I guess I'll ride this winter out

For reasons unknown, it was more difficult for me to sleep indoors than outdoors. After my coughing fits, I tended to toss and turn rather than passing back out, as I had in the bivy sack. It was the air, I suppose — drier and warmer — along with the stimulation of city lights and sounds. Around 2 a.m. I scrolled through Facebook for a half hour, and learned that the woman leading the Tour Divide, Lael Wilcox, sought medical attention for respiratory distress and was diagnosed with bronchitis. She received treatment in Helena and continued down the trail that evening, about four hours before I arrived.

Lael and I spent two nights in the same house in Banff, so it wasn't implausible to speculate that we'd caught the same bug. Her symptoms sounded similar to mine — night coughing, congestion that got worse through the day, tight breathing and wheezing. But they also sounded much more severe. I wasn't having asthma attacks, and my tight breathing didn't force me to stop. I've had bronchitis once before, while I was living in Idaho Falls in 2005. During that bout, my symptoms were so severe that I nearly called 911, because I couldn't pull myself up from the floor without blacking out, and I had to lay on the floor because it was the only way I could breathe at all. There was no way a person could ride a bike a hundred miles a day with that kind of illness, unless they were super-human like Lael. No, my Divide crud was uncomfortable, but it wasn't bronchitis.


In the morning, I added Benadryl to my daily dose of caffeine and Claritin — another antihistamine that I'd been taking as a preventative measure since day one. As I rifled through my drug baggie for the pink pills, I realized I hadn't taken a single painkiller on the Divide. So far, I was riding pain-free. Knees, toes, butt, shoulders — all of the issues that I expected hadn't cropped up once. My bike hadn't had so much as a flat tire. But the worst allergies I've yet experienced? I never expected that.

At least the indoor stay seemed to have the effect I hoped, and my lungs felt clear when I wheeled my bike into the warm morning air. For arriving in town reasonably early, I left my room late — after 6 a.m. I felt guilty about that, so I made only a quick stop at a convenience store and devoured two bananas and a green smoothie for breakfast. But I did get a coffee, and pedaled away from Helena feeling like an indestructible super hero.

The first 1,500-foot climb was a breeze, and I started up Lava Mountain with an abundance of energy. I attacked the root-clogged doubletrack with zeal, clearing steep pitches that I normally wouldn't have attempted with an unloaded bike on a day ride. Topping out at 7,500 feet, my lungs were still clear and I could breathe the fire I hadn't felt since the first day. Helena may have forced me to endure the wrath of the Gordon Lightfoot fan and a crappy night of sleep, but in exchange she had cured me! Hallelujah!

After descending into Basin, the route turned straight into a fierce headwind along the Boulder River. I felt the familiar squeeze of my airways beginning to constrict, again, and pulled a buff around my mouth to temper the barrage of dust and allergens. The old GDMBR used to skirt along frontage roads of I-15 before joining the freeway for a screaming descent into Butte, but it's since been re-routed to continue following the Boulder River to Lowland Creek. The gravel road gradually ascends (into fierce wind) seemingly forever to a Continental Divide crossing where the CDT also cuts through, then continues through steep, rolling hills until you're convinced the climbing will never end, and then you're in Butte. What happened to the screaming descent? How do you keep climbing for thirty miles and somehow end at the same elevation where you started? Mysteries. It's also twelve miles longer than the old route, and for me it was at least three hours slower. I expected to arrive at 2 p.m., and it was well after 5 by the time I rolled into town.

Afternoon thunderstorms rumbled overhead, and I raced past the brick buildings and run-down shops of downtown Butte. The route made a wide arc around the outskirts of the city — a scenic tour of open pit mines and other industrial areas. The maps indicated I'd have to ride at least a mile off route to find services, and it wasn't wrong — somehow the GDMBR managed to wrap around city of 30,000 without passing a single viable business beyond downtown. Finally there was a gas station, and I stopped for a large resupply while mulling how excited I felt about a dinner of beef jerky and cheese eaten on the bike. I'd been promising myself Subway since Basin, but the sensory overload of streets, traffic and people left me anxious to flee the city.

