The Northern Tier: Days 10-14

Day 10: Paradise in Whitefish

The day started smoothly from Peck Gulch.  I slept in and sat by the water, taking in the breeze and some instant coffee, proud from my last century.  I was eventually on the road and things moved smoothly to Eureka where I met Olivia and Eric of Riding Wild.  These two are on a worldwide tour, bikepacker style, and had just gotten started on the Great Divide trail when I met them in the parking lot of Stein’s.  We shared lunch sitting on the curb watching our precious bicycles and chatted about the tours we were on, how we were blogging and documenting things.

As it turns out, a bear had already snagged one of their bags in the night a day or two back.  That bag contained their cooking pot, and without a method of boiling water, they left me with their ramen, which I am still eating on day 14.  It’s delicious, thanks guys.

After parting ways, I rode along Old Tobacco Road and highway 93 to the Whitefish Bike Retreat.  This mountainbike mecca is tucked away in the forest just west of Whitefish, Montana and is host to bikepackers, mountain bike riders, tourers and the like.  I was in welcoming arms as a sweaty and torn up cross-country rider.  I set up my camp and grabbed a beer from the kegerator, officially making the bike retreat the radest camping locale yet.

Then entire compound is decked in bike paraphernalia.  Bike trails link the office and the lodge to the campground, there is a skills course and a dowhill jump track complete with wooden berms and everything.  The door handles are made of bike handlebars, there were bikes everywhere… it was paradise for woodsman cyclist.

I was honestly sad to see the place go when I left the next morning.  It would have been fantastic to have stayed a few days, but I was ill equiped for the trails with my roadbike.  Some time in the future I am coming back to that place, with proper gear and stoke.

Mileage: 80

Day 11: Glacier

     Day 11 was short.  I spent the morning writing and parts of the afternoon visiting a local bike shop where I repaired my broken cycling shoe (lost a cleat screw) and told stories with the local mountain bikers.  Whitefish again proved itself to be a great gathering place for the mountain bike inclined.  It functions as a centralized hub for a lot of the trails in the area and I was glad to have stopped and chatted.  Bike packing seems like an interesting way to travel.

 

I grabbed some bearspray and hit the road slowly towards Glacier National Park.  I snagged a site at the Apgar campground just inside the park entrance and was for want of things to do.  I had arrived at four PM which is much earlier than any other night so far and while camping alone there isn’t much to do other than read books.  I rode my bike around the campground for a bit.

I asked the campground host about washing dishes and Mrs. Griffith offered to wash them for me.  When she brought back my pot, it was full of cookies that she had baked herself.  It was one of the kindest things anyone has done so far.  For the rest of the night I was beaming with gratitude.  They were delicious and I saved most of them for the ride the next day.  It was going to be huge.

Day 12: It Was Huge

This day was the first day I woke before the sun and the birds.  4:30 AM this far North.  They both followed shortly after and I was serenaded while eating my dialy 3 packets of oatmeal plus salami and cheese sandwich and coffee breakfast.  Lake McDonald was the first stretch.  The air was cool and still, the roads were empty and I was flying.

I croseed several streams and made my way into the hills before the mountains reared up, huge ramparts forming a glacial carved fortress into the sky.  They were cloud capped and magnificent and I had to keep myself from stopping every few minutes to gawk and take photos.

I was riding on the Going-to-the-Sun road, an excellent line of pavement carved into the side of Glacier Wall, making only one switchback as it gradually climbs up the side of the mountain to Logan Pass.  I was charging, racing up the hill, powered by cookies from Mrs. Griffith and plenty of excitement to be in the mountains proper.

There were obvious storm clouds gathering on the peaks but I didn’t care.  Despite the cold I was sweating plenty and I was so stoked I would have ridden in to a snow storm.  The climb continued and my lungs and legs propelled me faster and stronger than I’ve ever been.

It was fantastic.  Cars were respectful and despite the lack of shoulder I never felt unsafe.  They kept their distance and only passed when things were safe.

I reached the top of the pass in three hours.  1,000 feet per hour, 5 cookies and half a gallon of water.  The feeling of walking off the bike after something tremendous like Logan Pass… nothing can touch you, nothing can penetrate the radiance that wells in your chest, the pride and triumph.

After spending some time in the gift shop buying tokens for myself and others I stepped outside to begin the descent to Saint Mary.  It immediately began to rain.

