Tour Divide 2015 - Day 3

We had set our alarms for 3am but Andres's alarm went off at 2am. Wrong time zone apparently. Fifteen minutes later, unable to get back to sleep I said "lets just go"? Andres agreed so we jumped up, packed our bikes and were on the road at about 2:30am. We weren't trying to be tactical, there was simply no point in not riding now that we were awake.

We rolled along slowly to warm up. It was very cold and for someone from Uraguay, bloody freezing so Andres kept stopping to add layers. I just pedalled along steadily and he would catch back up. We passed someone packing up their bivy in the darkness outside Grave Creek campground. I said "hey" but couldn't make out who it was in the pre dawn darkness. (Turns out it was Brett Stepanik who said he had a rubbish sleep as it was cold and the river noisy)

We had been climbing constantly now for a few hours and as dawn began to break got our first glimpse of the type of country we were riding through. Forest again.

After  three and a half hours climbing we crested the Whitefish Divide. There had been an avalanche come down the left slope and it had bowled over half the forest on the right hand slope. Quite a sight for someone not used to snow country and the power of avalanches.

We donned all of our warm gear here for the descent. It was still hovering around zero so we knew we would suffer but a least it was downhill and we would be making miles at a decent rate again.

We had to stop about 30 minutes later to revive frozen fingers and faces. It was seriously cold but the views were beautiful.

The road went downhill for many miles and we pedalled easily at about 30km/h. Soon, Kintla Peak in Glacier National Park reared it's cloud shrouded head on the eastern horizon.

We passed several people walking along this section of road. All were cheery and one almost lost his silly golden retriever to us. It kept chasing along with Andres despite the owner yelling for it to heel. I stopped as I could see this stupid pooch was just going to bound along all day with us and Andres followed suit so that the frustrated owner could get a hold on his dog. It was funny to me but I could see his blood was starting to boil.

Turning up Red Meadow road we soon caught up to Rob Orr again. He had slept out and wasn't having a very good day but as happens on the divide, he seemed to take inspiration from our presence and pedalled off over the hill in front of us.

The climb was quite steep and having been on the bike for six and a half hours already, my legs cried "enough" and I hopped off to walk one of the climbs. I found this gave my legs a nice rest and seemed to stretch some muscles. Getting back on felt like bliss again and I pedalled to Red Meadow Lake for a photo stop. I didn't end up getting one that took in the enormity of the lake and mountain so the following will have to do.

As we passed the little campground by the lake we got a few "woohoo, go the divide" cheers. Blue Dot watchers were everywhere!

The road now pointed down again and we covered some serious ground fast, dropping down from Red Meadow Lake. The road lower down had recently been graded and was very loose and very dusty making for some hard work despite the downhill grade. My Spot stopped working somewhere here and I had to replace the batteries after just two and a half days of use. The same brand of batteries that I replaced them with lasted for the next 18 days. Go figure.

The last few kilometres into Whitefish were along Whitefish Lake and were stunning. The shoreline was lined with holiday homes and I just wanted to stop to take it all in. My stomach had other ideas and we headed for the first resupply just outside of town, the Alpine Village Supermarket. In here, apart from the iced coffee and ice creams I found some burritos in the deli. I bought three and they were so good that I went back for another one!

Resupplied, we didn't bother going into Whitefish as it would just be a time suck. But where to push on to tonight? There was Columbia Falls and Big Fork. Ferndale was also an option. Because of our early start we had covered more ground than my modest plan called for and the only sensible thing to do was to resupply in Ferndale then push on into the wilderness toward Swan Lake.

From Whitefish to Fernadale was all sealed or really good dirt road and basically flat. I enjoyed pedalling along at speed with the nice tailwind. looking back towards Whitefish we could see a huge thunderstorm on the hills. While we enjoyed a dry, dusty run down from Red Meadow Lake there would be riders under that storm having a miserable mudfest. Timing.....

As I rode along I did a systems check. Knees-good, backside-good, ankles-good, hands-good. Apart from the obvious tired legs there wasn't any part of me complaing yet despite the 600km (372mi) and near 8000m (26500ft) of climbing so far. I was very happy with how things were going.

Then, I wasn't. About an hour later I started to notice an ever so slight squeak in my left heel. Oh, no. Not the dreaded achilles tendon. Lots of riders have issues with their achilles simply from overuse. It wasn't too bad, being just a squeak and there was no pain involved but I knew I had to tend to it.

We came to our last chance of resupply at Ferndale and rode slightly off course to get to the excellent Ferndale Market. This gas station/grocery had everything a hungry divide rider needed. We fed ourselves, stocked up and used some wifi to check the Trackleaders page, Hey! We were pretty well out the front of the TD conga line making it's way down the divide route! A quick count saw us in about 15th or 16th place. Not bad out of 150 odd riders.