Eleanor walked in as I was filling a basket with all of the store's remaining string cheese, along with my new favorite power fuel that propelled me up Lava Mountain — cinnamon bears. She asked if I was aiming for Wise River that night. "Oh no," I replied. "Not with Fleecer Ridge in the way. No, it's far." I scanned her expression for hints of whether she planned to take on Fleecer that night. I wanted to warn her the approach is faint and difficult to locate in the dark, the descent drops off the face of the Earth, and the area has a reputation as a haven for mountain lions. But I felt I shouldn't try to influence the decisions of a competitor. As it was, it seemed she may have stopped into the store specifically to ask about my plans, because when I turned around again, she'd already left.

Evening was always my favorite time to ride, and this evening was the best one yet, with cool temperatures, open hillsides and incredible views of the Highland Mountains. Steeper climbs did ignite shallow breathing, leading to dizziness and muscle failures that forced me off the bike. Congestion was deepening as well, but I could formulate a reason for that — I hadn't taken allergy meds since Helena. Still, I couldn't deny that even though the morning had started out so well, each passing hour added increments of struggle, until twilight brought the dizzy, dull-headed, fatigued symptoms of oxygen starvation. As darkness settled I slipped into a daze, still pedaling forward but oblivious to everything else.

I was aiming for the Beaver Dam Campground, just 116 miles from Helena, but it was about as close as I was willing to get to the mountain lions on Fleecer. When I caught glimpse of the campground sign, consciousness came flooding back in a tsunami of fatigue. It was a strange sensation, as I don't recall feeling terrible on my bike. But as soon as I stopped, I felt utterly shattered. The audible wheezing had returned, and I looked up at the stars as I gulped air through the narrow straw of my lungs.

After taking a Benadryl, I settled into my bivy feeling inexplicably depressed. In hindsight, this was perhaps another symptom of low oxygen levels. My mental energy was just fumes, and I wondered if I should try to eat something, but I'd already slung my food bag over a branch.

"Tomorrow," I mumbled, and then found myself humming, "the sun will come out, tomorrow," and then I was asleep. 

These veins of mine are now some sort of fuse

I guzzled a liter of water during the night coughing, and still felt parched when I woke up in the morning.

"Why am I so thirsty?" I wondered as shook out my dew-covered bivy sack. My hands went numb as I collected another liter from the creek. The 6 a.m. sky was already bright, but the air was icy and damp, and I felt an odd pressure in my chest as I breathed.

The first seven miles of the day were spent obsessing about coffee. It had been more than four days since my last cup — that incredible sugar sludge I obtained in Elkford. Each morning I took a caffeine pill to stave off headaches, but it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same.

I rode by a sign fixed to a fence that read, "Ovando is Open!"

"I sure hope that's true!" I yelled back, out loud.

Ovando, population 71, is a lonely town in the Blackfoot River valley, tucked away between the Mission and Swan Ranges. It's close to Missoula, the city in Montana where I lived for a short time in 2010-11. For this reason, I was excited to visit, and scanned the vaguely familiar highway for signs of old friends. It's ridiculous, I know, but this is one of the scenarios I fantasized about — that people I knew would be waiting for me on the side of the road, cheering. It funny, these dreams you conjure as your thoughts become more childlike.

In town, there were a half dozen bikes parked next to the museum, where a small cabin and teepee were available for campers. Jeff Wise was walking his bike toward the Stray Bullet Cafe as I rolled up beside him.

"You're just in time," he said. "Restaurant opens at 7."

I glanced at my GPS. It was 7:01.

"Ovando is open!" I yelled triumphantly, and Jeff regarded me with a squinty grin.

Jeff told me that the camping area was overflowing with cyclists the previous night, but most had left before the crack of dawn. I was glad I stopped short of town, because I had no interest in wedging myself into crowds amid all this open space. Jeff ordered the same combination of breakfast food as me, and when it came, he exclaimed, "I can't eat all this."

"Oh, I can," I said, and it was true, but I was mainly focused on guzzling cup after cup of coffee. So satisfying.

The owner of the fishing shop next door, a woman who goes by the name of Angler on the bikepacking forum (and I'm sorry that I've forgotten her real name), came inside and took pictures of all of us. Angler is the Divide's most dedicated journalist. She photographs every cyclist she comes across and posts a small anecdote about each one on the forum. She was extremely nice and upbeat for 7 a.m., and I visited her store to buy bug dope and a few energy bars. (Along with fishing supplies, Angler also offers an array of cycling-related items. The whole town of Ovando has come together to create a cycling-friendly destination, and it's wonderful.) Anyway, I hoped to find salt tabs, thinking that electrolytes might help balance this strange thirst I was experiencing. She dug into a box full of Hammer samples and found several packs of Endurolytes, and gave them to me for free.

