Tour Divide 2015 - Day 4

I awoke early next morning to some rustling. I had slept well, but was drenched with sweat. I mean soaked! I had read in blogs about the "night sweats" while on the tour but surely, this was ridiculous? The rustling turned out to be Andres just finishing his packing up. I let him go then proceeded to pack my kit up. My heel was feeling squidgy so I resolved to take it easy and just continue to pedal forward at a reduced pace.

I rode back to the route and it turned out that we had camped 5km off route. As I regained the route I saw several great camping spots on creeks within the next 10 to 15km. Last night was an inefficient mistake distance and time wise that I vowed would not happen again. 

I rode along on my own, whistling loudly as this looked like prime bear country. It also looked much like the last 600km so I didn't take many photos. I was lost in my own head trying to sort out what I could do about this achilles. It didn't hurt, it just felt odd and slightly uncomfortable. That would probably change unless I did something about it though.

I didn't feel like I was making good time with quite a bit of niggly climbing along here. It went up for a while then down then back up again. The elephant on the ride today was Richmond Peak, a climb and traverse that saw it's name whispered in hushed tones by veterans. There is always snow, scary, slippery snow on Richmond Peak.......

But first I had to get there. I had about 80km (50mi) to ride to get to Holland Lake Lodge and breakfast. Some of this 80k was through what looked to me like grizzly country. Again, the scat on the trail backed this up. In the following photo the trail left the forest road and followed a faint single track through the grass for a while.

"Try not to look like a wounded gazelle limping along, pedal strongly" I told myself. But I am sure I looked like prey.

Next thing I hear some rustling behind me and WHOOSH, a guy rides past me like I am standing still! F@rk me! I near soiled myself and it confirms that I was crawling along. But in true TD fashion, I pass him again 15 minutes later as he is changing out of his warm kit and having a bite to eat. I laugh when I read Blue Dot watchers speculating when someone's dot gets half a mile in front of the following rider that it is a break. Rubbish. Unless you get a 30 mile break on someone they are going to catch you the next time you eat/take a crap/have a minor melt down due to no more peanut M & Ms or have to do some other self-support type thing.

Bear Aware? Fark, I wasn't in a coma! Of course I was aware!!!

As I approached the 83 highway I passed one of the few riders I had seen all morning. I said "hi" as I rode by. Stopping at the 83 I knew that breakfast and Holland Lake Lodge were just a few miles along route to the right and one mile off route. The other guy rode up to me and stopped as well. He introduced himself as Lukas from Switzerland. He asked what I was doing and I replied "contemplating breakfast". He said he was going left, off route to the Hungry Bear Cafe as it was a 0.7 mile flat ride and not the climb like it was to Holland Lake Lodge. I was sold, turned left and pedalled off down the road behind him.

Any other time it probably wasn't the prettiest of places but this morning, it was the Taj Mahal filled with edible goodness! I briskly sat myself down and fired an order at the young lady waiting our table. Pretty soon a ridiculously huge plate of pancakes arrived in front of me and I did my best to make it disappear, along with several coffees and a can of Coke. Lukas had the same so there wasn't much conversation at the table.

I filled my Camelbak with icewater from the jug then paid the waitress. $11 was the tab and that sounded right. Outside as I readied to leave Lukas burst out and said "here, take this". It was $6 or $7. Wha? "She charged you for both of us" was his reply. All that food (I had actully been beaten and left a lot of pancake behind-oh the shame) for just $6? Crazy cheap and Happy Days!

Some decent food in ma belly cheered me up again- a recurring theme on the divide. I charged off toward Richmond Peak, pedalling delicately of course to look after my ankle but there was definitely a spring in my step pedal.

Passing Holland Lake I got a little lost in the campground as the gps track seemed to go through the campground and then out a bit of single track near the bridge, not straight along the road I was on. I was super paranoid about missing even a small section of the official route and being relegated later on so I did a couple of loops of the campground to make sure I had the route covered. Idiot.....

Shortly after crossing the bridge the climbing began. Taking it easy wasn't.....easy, as I wanted to get up this 2500ft climb and down the other side. As I climbed I felt more and more alone.

Finally the trail became little more than a single track climb. The forest felt mighty "close" at this point without even a bird tweeting to break the silence. It was hard to get used to the silence in the bush over here. At home there would be a cacophony of noise as various birds strove to out sing one another.

I pushed up a narrow section of steep trail then burst out onto another fire road. Phew! It felt like I had been holding my breath for an hour or more.

I began climbing steeply again, this time with expansive views across to the Grizzly Basin on the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. Photographs do not do this basin any justice at all. It was MASSIVE and "right there" as I climbed away. It felt so close that I was scanning it's steep slope for movement, any sign of a bear. This is how I wanted to see one, at great distance across a basin. ;)

More single track surrounded me. I held my breath again....

