On 6/18 I did 58.4 Miles to Bunchgrass Campground. On 6/19 I did 70.3 Miles to a fire road outside of Whitefish. On 6/20 I did 51.9 miles to Flat Head National Forest. On 6/21 I did 76.4 miles to Clear Water Lake. On 6/22 I did 76.1 to the base of Arrastra Mountain. On 6/23 I did 11.7 Miles to Lincoln, MT.
Listen to anything by Eddie Vedder. It has been pouring rain on me for 4 days (with a few nice breaks) and everything is soaked to the core including my moral and the only thing keeping me going is a non-stop Pearl Jam and Eddie's gargled voice on the cold steep climbs through the mountains.
After leaving Elko, Canada I had a 35 mile section to the the US/Canadian Border. It rained hard all night and into the morning but soon the clouds lifted and I had a few beautiful sunny hours through the mountains. I spent my ride half on payment and half on forest roads. I must have been stopped atleast 4 times by local Canadians who were driving by and wanted to chat. If I were to guess I'd say I was stopped between 1-1.5 hours a day in Canada by the people who wanted to tell me about their town, jobs, hobbies, and the must see attractions as well as try to guess where I am from based on my accent (they have no idea where Ohio is). I absolutely love not being on a schedule and since most of the time I'm by myself it's such a fun part of the day to be flagged down and shoot the shit on the side of the road with some fun people.
I crossed the US/Canadian Border at Roosville. I was expecting it to be more of an occasion but instead I just got in line with the cars and waited my turn to show my passport. It was a little anti-climatic especially since I could have just walked across unchecked 100 yards to the left or right of the the official border crossing like the the farmer I watched on his ATV go back and forth across the border atleast 5 times while I was waiting in line.
The US/Canadian Border is the lowest elevation of the ride and I started to make my climb out of the valley after resupplying in Eureka, Montana. I made it to Eureka just in time for the skies to open up again and I rode through town in a another storm. Unlike the trail towns I have been in when I'm hiking, everyone knows what I am doing when they see a fully loaded bike going through town. The locals would pull over in their cars and give me weather reports (it was pouring rain so it wasn't the most useful information) and they would hand me a beer. By the time I had left Eureka I had 4 beers in my backpack (do I look like the type of person who needs a beer (don't answer that question)). There is no way in hell I'll drink a beer and ride as I'd probably fall over and pass out right then and there, but camp the next few nights was fun to crack a cold one with my rice and potatoes.
For the forseable futute it looks like I will go over two passes each day on my ride. This is a lot of elevation change and usually results in 5,500 to 7,000 feet of elevation gained each day. The first day was rough especially since the second pass was completey covered in snow and required another 5 miles of pushing my bike up and over in calf deep snow. While hiking my bike I met back up with the Polish couple, MJ and Karolina, who were having a hell of a time pushing their bikes. It was nice to catch up with them and once we got to snow free trail we took off together. We ate a dinner by a beautiful lake and they went into Whitefish to get a motel. I stopped 10 miles short of Whitefish and set up camp. I woke up in a huge storm. I checked the weather and it was going to be a hard rain all day. I packed up as quickly as I could but what few dry things I had left were now soaked. The rain was cold, and as I stopped to check the maps I started to shiver. I kept moving to keep my temperature up and ducked into a coffee shop. In general I hate towns mostly because they are expensive but also because I never feel lonely on trail but feel out of place being in town by myself, but I quickly found a cafe and warmed up in the corner. I knew I couldn't stay here forever and that I had to do atleast 50 miles to get to National Forest where I could setup camp (motels were 250 a night, I'd rather die of hypothermia than spend that money, I almost did and don't regret my decision). After regaining some feeling in my body I set out again and rode as hard as I could in the rain. It was kind of miserable and kind of fun to push myself. It was hard to setup camp when my fingers wouldn't work and I was shaking so bad, but eventually I made it into my tent and passed out hoping tomorrow would bring blue skies.
Tomorrow definitely did not bring blue skies as I dropped more 4 letter words than I knew i had in my vocabulary when I woke up at 5am and it was still a heavy rain. I became disgruntled and packed up camp, there was no need to be delicate about putting anything away since everything I owned was a soggy mess. I started up the next pass when two other divide riders met up with me, Tyler and Taz, who I had actually had coffee with in Whitefish. The two of them are in their early 20s and have biked across America before and maybe the funniest humans I have ever met. We set off together grinning our teeth trying to not let the cold rain get the best of us. We leap frogged all day and the skies finally cleared up. Our gear was still a disaster but we yelled really loud when we could finally see our shadows and have the sun start working it's magic. We camped together that night. They are way faster than me but like to take breaks and take pictures (Taz is a photographer) and between my early starts and their breaks we would ride on and off with eachother all day and it was absolutely awesome to have such solid company.
When we were riding they stopped to do a photo shoot of some epic mountains and I continued down trail. I was moving at a good pace and looked into the woods and made eye contact with a giant grizzly bear that was sitting on its butt and legs out infront of it playing with two cubs about 20 yards away. We saw each other at the same time and the docile looking bear stood up on its hind legs and made a loud snort (imagine an old man with no social skills clearing his throat at the table, now amplify that sound by 10 and that's what the bear sounded like). It dropped from a standing position to all fours and lunged towards me. At this time the two cubs took off running in the other direction (thank God they didn't run towards me) and after they ran behind her she kind of did a quick turn around and followed them. The encounter probably lasted less than 5 seconds and was absolutely terrifying. I've never seen a bear in the wild stand on its hind legs and I can only say that it appeared to be over 15 feet tall (google says they get 10 feet tall, but damn it seemed bigger), the bluff charge was equally as scary and I don't really know if it had been a real charge if I could have deployed my bear spray in time.
99.999% of my trip has been relatively uneventful and it is usually just me and my thoughts in the mountains (which can be a pretty scary thing too), but two close encounters with bears in first section of trail has me on my toes.
