Wednesday July 14, 2010

After a half day of rest and a good night sleep we ready ourselves for the toughest day of the trip. Confronting us right away on this cold Montana morn is a substantial climb, followed by a two mile stretch of grassed over remote road. To get to this trail we had to lift our bikes over a downed tree 30” in diameter. After that it was straight up through dense undergrowth. Our bikes are now push carts. Finally we were able to ride our bikes again and fight the weeds and smaller downed trees. After a half mile we make our way out to gravel road. Too soon we start our steady climb at 5.5 miles, burn baby burn. The only thing saving us on this climb is the unbelievably beautiful scenery. We meet several other bikers on the trail today. Most of them pass us as they are younger and have much stronger legs. Ahead lies what is referred to as primitive trail (Like lifting bikes over trees and mowing through waist high grass isn’t primitive?).

The trail turns to a 6 inch to one foot wide wake of rocks and limbs. Our faces and lets get slapped with pine trees and other wild growth. Then we come to a rock slide area. Once again the only option is to walk our bikes. This time however, it is out of fear. The trail is just wide enough to walk on with one side straight up the mountain and the other side straight down about 100 feet before you would come to rest on a soft bed of big, sharp, pointy rocks. After that comes a wash out where it takes two of the guys to push and pull the bikes through. At last the path is ridible once more. Mounting up we take off with Irene in the lead. The mountain mama has built up some courage in her skills over the last few days. ( She really should know better.) As she tracks down the trail at a 4 mph pace, too fast for this mountain, with Rob right behind her trying to keep up, suddenly the words, “biker down” echo down the mountain. The rest of the crew come around the curve to find Irene down on the trail with her bike up in a tree up-side-down. What a great circus act. Jude completes some first aide and comfort as the gents dig her bike out of the tree. We push our bikes along to get some reassurance and then we’re off at it once more. After four miles of lifting our bikes over trees, negotiating cliff trails, tire biting rocks, and body slapping pines we emerge scarred and tired onto a graded forest road.

We start a ten mile descent into Seeley Lake. Now we are thinking we have an easy rest of the way down, we drop our guard and cruise along the trail, only to be met on a downhill curve by a dreaded gravel truck.
He tries to take on our master of ceremonies, circus act Irene, rounding the corner and bailing off her bike, to bring the semi to a halt, leaving the truck trying to find a gear to get back up the incline. (Ever feel like you should have stayed at camp?)

Rolling into Seeley Lake we find our camp wench and her side kick has plenty of refreshments awaiting us. This night we ate out, visit the local establishments bringing a close to an eventful day of about 38 miles.

*Note: Restaurant food was never close to as good as our wench food.