Back at the cafe, I bought several of these dense, homemade-looking food discs called "Protein Pucks." (They were mostly almond butter and very tasty. I wish I could have purchased a dozen just to avoid terrible protein bars a little bit longer.) Someone had also recently brought in a whole pan of fresh cinnamon rolls, so I bought one for the road.

I pedaled 15 miles out of town before I was famished again, and decided to devour the cinnamon roll at the bottom of Huckleberry Pass. This was the second time that I would consume a massive pastry at the bottom of a huge climb, and it was the second time I'd regret it.

I rolled into Lincoln in the early afternoon, still thirsty, and the wheezing had returned. The weather had turned extremely hot, although my thermometer said it was only 26C (79F.) "Lies!" I thought. I went into the gas station for ice and the candy supply I'd been promising myself, and met a family of six — kids ranged from age 9 to 18 — touring the GDMBR. They'd also started their trip in Banff, about three weeks earlier. When they asked me how long I'd been on the road, I had to think about it.

"Maybe five days?" I replied. "I think this is day five." We talked for a while as I shopped, and I told them about the best parts of my race so far.

They left before I decided to sit down and devour a personal pizza (so hungry on this day. Why so hungry and thirsty?), but I caught up to them a few miles down the road. The 16-year-old daughter raced to catch me after I passed, and asked more questions. We rode together for about ten minutes, and I turned the questioning to her. She told me she'd been really into bikes since she was a kid, but just started mountain biking a year prior.

"I really like it," she said. "I feel so much faster when I'm going downhill."

"And you haven't had any problems with the more technical stuff, the rocks and mud?"

"Oh no," she shook her head. "I just hold on tight and go."


She turned around to return to her family, and I turned off Stemple Pass Road to battle this rocky doubletrack that shoots straight up a steep canyon, in the Death Valley-like heat of the day. (only 25C? Lies!) Piles of rotting tree trunks were stacked in clear-cut meadows along the road, and it looked like a battlefield. It felt like a battlefield. I was coughing up the afternoon crud and breathing swift and shallow at this higher altitude (only 6,000 feet? Lies!) The pass topped out at 7,000 feet, and the descent was similarly steep and dusty.

Below Stemple Pass, the region feels remote. You're surrounded by the tall, rounded peaks so characteristic of southwestern Montana. The valleys are home to abandoned mines, a handful of ranches, not much else. Just past the bridge over Marsh Creek, I passed a house where a man in the yard called out, "Do you need water?" Yes, I thought ... I'd guzzled most of my three liters of ice water in a matter of hours. "No!" I called back. "I'm good, thank you." In the intervening years since my first Divide ride, the ethics regarding trail magic have been more clearly defined by the bikepacking community, and the consensus is "Just say no." I respect that, and approve as well. This ethic urges us toward greater self-reliance. I stopped a few miles down the road to refill from a creek with my sluggish filter.

When it was time to climb again, my legs balked tremendously. They were all emptied out again, and my lungs felt constricted, even when I managed a good, loogie-producing cough. At this point I'd convinced myself that my breathing difficulties were allergies, and this air was particularly aggressive. The empty legs were, well ... I actually couldn't quite convince myself that the hundred-mile-plus days were the culprit. The struggle was different from my first Tour Divide, my multi-day ultramarathons and the Freedom Challenge. In those events, my legs had pain, but they still had power. Here, my legs had no pain — not even mild knee soreness — and yet no power. And really, I wasn't doing too badly. I was still able to climb, and still staying near my daily mileage target. But it felt like such a huge battle. Like I was forcing my muscles through this effort, and they might give up on me suddenly, without warning, and then I might just collapse on the dirt, utterly broken.

The 6 p.m. slump sank in as I battled a rolling ridge along the Continental Divide, and I brooded over my physical state. I reflected back on recent endurance-related struggles: falling backward and collapsing onto the slope as I tried to carry my bike up a rocky scramble during the Freedom Challenge; gasping and wheezing on Two Top Divide during the Fat Pursuit; dragging a rigid leg up a talus field during the Tor des Geants; pushing my bike with all my might and still failing to move forward in knee-deep snow drifts and gale-force headwinds on the Iditarod Trail. All of these instances had legitimate extenuating circumstances, at least in my mind. But what if there was a pattern? What if I no longer had access to strength or vitality that I used to take for granted? What if I was developing this ... weakness? A weakness I could neither improve nor control?