I resolved to ride on and camp but first there was another 1000ft climb to get over. I took it easy on my heel and tried to modify my pedalling technique to limit the amount I flexed my left heel on each rotation. It felt better but there was still a "squidgy" sound that I could hear or feel internally from the heel. Andres was happy to pedal gently along with me. He realised that we had made excellent ground today and it was time to soft pedal for a while. Others smoked past us but true to Andres's opinion, they blew knees, ankles and heartlidges in the coming days and I caught some of them before the end of the race, despite my ailment. He caught all of them.

We decided to camp slightly off route, near Swan Lake. There was a river and a bridge and we thought we could wash up and refill our Camelbaks here. Just after we stopped and were about to set up camp two slightly drunk guys pulled up in a car. They got fishing rods out and told us about their plan to fish right near our camp. Being friendly I was chatting to them and they said "yep, we grill 'em soon as we catch 'em". Great. We would be camping right next to fish guts and the smell of grilled fish! We decided to move on and eventuall almost rode all the way into Swan Lake, about 5km off route. We found a small cabin by the side of the highway and set up camp there. It had a water hand pump that worked and we were set for the night. A family was camping in the main cabin and I felt secure in the knowledge that someone would hear me scream if a grizzly tried to snuggle up with me.

I told Andres that if he was up beofre me in the morning to just go. This was a race after all and he was under no obligation to wait. I wasn't sure about my heel and he was still riding strong so I didn't want him to feel bad about leaving me. We were all here to test ourselves and I knew Andres was going to be strong, with a chance of finishing very well.

This resolved, we ate then hit the hay. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.......again.

Tour Divide 2015 - Day 2

We were up before the alarm went off, gathering all of our clothes that were strung up around the room which resembled a Chinese laundry. They were nice and dry and a peek out the window showed a glow on the eastern horizon, indicating that the day would be the same! Awesome!

As we rolled out of town my natural pace was faster than Simon's as we warmed up, so I slowly pulled away from him as we climbed the pavement up to Corbin. The first 34km(21mi) were paved and I was starting to think that I should have pressed on last night rather than cave to the temptation of a warm, bearproof bed. Yes, I have an irrational fear of bear encounters and this next section was actually prime bear country.

Having said that, shortly after leaving Sparwood I came up behind another racer who I assumed had made an early start from Sparwood. The rider turned out to be Jill Homer. Jill has written a great blog for years and I first heard of the Tour Divide via her writings. We exchanged pleasantries and she commented on how nice and clean my bike was after yesterday's drubbing. I explained the car wash (but not my mild OCD that took me there) and she explained her slow pace as having just crawled out of her bivy by the creek. Wow! She had pressed on and camped out. This made me feel soft and like I had missed a opportunity to make more ground. Later, via her blog I would see that not all was as it seemed. Various riders that I spoke to who pressed on all had bad rest in the cold and subsequently had a rough day on day 2, whereas I was feeling good and powering on.

I din't get any photos of the pleasant river valley that led up to Corbin, just the one with the big, ugly mine tailings pile in it. You can see the thick dew/frost. It was a cold morning and luckily it was all uphill meaning that I kept warm.

I was soon back onto dirt road, climbing up to Flathead Pass. After climbing for a while I could hear bear whistles being blown ahead and above me. I was catching someone and they were doing the bear scaring work for me as well. The climb to Flathead Pass was rocky and rough going with careful line selection being important. Cresting the climb, there wasn't any reward in the form of a view. This pass was simply a low point in the mountains that was acceptable to put a road through. I began to blast down the descent, staying off the brakes as much as possible to maximise the use of elevation gain. Somewhere here one of my dishwashing (waterproof) gloves abandoned ship but I wouldn't notice for an hour or so.

I caught the whistle blowers as we came to the section of trail that doubles as a river! An icy cold, rapidly flowing river.

I could see Greg and Evan, the kiwis but I didn't know the other riders with them. There was no way through here but to wade into the stream and just put up with icy feet. That certainly got my attention and I did my best to catch the guys but they weren't hanging around despite my valiant attempts to ride sections of this road/river. Not an issue although the company would have been appreciated.

This road/river got old very quickly as I continued to bath my feet every few minutes. I couldn't imagine what it was like last year in the rain and snow. I had it easy!

The road soon open out into flowing forestry road and I began to make good time again. I came to a large river, the Flathead River, with a big wooden bridge across it where a rider was sitting in the middle of the bridge eating. I stopped and chatted then asked if he minded taking a photo for me.

