Geraldine pedaled beside me as we motored up the final pitch of a 3,000-foot ascent, a dusty dirt track snaking like a tentacle up the mountain - your typical Montana monster.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
I took a few quick gulps, stockpiling the oxygen. "High," I said. "Feels high."
"What, the altitude?" she asked.
"Maybe," I said. "Maybe elevation. Maybe it's the ride. Maybe I'm just tired. This has been the world's longest week. I can't believe it was a week ago I was living at sea level, a long, long way north of here."
"How do you like Missoula so far?" she asked.
"It's awesome," I said. "My co-workers are friendly, job's just getting going, and the mountain biking has been fantastic. I mean, this only my second ride, but they've both been pretty incredible."
Geraldine grinned and moved ahead up the fire road. I blinked toward the low sunlight, already golden at 8 p.m. The altitude-stunted trees thinned out, leaving wide-ranging views of the rolling mountains. And the smell! I breathed in a fermented stew of pine and mulch, marinated in spring melt and dried in the daylight ... the pungent aroma, the strongly familiar fire road, the trees and dust ... Divide flashbacks. I shook my head, trying to turn my focus away from a creeping sadness.
My new co-worker, John, invited me on his annual 50-mile summer solstice celebration ride. I politely turned him down. It was my third day on the job, and I wasn't about to ask my boss if I could cut out an hour and a half early. John persisted. I said, "Maybe. No promises." John wrote my boss an e-mail, cc'd to me, extolling the virtues both my boss and the publications department would enjoy if he would just let his new hire out for the solstice ride. My boss laughed out loud, looked from his computer, and said, "You should just do it." So I had to.
We left downtown at about 4:25, a group of 14 motoring toward the mountains. John told me the names of things, of buildings and streets and geographical features. I remembered the names briefly, but they soon faded to the gasp and flow, the climb. The group laughed and joked. "Have you done this ride before?" many asked me as we shifted positions in the pack.
"No," I said. "I'm new to town."
"How new?"
"I got here on Sunday night."
"Wow, really?" The real questions followed - where did you come from, what do you do, have you been here before. Inevitably, the conversations turned to the Tour Divide. What was it like, what did you eat, where did you sleep. Then, from some, "Did you hear about that guy in the race that was hit by a truck today?"
All of my valuable oxygen would seep out in a sad sigh. "Yeah, I did."
What are the odds, really? On narrow backwoods fire roads in Colorado, miles can pass without seeing another vehicle; hours can pass without another sign of human life. There are just a few dozen Divide racers spread out over several hundred miles. What are the odds? After the long double-track climb, the group veered onto faint hint of singletrack in the woods. I watched sunlight flicker through pole-thin limber pines and wove through my own unsettling thoughts. Flashbacks. It was just a year ago, on June 30, in Southern Colorado. It was the day that changed everything for me. Terrorizing lightning storms chased me off the exposed summit of Indiana Pass, followed by drenching rain that cut a chill so deep it nearly severed my spirit. I already felt half-broken when I caught the ambulances. Then I learned the person being transported was my friend, Pete - another Divide racer, who had been hit head-on by a truck while descending the steep pass. I stepped inside the ambulance and briefly spoke to him. I saw him strapped to equipment, immobilized and almost completely covered, except for his eyes - his drug-dulled eyes. I thought his injuries were severe. I convinced myself of terrible scenarios. I pedaled through the woods in a sea of grief and depression. I felt like there was nowhere to come up for air. I lost hope that day, for a little while. I obsessed about "The Things That Are Important." I wrote in my journal:
"Pete and I had both been out there on the Great Divide, riding the same muddy roads, climbing the same sweeping passes, watching the same spectacular sunsets. Both of us had been bound by this one thing, this totally unique thing, this effort to ride across the spine of the continent as fast as we possibly could. And to what end? To what end?"
Dave Blumenthal collided with a truck coming down a remote Colorado pass on Wednesday. I could picture the rocky, rutted road well because I had experienced a crash there during a rainstorm last year. Initial reports said Dave had sustained head injuries, that they were critical, and he had been rushed to a hospital in Denver. It was difficult not to imagine the worst, but impossible not to hope for the best. After all, Pete miraculously escaped from his head-on collision relatively unscathed. The day after his crash, I found out that he only had a broken collarbone and many cuts and bruises. Pete was riding a 100-mile singletrack race within six weeks.
Maybe Dave would make a similar miraculous recovery. I hoped for that with all my heart. I have never met Dave Blumenthal, but the Divide has a way of connecting people. I read his blog and forum posts leading up to the race. I listened to his call-ins. I identified with him, and his desires, and his reasons for wanting to do "this totally unique thing." But what are the odds that two horrific head-on truck collisions could have a happy ending? I tried not to think about the odds. I did think about Dave. The solstice group lined up single-file and swept down a narrow trail that John essentially built. We plummeted through moss-lined forest and apocalyptic clear-cuts as the golden sun cast long shadows behind us. Down, down, down, with cool wind whipping past our ears. "The summer solstice is such a strange thing to celebrate," I thought. "We're simply acknowledging the inevitable descent into winter darkness."