Rather than continue to brood on unfounded theories about why I'd soon be joining the ranks of endurance athletes who no longer had the capacity to pursue their passion, I returned to my allergy theory. A stiff breeze blew along the ridge, and there was grass everywhere. Even though Helena was a little bit short for my day — just 110 miles from where I camped — I decided to stop in town so I could clean the potentially toxic layer of grime off my body, sleep in a climate-controlled room, and hopefully clear my lungs of pollen and dust.

I rode more than a mile off route before I finally found a hotel, which had a line at the front desk at 9 p.m. I walked to the back to use the bathroom, and when I returned to the lobby, the last guy in line was just leaving. So I went to the desk and inquired about a room. Before the clerk could answer, this woman who I didn't even notice earlier rose up from a lobby chair and berated me, loudly. She was the next in line, she screamed. She'd been waiting for a half hour and had to sit down because she was so sick, and people kept butting in front of her, and she wasn't going to put up with it any longer. She had driven all the way from Missoula for the Gordon Lightfoot concert, and now she had the flu, and why was I being such a selfish bitch? Then she started coughing, loudly, pounding her fist on the desk to the horrified expression of the clerk. I just gaped at her, mouth open, hair matted to my scalp, clothes and legs coated in dust, with my own illness crushing my lungs. "You know," I seethed, "all you had to do was say something. Use words. No one knows you're in line when you're not in line!"

I couldn't let it go. After I finally secured a spot, I stormed into my room and stomped around while swearing and throwing all the pillows against the wall. I hated being in the city so much, here with the crowds and sprawling streets and crazy bitches and stupid Gordon $%&! Lightfoot. All I wanted to do was escape on my bike, ride away from my rage and flee back into the mountains. But I had to get this breathing issue under control. The city might be mean, but the air outside was killing me.    

Troubles on the headwinds, troubles on the tailwinds

The coughing returned for another round of midnight fits, and all I could do was prop open the bivy sack so I could dislodge whatever piece of lung was trying to escape this time. I drank all of my water trying to soothe the coughs, and fell back asleep with the bladder valve between my teeth.

Despite the coughing fits, I slept fairly well, and rose to beautiful light on the edge of my grassy clearing. While rifling through my backpack, I rediscovered the piece of chocolate cake I'd purchased at the market in Whitefish. It was another one of those items grabbed on a whim (as all Divide food is), and I'd completely forgotten about it. It held it in both hands for several moments, admiring the five layers of cake slathered in dark chocolate frosting with floral designs. It wasn't even smashed. I wanted to eat it badly, but no — this cake was too special, and mornings were too easy. I needed to have my cake for hard times. I gently placed it back in the pack after pulling out two protein bars. Then I sat in the sun gnawing miserably on the bars, without any water to help me choke them down. 

I pedaled up Yew Creek Road, scanning the hillside for signs of tributaries. In Canada and Northern Montana, there seemed to be creeks every few hundred meters, but here the drainages were bone dry. As I crested the 1,500-foot climb, my map indicated Yew Creek and that too was dry. Even though I understand on an intellectual level that a short dry spell won't kill me, I really dislike running out of water. Thirst ignites all these fear responses, and I felt sick to my stomach.

"You're probably the biggest water hoarder on the Divide. Why didn't you fill up in Ferndale?" I scolded myself.

Elliot passed with another rider and told me that he, too, was hunting for water. I understood on an intellectual level that we were directly above Swan Lake, and eventually we'd descend to a low enough elevation that one of these creeks would be running. But I was letting my phobias get the better of me, and raced after Elliot just in case he had a sharper eye. We did have to descend to the bottom of the hill to find water in Yew Creek, but it was there, running clear and cold.

Imaginary disaster abated, Elliot and I continued along a series of lower-elevation logging roads paralleling the Swan River. This 60-mile segment is fairly tedious, following short but frequently steep rollers through secondary forests with few views. There are some intriguing larch groves, and a whole lot of black bear scat to capture attention. But if you're here when the sun is bearing down, you've developed drinking water anxiety that heat doesn't help, and there's this piece of chocolate cake taunting you from your backpack ... it's not the most fun section of the Divide. (This photo is from the Holland Lake area, later in the day.)

Elliot was gracious enough to ride with me for a while and told great stories about the Arizona Trail Race — hiking his bike into the Grand Canyon, being offered a free steak dinner from tourists at Phantom Ranch after he'd already eaten a full meal, and then struggling to hike out in the dark with 700 miles of tough biking on his legs, 40 pounds of bike and gear on his back, and an extremely full stomach, plopping down for naps while trying not to appear asleep just in case a ranger caught him "illegal camping." I laughed and laughed.

