Butte ... Montana!

It was one of those moments I was never going to be able to explain. We nudged deeper into a sea of sweaty bodies as the salsa band's drummer stirred the beat toward a fever pitch. The horn section built to a crescendo and the three singers suddenly dove into the crowd with their microphones, not even missing a note as dozens of outstretched arms pulsated around them. Then the brass musicians plunged in next; the trombone player plowed right into the heart of the crowd and paraded through the mass, stretching his instrument high like the leader of a frantic marching band. It echoed a hundred moments of youth when the collective energy of a group hit a ceiling so high, with a peak so unified, that it felt like the entire sky would burst open. The singer yelled "Butte!" and the crowd answered in a deafening roar, "Montana!" "Butte!" "Montana!" "Butte!" "Montana!"

I glanced out over the city lights below the outdoor stage. They shimmered with a surreal intensity that I had seen before. It was another one of those moments I could never explain. When people asked me about my favorite descent during the Tour Divide, I would often think for a second and then answer, "Coming into Butte, at midnight, in the pouring rain, on I-15." They would always look at me with that incredulous smirk, as though to say, "You mean to tell me that you rode a mountain bike 2,800 miles across the country, and that's the most fun you had? On an interstate?" But I couldn't convey to them how cold I was, how tired I was after a 16-hour day, how hard the rain was falling and how long I had been pedaling through a bleak and black wilderness, only to crest over Elk Park Pass and plummet toward Butte, hitting 30 mph, 40 mph, with rain and wind roaring in my ears like a freight train, and the blurred city lights so bright, so inviting, so full of warmth and hope, that the whole world seemed to wrap its arms around me in a welcoming embrace.

And then I felt that embrace again, during the National Folk Festival, in this random town that was once the Superfund toxic cleanup capital of America, in front of a random salsa band who I had never heard before and whose name I didn't even know. I was never going to be able to explain it.

Geraldine and I headed out Saturday morning for a girls' weekend in Butte. Geraldine organizes Climate Ride. We would have been introduced through mutual friends in Anchorage, but we just happened to meet first in a more organic way - we participated in the same 50-mile solstice mountain bike ride. The plan was to ride singletrack in the morning and take in the 72nd National Folk Festival in the afternoon. Both of us had about the same level of experience with Butte and its biking. But instead of doing any kind of prior research, we just decided we'd pull off I-90 somewhere and hope we got lucky.

We did get lucky. Oh wow, did we get lucky. We just happened to turn off at the Homestake trailhead of the Continental Divide Trail. At the trailhead, a group from Bozeman told us it was their favorite ride in all of Montana, and it was easy to see why. The narrow trail climbed steeply, but not heartbreakingly, to a narrow ridge and then followed the Divide tightly on an undulating roller coaster trail that snaked through a maze of erratic boulders and sweet-smelling pine trees.

We topped out at about 8,000 feet and dropped into the next canyon through the lupine and pines, then curved around the highway and looped back through a rockier, chunkier "beaver pond" route. (I saw no ponds. Only rugged slopes.) Montana is quickly making me much better at rounding switchbacks (though still not good.)

While mashing our way up the beaver pond route, a classic Continental Divide storm bulldozed in and soaked us thoroughly. I am not entirely stoked to be back in the region of thunderstorms. Lightning is one of my biggest fears, and thunder booms always set off an adrenaline-charged stress reaction, especially when the thunder is booming as I pedal a metal bicycle, wholly exposed at 8,000 feet on the Continental Divide. That said, all of that adrenaline sure does make for a memorably epic descent.

Then, the National Folk Festival. It was an impressive event - six stages and tens of thousands of people milling around the turn-of-the-century brick buildings that dominate the downtown area of this old mining town. We met up with Geraldine's friends and ate horrible festival food. I thought of my former roommate in Juneau, Shannon, who spends his summer traveling around North Dakota with a gaudy corn dog stand. I was a little disappointed not to find him at this Folk Fest. It was fun attending the festival with other women, who we could giggle with about how sexy the 50-something Moroccan singer was, and no one would roll their eyes at us.

We left the festival late and didn't get into camp until close to 2 a.m. We didn't even camp at a real campground, just the Highland trailhead where we planned to ride the next morning. So we were more than a little dismayed when two vehicles full of drunk men and women showed up after daybreak at 6 a.m., parked literally 15 feet away from us, and proceeded to build a fire and party for two hours in the loudest way possible. One of the women repeatedly screamed "Wake up!" toward our tents, and started talking about "kicking in the doors" of "those dumb biker bitches." (How she knew or assumed we were women, I don't know.) I was genuinely afraid but I had left my bear mace in the car, so I just huddled in my tent and hoped they didn't choose to actually engage us, as I'm pretty sure Geraldine would have knocked in a few faces and I would have run frantically for my life. It always amazes me that people focus all of their camping paranoia on bears. I would take a bear in camp any day over a drunk Montanan, which seem to be much more commen.