After an hour of ripping, nearly solid downhill, we returned from our six-hour epic in incredible moods. We went out for drinks and food and laughed away the deepening night until midnight came, and we were tired, and we pedaled home. Optimism ran high and I convinced myself of the best - Missoula is going to be awesome, the hot summer with its "long" nights is going to be tolerable, and Dave's going to be OK.
On Thursday afternoon, I found out Dave Bluementhal died of his injuries. He is survived by his wife, Lexi, and his 4-year-old daughter, Linnaea. He was 37 years old.
Light flickers and fades, and in its absence we remember The Things That Are Important.
Dave, I never met you, but I won't forget you. I feel a deep, empathetic sadness and my heart goes out to those who love you.
I am trying to adjust to my new reality - working 9 to 5, off on weekends, riding a bike commute route, dealing with heat ... I'm realizing that most of my wardrobe is irrelevant here in the summer. Amid piles of rain gear, wool, poly pro and polar fleece, I found only one pair of bike shorts and four short-sleeve jerseys. Montana is dry, with lots of air particles that seem to trigger my allergies, and it's hot. Did I mention it's hot? It's not hot compared to, say, New Orleans, but it's an adjustment after a few years of living in a place where residents celebrate if the temperature rises above 70. I have yet to go on a bike ride where I don't run out of water. But I'll figure it out in time.
But one advantage of moving to a new place is an exhilarating sense of discovery everywhere I turn. Even bike commuting through town is still an adventure to me. Everything is so fresh and new that even small tastes are fulfilling; all the same, my appetite for adventure is more insatiable than ever. I see this green valley surrounded by mountain ranges, and beyond that, bigger mountain ranges, criss-crossed with an endless network of fire roads and trails, and I feel like I could go anywhere, and everywhere, and I want to. Of course time is a constraint, and so is knowledge of the region, and I had limited amounts of both on Sunday afternoon. I was waiting for my friend, Jen, to arrive from Utah en route to Sand Point, Idaho, so I could see her before she continued west. When I received a text from her telling me she was running late, and wouldn't show up until after 10, I realized I had a whole late afternoon and evening to discover something new.
I pulled out the Rattlesnake trail map that I just acquired on Saturday and decided to try an adjacent long trail, Stuart Peak. I didn't know how high Stuart Peak was. I didn't know how long the trail was. I rode seven miles of scorching pavement to reach a smooth strip of singletrack wending through a shady canyon, and knew I was in the right spot. The first three miles were grin-inducing fun, even on the climb, but then the real grunt started. Steep, horse-tromped, loose dirt cut a bee-line toward the sky. I tried with all my energy to ride uphill until I was seeing stars, then took short breaks, which became walking breaks. My lungs burned and my legs throbbed. I thought maybe I burned all my matches, flared out too soon, but the lure of the unknown beckoned, and I couldn't stop following it.
About five more miles of intermittent red-line riding and gasping walk breaks brought me to a wilderness boundary, where I gladly deposited my slave-driver of a bicycle behind some trees. I'm the rare mountain biker who agrees that bikes should be banned from wilderness areas. For me, the view is mostly personal. I just like the idea that there are still places in the country that can only be accessed on foot. It gives them a more mystic quality, like stepping into a place that time forgot. And it forces the relentlessly hurried among us to savor the world at a slower pace.
Bikes allowed or not, it wouldn't have mattered on the Stuart Peak trail, where I quickly hit deep, punchy snow. By this time, I was pretty close to running out of water, so I just filled my Camelback bladder with slush, which was incredibly refreshing.
The final ascent to the peak was a full-on snow climbing, where the north-facing crust was fairly icy and hard despite the scorching weather in Missoula, now far below. I checked my GPS and saw the elevation was approaching 8,000 feet, which meant I had climbed nearly 5,000 feet since leaving town. The number gave me a sense of satisfaction. If nothing else, it validated how much I had suffered up the climb.
And then, just before 8 p.m., I reached Stuart Peak. Gotta do the self-portrait on top of the peak, even though shorts aren't the most flattering look for me. I'd like to say that living Outside might allow me to get something of a tan, but that would be a lie. I'll probably go through several bottles of SPF 70 before I finally just surrender to wearing pants in 90-degree heat.
The topography of this region is significantly different than coastal Alaska, but striking nonetheless.
I bounded down the snowfield and collected my bicycle, giddy about the 4,000 feet I still had to lose. The descent was amazing. There aren't words that actually describe that level of exhilaration and freedom, the smooth, snaking free-fall through a blur of trees. I unravelled more than three hours of sweat-drenched climbing in 20 perfect minutes.
I think I'm going to like Missoula.