Soon Elliot outpaced me and I settled into my late afternoon slump, which was happening far too early on this day. My breathing became rougher and the phlegmy cough came back with the afternoon wind.

My symptoms didn't entirely line up with past experiences with cold viruses. The mucus in my lungs, for starters, and the ragged breaths. I was starting to move away from my theory that this was a cold. "It's pollen," I thought. "It's allergies."

And then there were my legs, which seemed to be emptying themselves out by the pedal stroke. It wasn't normal leg fatigue — at least it wasn't like any fatigue I'd experienced before. They only similar experience I had to compare it with was last year's Freedom Challenge, when excessive lifting of my bike with weak little arms resulted in muscle failure in my triceps and forearms, as though I'd done one too many reps with a heavy barbel and could manage no more. On the Tour Divide, my legs were exhibiting this similar shuddering weakness. When I held two fingers against my quads, I could feel them quaking. I didn't know why.

I fought leg wobbliness on the gradual climb to Holland Lake, with the day's next huge objective — Richmond Peak — looming like a monster in front of me. At Holland Creek I stopped next to the river and pulled the chocolate cake out of my pack. I held the now-fairly-smashed confection in my hands, cradling it with smiling appreciation, but admittedly not the same affection I held in the morning. Now, this was just sorely needed fuel. I devoured the entire thing with my hands, ending up with frosting smeared on my nose and cheeks like a toddler, and a stomach ache to match. Despite the massiveness of the cake, I didn't feel the sugar rush I expected to feel. I filtered water out of the creek, acquiring about 12 mosquito bites in the process, and turned to face my monster with a churning stomach and no energy. Elliot's story of the Grand Canyon crossed my mind.

"I guess if worst comes to worst, I'll take a nap."

It was such a long way up. "It's just 2,700 feet," I told myself. "It's like Black Mountain at home. It's just one Black Mountain." But the legs didn't care. The muscles had turned to styrofoam, and pushing them only left me winded without any increase in power. "You love climbing," I reminded myself. The legs still didn't care.

With great difficulty and some whimpering, I managed to schlep myself to the trail intersection where the route begins to contour around the mountain. From here I half-hoped to see snow, because I just needed to walk for a while. Richmond Peak is well-known in Divide lore for being buried in snow at terrifyingly steep angles, where slipping in the wrong spot could actually prove fatal.


When it's not buried beneath a 60-degree snow slope, Richmond Peak is just a smooth, flowy trail cut into the mountainside on the eroded remnants of an old road bed. Not scary at all. I made an effort to enjoy myself but I was in a low place, struggling with efforts that should have been easy, wondering what was going on with my legs, my lungs, the coughing. All of these are fairly normal occurrences during an endurance effort, when I'm spending entire days and nights out in the weather, taking in the oxygen I need to keep my heart rate in zone two and three for 16-hour spans. But something just didn't feel right, beyond what I've come to expect from endurance-related fatigue. It was as though the air was attacking my body, gouging tiny holes into my lungs and legs and draining me from the inside.

I stopped several times during the descent to shake off dizziness, and ate handfuls of trail mix. I'd already resolved at my next resupply to just buy a bunch of candy, because this protein-focused diet wasn't working and if I had to cannibalize muscle to get through this, so be it.

I soft-pedaled up the next small climb and contoured around Cottonwood Lake as the sun was setting. The tips of larch trees reflected a neon shade of orange, and pink light filled the sky. I felt a surge of gratitude that I had the legs to reach this place at all. The ability to travel five hundred miles along the remote backroads of the Rocky Mountains is a beautiful privilege.

About seven miles from Ovando, I rolled across a bridge over Monture Creek, sparkling under intense starlight and a coal-black sky on the night of the new moon. I'd been aiming for town, which I heard had cyclist-friendly camping. But I realized then that I didn't want to go to Ovando tonight. This was where I wanted to be.

I rolled out my bivy on the bank, and then crawled over boulders to sit next to the creek, filling my Sawyer Squeeze filter with cold water, drinking an entire liter, then filling it again. The water tumbled down my throat and filled all the porous emptiness in my body with new life. I leaned back and gazed at the sky, splattered with the orange and purple light of the Milky Way. This was everything I needed.