Until I burst out onto an intersection of roads and a view to the west of the Mission Wilderness. Wow!

Turning hard left, I was into the final section of track across Richmond Peak. The route notes say "Occasional downed trees and rocks in trail during next 3.8 miles; use extreme caution in slide zone at point where road has failed". Where road has failed?! WTF? I was lucky this year because there was no snow. None at all. This is the section where Matthew Lee says in the Ride The Divide movie "it was route finding, it was mountaineering, there were full on cornices etc" but today, for me there was a rocky, dry trail. And THAT view. I was so glad that I did this during the day. I pity racers that get to Richmond Peak in the dark as they miss this view.

Fair dinkum, I loitered for 15 minutes here trying to out-shoot myself with various selfies, angles and camera locations. None of them do it justice at all. Today, alone, was worth all the suffering so far. Maybe not all that was to follow, but definitely all up to this point.

I came to the point where the road had failed. I got off and walked as it was a loong fall down if I got it wrong. Then the trail went down. It was a fire road that had overgrown into single track and it was awesome fun. For a while, then like other descents off a mountain it became torture as I clung onto my speeding bike, trying not to brake too much but also trying to keep some semblance of control. I must have done an ok job. Strava tells me I am 6th overall on the Richmond Peak DH ! I guess those top guys aren't on Strava? Wait, yes they are. I am right behind Mike Hall and ahead of Neil Beltchenko! Didn't he come 3rd in the TD this year?

Finally I bottomed out and had to pedal again. I came to the turn into Seely Lake, a 2 mile off route resupply, but I had plenty of food and figured I could pick up water from a stream so pushed on to the next stop, Ovando which was a mere 45km away.

45 up and down kilometres away in fact. Yes, we were doing the rollercoaster again and my legs had nothing. I put my ear buds in for the first time this trip and turned on some inspirational music that my son and I love. I must admit, a few tears streaked my grimy face as I listened to his favourite songs and for the first time in the race I lost focus a bit and my mind drifted off to wondering what my family was doing. Stupid fucking race.......

It was hot, I was pedalling hard with my normally weaker right leg and almost out of water again. I stopped at a babbling creek to fill my bottle and wash some dust off. How much further to Ovando? I really was looking forward to the Stray Bullet Cafe, another of my "carrots".

Finally, there it was in the distance. Ovando MT, population 71 (approx). Woo hoo!

I rolled into town and straight up to the cafe'. It was closed! It closes at 3:30pm! WTF? Don't they know they have all of these ravenous mountain bikers coming through who would happily pay $20 for a burger and Coke.....and they are effing closed?! A friendly local points out there is a bar up on the highway where you can get a feed so I point the Muru back UP the hill and hit Trixie's bar for a burger and a few Mountain dews.

Angler, from Bikepacking.net turned up again (that was her giving us directions earlier) to take a photo of Lukas and I as Lukas had just arrived. She proceeded to take the worst photo of me ever seen (sorry) but I present it here as I didn't take any more of Ovando once I found out the cafe' was closed. And, no, I wouldn't be staying the night after such a huge let-down. One thing I did notice here was Lukas's obvious style. He and I had the exact same rare Icebreaker jersey on. Maybe that is why I am red? With embarrassment?

I told Lukas I was going to camp out the road a bit to rest my heel. He said he would camp with me but was going to start pedalling as I was faster and would catch him. But I didn't. I was soft pedalling after dinner to let my meal settle but I was also scouting for a nice camp site, preferably by a river so I could cold soak my left achilles.

I soon found what I was looking for on the eastern fork of the Blackfoot River. There, that gap just to the left of the river. A secluded flat spot right by the river....

With a house nearby to hear me scream should a grizzly want to "cuddle"....

I quickly set up camp.

Then wandered over to the river for a wash and a soak. It was nice to just relax with no food to push into my face, map to anxiously pore over or internet to madly try uploading photos to....

That water was straight off a bloody glacier but just what I needed.

Offending achilles gets a drowning

Ahh, this must be what it is like to tour. Stopping 2 hours before dark and relaxing.....

I crawled into my sleeping bag well before sundown but sundown was about 10:30pm here so I guess it wasn't exactly uber early. 

It was my first sub-200km day. 198km isn't far off though and there had still been 2700m climbing. That was almost 900km (560mi) and 10 800m (35 500ft) climbing in four days.     

Four.

      

4.   

   

Yep, just 4 days. No wonder I slept through my alarm by two hours the next morning!

Cheers and there is more to come.........

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!