can't think beyond eat, sleep, ride, and I have a whole life to move on with. Right now, I admit I feel a little amused when people tell me they're impressed with what I've accomplished. I want to tell them that life on a bike is so much easier than real life.

In the coming weeks, I do plan to write in depth about my experiences on the Tour Divide, because that's what I do, and that's how I process things. But in this short term, with so much else going on, I might just have to settle for posting my favorite pictures and a few short captions. Eventually, I'll upload all my hundreds of pictures to a site like Picassa and probably unload thousands of words of Tour Divide blabbage on this computer. But for now, I'll start with my two days in Canada.

John Nobile and I at the race start in Banff, the Spray River trailhead. So innocent, so full of hope ... so clean. :-)

I was talking with my friends Keith and Leslie with the race suddenly "started," and the whole field just launched forward before I knew what happened. I quickly fired up the Spot unit and turned on my GPS, but I began the race at the very back of the pack. That was probably a good thing. I missed the crazy hammering of the first few miles, and just hung back and enjoyed the scenery with the other Tour Divide tourists.

Even still, with 42 racers still relatively close together, there was lots of company that first day. It's almost strange to look back on. It was one of my most relaxed days, and the only day that to me had any appearance of a race. But then again, I was never up front. ;-)

I'll admit that at first I was a little irked about having to ride the Canadian "prologue." It wasn't part of my plan until very close to the actual race, but I did make the decision to ride the Tour Divide and Canada is part of the Tour Divide. Even though I came very close to the Great Divide Race (border-to-border) female record and, despite all, in the end could have broken it with a little determination and an all-night ride across the desert - I don't regret my decision. I had great company both before and during the race, and the Canada stretch really is as beautiful as they say it is. But they're all beautiful. Even the Great Divide Basin is beautiful.

But Banff National Park is stunning.

And the first day - long before trail weariness sets in - is the perfect time to enjoy scenery. I took lots of pictures on day one.

Even the powerline access trails are stunning.

The first day brought hours of scattered rain showers, which turned out to be a constant for most of the trip. I didn't keep solid track of my "Days of Rain" on the Tour Divide, but it was at least 20 out of 24. Of course, I'm from Juneau, and the rain didn't really bother me at all until the mud caught up with me.

Some kind of industrial plant outside of Elkford, where I spent my first night about 100 miles from the start. I became pretty lost finding my way out of Elkford, and burned up about 45 minutes to an hour looking for the right road out of town. That was actually the most lost I ever was in the course of the entire trip. And for that, I'd like to thank my Garmin Vista HCX GPS unit, and Scott Morris for creating a most excellent track of the border-to-border route. Seriously. With my sense of direction and attention span, it was a godsend. My GPS became my most valued possession - almost more so than my bike. I practically slept with it at night.

Those first two days were mostly smiles, gratitude and curiosity about how much longer it was going to last. At that point, I had no concept of really riding my bike all the way to Mexico and didn't really believe I could do it in the time frame I had set for myself. I thought my body would shut down, or my mind would, or both. The task I had set to, in all honesty, looked impossible.

Maybe those thoughts were my own way of taking the pressure off myself. The race already took so much time, money, planning and preparation that I don't think I was ready to deal with the disappointment of failure. So I told myself that just in being out there, it was already a success.

But by the afternoon of day two, the race was starting to look ridiculous. The night before the race, the organizers threw in the curve ball of a new "test" section that added something like 45 miles, three big passes, a lot of rough roads and a nearly nonexistent animal trail that was supposed to pass for "singletrack." Plus, we had to follow it all with only a rather vague and sometimes outright wrong cue sheet - no maps, no elevation profiles, no GPS. Luckily, I had the bike tracks of the many people in front of me to follow. I ended up going through the singletrack stretch in the dark. The end quarter mile gained nearly 300 feet on a very slippery, muddy trail that cut straight up the steep slope. The cue sheet called it a pusher but it wasn't even that. A couple of times I had my bike practically over my head, slipping backward down the slimy trail as I struggled to find my balance. I didn't think I was going to muster the strength from my puny arms to push the bike up that slope. I thought I was going to have to break my bike down to several pieces and literally shuttle it up. But after lots of grunting and sweating, I did make it up only to reach a clear-cut area with lots of downed trees and no distinct trail across it. I groped around in the dark for a half hour, knowing the road was mere yards away but unable to find it. By the time I stumbled onto the gravel, I was so tired and frustrated that I only rode another mile before just plopping down to camp in some pretty serious bearitory. I didn't care. It's funny now to look back and think about how frustrated I was about the whole thing. That was nothing. :-)

The next day, I woke up to more fun obstacles.

I crossed the border at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, June 14. I was feeling pretty tired, and the race had only just begun.

Made it

I rolled as close to the Mexican border as the gate would let me at 5:24 p.m. Monday, July 6, to finish the 2,700-ish miles of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route in 24 days, 7 hours and 24 minutes. My parents drove down from Salt Lake City to meet me at the border, so even though the guard station was closed, I didn't have to finish alone. What an incredible experience. Feels strange to not have to pedal any more. Feels even stranger to be wearing clothes that I didn't just wash in the shower. I'm happy, healthy and still feeling strong. Despite a few mechanicals, minor injury and weather setbacks, I still kept my goal of finishing within 25 days, and still feel like I could go out again tomorrow if I needed to. Glad I don't have to, though. I took 731 pictures. More to come soon, I'm sure.