We had wanted to get on the trail sooner, but we both didn't want to get up until the drunk people either passed out or left, which they mercifully did at about 8 a.m. We headed up the Continental Divide Trail again. This section was much different than the Homestake section. Steep switchbacks, mud, and more mud ... a little bit of Juneau in Montana.

The views were still incredible, though. I felt like roadkill, which I blamed on festival food and less than four hours of sleep followed by two hours of fearing for my well-being, which would sour anyone's stomach. It was still an awesome weekend! Yeah for Butte, Montana.

Maybe I had to leave

Every morning, the still-unfamiliar sound of my alarm clock blares through the sweaty stillness of deep sleep in a hot room. I slouch out of bed, turn my bleary eyes to the bright sunlight streaming in the window, and brace for it ... the sadness, the homesickness, the cold realization that I have left the place that I loved. I brace for it every morning, because I expect it will hit any day now. But this morning, like yesterday, and the day before that, there is only anticipation, the electric buzz of possibility igniting a day where anything can happen.

I make my breakfast and scrape away the last of the peanut butter in the jar I hauled all the way down from Alaska. I pause for a minute before throwing it away, but the sadness doesn't come, and I toss it without regret. I take a slightly cool shower and squeeze remaining drops from big shampoo bottle that took the ferry ride from Juneau before making its way to Anchorage, then road trips, then south. There's a tiny bit left, so I save it, just to be sure.

I walk into the sun-drenched morning and hop on my bike. I'm wearing all my work clothes already because around here, heavy fleece and rain gear isn't an automatic prerequisite in July. I see a new, interesting street and I take it, and then I get lost. I forget I don't know my way around yet.

The work day flies by quickly. I take midday walks to the coffee shop and the sandwich place. There is still much to take in, but little to stress about. It still feels strange, not having a deadline bearing down on me every day. Suddenly, it's late afternoon, and time to go for a ride.

I like to ride alone. I'm used to it, and I enjoy having all that time to think. But around here, there is something new and exciting going on nearly every night, and it's difficult not to ride with others. I especially like Thursday nights, and the Thursday Night Riders, a group ride that appears to attract a fun combination of unpretentious fast people, longtime Missoulians and intermediate mountain bikers like myself, looking for a challenge. Today is the "Hayduke Ride," an ambitious one, 3,400 feet of climbing all on singletrack. I start from town, which makes it more than 4,000 for me.

Heat wafts off the pavement as I ride down Orange Street. I pass a digital thermometer that reads 95 degrees. My pasty still-Alaskan skin cells look for a retreat but find none. My jersey is already so wet and sticky that it feels like it would take my skin with it if I tried to peel it off. I suck down huge gulps of warm water from my Camelback and think fondly back to the days when I needed fleece and rain gear to ride in July. Honestly, right now I'd rather gouge my eyes out with icicles than ride my bike, but I tell myself I'll warm up to the task at hand, somehow.

I arrive at the trailhead just as the group is riding up the road and seconds away from leaving me behind, just like last week. I kinda wish my timing wasn't so good, because I've only ridden seven miles and already I feel like my head is swimming in a pool of lava. "I'll acclimatize to this eventually," I tell myself, but then I remember that I grew up in Salt Lake City and somehow never adapted to summer. Some of us were just born for ice and snow. That doesn't mean we don't love the sun, but we love it in weaker doses. I dig for energy beneath my overbaked skin. The group starts up and I lag behind. I figure I'll catch up when evening does.

We climb and climb and climb. I catch up to a few riders and mostly talk about how I miss Alaska and fleece gloves in July. But all around me, the world is opening up. There are wildflowers on the hillsides and sweeping mountains on all sides; the sun casts bright streaks of color across the sky and there are a lot of mountain bikers laughing and smiling. Elevation and evening creep up on us, and I start to perk up. Maybe it's because the temperature eased up a little, but more likely it's my view of much of what is right and good about the world.

We reach the 7,100-foot summit and gather, a dozen strong, to look out over this right and good world and anticipate our well-earned reward. Two hours of climbing disappear beneath a swift and blissful descent. We're tired but there's more adventure to be had, so we veer up another climb and turn on a winding piece of singletrack down a brush-choked hillside.

After a mile or so, the group halts. I skid to a stop behind a cluster of riders. Not more than 20 yards in front of us is a black bear, with hair bristling like needles off her shoulders and back, standing and pacing and fretfully retreating. Her tiny cub, no larger than a six-month-old baby, is wrapped around a tree that we have to ride right by. They're the fourth and fifth bears I've seen on trails since I arrived in Montana less than three weeks ago, and are now officially more black bears than I saw in all of 2009 and 2010 in Alaska. Someone turns and says, "It's your fault, Alaska." I'm gaining a reputation for being something of a bear magnet among the Missoula mountain bikers. I'm not too worried about this one because our group is massive and momma bear obviously knows we're here and hasn't charged yet. But just to be sure we cluster tighter and roll slowly away from the young family. We breath relief and drop into the deepening sunset, then ride home in the dark.