I bundled up in my rain shells and R1 and began the descent.  My body was warm due to high performance fabrics, but my bare hands were frigid.  I was going about 35mph down the mountain, in the wind and rain with no covering for them.  Luckily my brakes worked very well but there were still moments where I was afraid my numbed hands wouldn’t be able to stop me.  Thankfully I was able to keep up with traffic and never hit a slow moment until Saint Mary Lake.

I bought myself a club sandwich in Saint Mary, posted some photos and then got back on the bike for another 80 miles.  I had gone 40 up and over the pass and when I had finished lunch it was barely noon.  I called ahead to a camground in Cardston Canada to finalize my decision and began the longest haul.

I eventually reached the Canadian border and continued into Alberta.  I was out of the mountains, but not out of the hills and definitely not out of the rain.  It was continuing to shower off and on for the rest of the day but my rain shell withstood most of it.  It was interesting to have a single cloud in an otherwise sunny sky drop a load of precipitation directly on top of you, while the sun still shines a few degress westward in the sky.  I have seen the rain come down on a sunny day.

After leaving the hills it was another 30 miles to Cardston.  Thankfully I had a tailwind and they went down in little over an hour and a half.  I stopped for a well deserved milkshake and collapsed into my tent at the Lee Creek Campground.

Mileage: 120

Day 13: Prairie

      After buying some Canadian food (evnetually getting half of it taken at the US border by customs) I began the first boring ride of the trip. It was a Sunday and the highway connecting the farming communities I was rolling through was absolutely dead.  I stopped just before the border at the junction of PR 501 and PR 62 and ate lunch.  During the entire thirty minutes sitting there I saw one truck.  It was a ghost town.

Some horses came out to great me as I passed, but other than that I had little to no interaction with anyone or anything other than myself.  The sky was massive and beautiful and the fields rippled in the wind but after several hours I was getting tired of pedalling.  There wasn’t a real town for 7o miles until Cut Bank.  Just as I was arriving there I got my first flat tire.  A quick fix and another mile led me to the Riverview RV Park, apparently a site where Lewis and Clark  camped while on their famous expedition.

That evening I watched the sky darken.  The horizon was black with rain and lightning streaked out from the swollen clouds.  I staked out my tent extra carefully and bedded down for a rough night. A few other campers came up to chat, including a teacher from Indiana who was stoked to see a young person on tour.  There are lots of older guys who are excited by my journey.  It’s nice to know that people are interested.  The campground host was gruff and somehow still exceedingly polite, showing me the quonset hut office and offering to let me stay inside “if things get real nasty”

That night things did turn nasty.  The rain came hard and the winds were strong enough to bend my tent poles.  I still slept warmly, sound and dry in my Big Agnes Fly Creek.  What a wonderful tent.

Mileage: 75

Day 14: Hail Argestes

The wind had dried everything by morning.  I was forced to cook in my vestibule because my stoved was being blown out by the gusts.  I checked the forecast, which called for scattered showers and 25mph winds from the northwest.  Travelling east, this means more or less a tailwind and it was ripping.  I had planned to take a rest day that day but I couldn’t pass up such amazing winds.  So I got on the bike and absolutely flew down the road to Havre.

There wasn’t much to look at other than wheat and hay fields and occasionally a small town.  The route paralleled the Hi-Line, a stretch of The Great Northern Railway and there were trains going back and forth all day long.  I was racing them and only losing by a little.  Ok a lot, but I was really booking it.  The road was relatively straight and I kept to my highest gears the entire way.  I averaged at least 20 mph, covering 100+ miles in less than half the time it took me to cover the same distance on day 12.

I road into a scattered shower once at about mile 80.  This time I got a taste of what my tent was sheltering me from the night before.  40 mph gusts blew the rain so hard it clogged my left ear with water.  I had to lean far to the side o avoid being blown over and the rain drops thudded into my sad.  It was like getting slapped by Mother Nature herslef and my left eye was blinded by it.  A cross wind that strong seems to suck the breath right out of your lungs.  I never slowed down and although this might sound a bit nuts, the stormy coditions were exciting.  It broke up the monotany of pedalling for hours on flat ground and when conditions get so horrendous as to cause sideways sleet, all you can do is laugh knowing it can’t get much worse.

A man stopped and offered me a ride after the rain subsided.  I declined knowing I had already seen the worst of the day.  My pride would never let me sit in a car either.  It was a friendly gesture though, and more evidence that Montanans are some of the most genuinely nice people around.

Mileage: 127