Thanking him, I pressed on and soon caught the Kiwis having a bite to eat. I rode with them for a while until they stopped again to adjust something on one of their bikes. They were sticking together like glue it seemed.

I rode on until I came to Butt's patrol cabin where there was a small picnic ground opposite, complete with picnic table. I stopped here to tuck into the sub I was carrying from last night and to shed my rain jacket now that it had warmed up somewhat. Maybe it was 10C!

Shortly after I stopped, Andres Bonelli stopped to have a bite to eat as well. We chatted and were both ready to roll at the same time so rode together for a while. I picked him as about 28-30 years old but was a bit surprised when he told me he was actually 38.

We pedalled along discussing everything from where we got our interest in the race, to training and race ethics and bears. Andres had done a massive amount of research on the race and the route and it later showed with his strategy and knowledge of services along route. I could only dream of having the time to have researched the route in such an in depth manner.

As we chatted we continued to climb the next pass, Cabin Pass. This one was worthy of a photo or three as it was quite spectacular.

We donned our lightweight wind vests for the descent. While the climbs here on the divide seem to go on forever, so too do the descents and it is easy to get very cold while roaring down the mountain. We enjoyed a long, rough descent until we were again pedalling along a valley floor in nice warm temperatures. Here we caught up to Brian Steel again and his buddy, Josh Daugherty topping up with water from a fast moving stream.

They informed us how crap their sleep was last night as they had pushed on up to Corbin rather than stay in Sparwood. They were really suffering as a result and crawling along.

We slowly began climbing as we made our way up the valley toward the famous "wall" section of trail. The wall was a quarter mile section of trail that went almost straight up a steep hillside. It was a cheap and nasty way of linking one forest road to another when the ACA created the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. It was in no way rideable, but we were hoping that as it was dry it would be at least walkable. From reports, in the wet it was barely that.

We passed several groups of riders along here prior to the wall.

There were a few groups of tourer along here as well. It certainly was a very pretty section that probably deserved a touring pace, not the race pace we were using.

The turn to The Wall appeared and we made our way along the thin little trail to the base of the climb. The Wall itself turned out to be a straight forward hike-a-bike. 

I would rate the ride from the forest road to the base of the Wall as far more taxing and worthy of some respect on a heavily loaded bikepacking rig.

We stopped at the top for a short break. It was time to down the second half of that sub I had been lugging for 158km(98mi). A few riders, including the Kiwis, passed us here but we reminded ourselves this was a looong race.

It was getting pretty hot in the sun now and more so as we began to climb Galton Pass. Galton wasn't anything super steep or lofty but it was all business going up then down quite briskly for a divide road.

I was still being a bit precious about drinking stream water and had all but run dry, so I had an hour wait until my Aquatabs worked their magic on the icy, clear water that I scooped out of a stream near the base of Galton Pass. On the upside at least I wasn't hauling unnecessary weight up the pass!

But the downside is that I was getting a bit cooked in the heat and dehydrating. I countered this by hopping off my bike and pushing for a while. My pride wasn't too big to allow me to mix things up and when I did hop back on the bike, my pedalling muscles felt rested and good to go again. Sometimes you just have to get off that damn seat!

The descent off Galton was a big one and FAST. We donned our wind jackets again and pushed over the edge. It turned out to be a brake searing descent. I actually had to stop mid way down for 30 seconds to give my hands a rest. No suspension and hauling on the brakes had left my hands with no strength but I was happy to do it. We weren't climbing!

Near the bottom of the pass were several cars and vans parked on the road. There was a guy standing in the middle of the road taking photos. I gave him a wave but didn't stop as I wanted to get to that border crossing in Rooseville and more importantly, the food in Eureka!

We dropped onto blacktop again for the roll through the border. Nice! The border crossing itself took all of about 20 seconds which surprised me. I wonder if the guard was Blue Dot watching and knew who was coming along next?

The last few kilometres into Eureka were into a stiff wind which put the finishing touch on my hunger as we rolled into the first gas station which just happened to have a Subway and a motel attached. We joined Rob Orr there eating and perusing his map and Marshal had grabbed a room, muttering something about SRAM rear derailuers as he pushed his bike by.

Looking at the next section of trail and it was going to be a long, isolated section with no services again and two passes. These were the Whitefish Divide and Red Meadow Lake, one of my "must see" carrots. We elected to call it an early day and stay in the motel. This would allow us a good rest rather than camping up high in the cold and we could start early to beat the heat later in the day.

Stats for Day 2 were 204km (126mi) with another 2750m (9000ft) of climbing. I didn't feel too bad but that last photo shows some sign of fatigue. Twelve and a half hours in the saddle will do that!