I tend to look for signs that I made the right decision about moving - the weather, the sunlight, the recurrences of amazing sunset rides for days and even weeks unbroken. Then I see the bears that remind me of Alaska most of all, and I really think the universe is reaching out to me, telling me that home is wherever I make it, and that's OK. I don't have to be homesick, if I'm home.

One year past

At half past 5 on Monday, July 6, 2009, I rode through the sun-baked desert toward a shimmering clump of trees called Antelope Wells, which would make today (Tuesday, although late, still technically July 6) the one-year anniversary of the day I finished the Tour Divide. In this year's race, since the only woman out there is still making her way toward the Mexican border, that means (I think) I held onto the TD women's record for one more year. Hooray! It actually still strikes me as humorous that I have my name attached to something like that - you know, the women's record holder of "the world's toughest mountain bike race" (don't mock me! This phrase just occurred to me and I think I'll use it as the lead in my book proposals.)

But still, regardless of my feelings about my own experience out there, as my dad pointed out, it's still something to be proud of. While this year's Tour Divide progressed, a lot of people asked me if I would ever ride the course again. The answer is "probably, in several years from now, if by some strange stroke of fate I'm in a good position to return when I'm 35 or 40 years old." The better question is whether I'd return to the race, or to an effort to reclaim the record. I of course recognize that my 2009 time is full of holes. I lost full days to mechanicals and injury in Wyoming and northern Colorado. I lost full days to mental anguish and mud in southern Colorado and New Mexico. And, of course, I opted for comfort over distance whenever the opportunity arose. But as I said to John Nobile when we stopped early one evening in Elkhorn Hot Springs, Montana: "This is three freakin weeks of my life. I'm going to enjoy myself." I still feel that way. Maybe more so now than last year. So while shaving days off my time would be easy in theory, it would be much more difficult in practice.

Speaking of this year's race, I was telling my mom about the strange parallels between Kent Peterson's race-ending mechanicals, and my own in the Great Divide Basin. Like Kent, my freehub began sticking as I crossed the bone-dry, remote sinkhole between Atlantic City and Rawlins. Kent and I first experienced our problems in almost the exact same spot, about 25 miles east of Atlantic City. This is just a few miles beyond a historical marker dedicated to Willie's Handcart Company, a group of Mormon pioneers who crossed the Basin in 1856. The company suffered major setbacks while crossing the plains, and dozens of pioneers died when winter caught up to them in Wyoming. Historynet.com had this to say about the Willie Handcart Company:

"The farther west the companies marched the more problems they had with axles and wheel hubs. In the humid Midwest, the climate better preserved the green wood, but as the air became drier, the unseasoned material dried too quickly and cracked."

As I told this story to my mom, she informed me that I actually have direct ancestors who traveled to Utah with the Willie Handcart Company. When my freehub began to fail, I was lucky enough to be able to coax it into Rawlins. Kent wasn't so lucky, and had to push his bike dozens of miles to Jeffery City. Now, I'm not superstitious ... and I by no means intend to imply that the spirits of my pioneer ancestors are out there exacting wheel revenge on unsuspecting cyclists ... but, if I do happen to write one of those "true life" ghost stories someday, you'll know why.

I just returned to Montana from my short weekend trip to Utah. My dad and I were able to get out for another hike on Monday morning - this time one that is arguably the best route in all of the middle Wasatch Range - the Pfeifferhorn via Red Pine Lakes. It's been at least a decade since I climbed up here. The view is as stunning as ever.

Pfeifferhorn is quite the majestic peak, guarded by crumbling knife ridges that are full of fun scrambling.

Looking out toward the Salt Lake Valley and the Twin Peaks, which my dad and I tried to climb on Saturday. If you squint, you can actually see the snow-filled couloir we decided not to ascend. Looks pretty much vertical from this perspective.

The big mountain in the distant center is Lone Peak, which is still listed on some of my early Web sites as my favorite place in all of the world.

My dad and I on top of Pfeifferhorn, at about noon Monday. The elevation is 11,326 feet - the highest I've been since the Divide. And, yes, I could feel the altitude.

Then, about nine hours later, I was here - 20 miles north of Dillon, Montana, making my way back to Missoula. I needed to pee something fierce but I raced past Dillon because I could see pink sunlight starting to emerge below the rain clouds, and I wanted to round the western mountains in time to see sunset. I was not disappointed. A six-hour, high altitude hike followed by an eight-hour drive certainly did make for a long day Monday, but it was all worth it.