On June 24th I did 40.3 miles to the CDT below Greenhorn Mountain. On June 25th I did 38.2 Miles near Coral Gulch. On June 26th I did 49.3 miles to Hail Columbia Gulch Road. On June 27th I did 31.4 Miles to Highland Road. On June 28th I did 64.8 miles to Grasshoper Campround. On June 29th I did 68.8 miles and camped under Baldy Mountain. On June 30th I did 35 miles to Lima, MT.
Listen to "We've Got to Get Out of This Place" by the Animals. I'm doing everything I can to get out of Montana and into Wyoming before the state kills me.
I had been pushing bigger miles and my body (especially my butt) needed a break. I had my eye set on a small town called Lincoln, where I would recuperate and spend my 36th birthday cleaning gear and tunning the bike. Lincoln, MT is pretty small, it doesn't even have a stoplight and is most famous for being the post office the Uni-Bomber mailed his packages from and thats about it. I wanted to stay here because I knew it had cheapish motels (i stayed here on the CDT in 2019) and a bar that had a bike stand and tools outside for Tour Dividers to work on their bike. I grabbed breakfast at the local diner with Taz and Tyler who I had camped with about 10 miles outside of town and said our goodbyes as I was stopping for the day and they planned on doing another 60 miles. After breakfast I started out doing town chores and wanted to get my bike tunned up since it had been running rough with all of the hell I put it through. I went to the bar and put my bike on the stand and started to make my adjustments, when I got to the brakes I was shocked to see the brake pads were completley gone. They were brand new when I started and I was only 550 miles in and had completley destroyed a set of brakes pads, I guess I shouldn't be too suprised since I think I had over 40,000 feet of decent since the start which can really put some stress on your brakes. Luckily I keep spare brake pads in my repair kit and I was able to get the bike as tunned and lubricated the best that I could. The rest of the time was spent cleaning and repairing gear and eating as many calories as possible.
I got a late start on the 24th since I was having a hard time getting my phone to charge since it had gotten a lot of water in it from all of the nasty weather. My phone is my only source of navigation so I'm pretty screwed without it. Most other riders have a dedicated GPS mounted to there handle bar that literally points them in the right direction and they don't even look at topos... I'm very jealous of there systems and will come better prepared next ride. I only did 40 miles out of town because of the late start, plus I ate lunch at the lama ranch. The lama ranch is a random farm next to the divide that A) has Lamas B) has about 5 tiny homes on it that bikers are encouraged to spend the night at with every amenity a biker could ever dream off including a stocked pantry, tools, a kitchen, and beer. It was hard not to stay all day there but I had miles to do and just left down so it seemed glutinous to take another half day.
Later that evening when I was looking for a place to camp I found a side trail that lead to a super beautiful field full of wild flowers that was about 300 yards off my route. I started to setup camp and noticed I had 4G so I called my brother. He likes maps as much as I do and I sent him a pin with my location and he said I was on the CDT, I tried to explain to him that I don't follow the CDT and that it's usually a few miles from me. He reiterated that the maps he has and the pin I dropped was on the CDT, after I setup my camp I walked around and low and behold 15 yards from my tent was a trail... oops I set my tent up on the CDT. Ohh well it's too early for south boulders to have made it this far south so I should be good. I'd lying if I said I remembered this area from my hike, but damn was it pretty.
The next day I got up and rode 20 miles and ended up in Helena, MT. I was just going to a quick in and out of town since I didn't need to resupply. I rode around the city to get a feel for it and found a coffee shop to get some fuel for the super rigorous climb out of town (they always put towns in valleys). I figured I should grab some spare brake pads from the bike store as well. I went into the bike store looking for 40 dollars of parts and ended up leaving with 200 dollars of repairs to my bike (that's after they gave me a disocunt) and could have easily spent 500 or 600 with everything that actually needs to be done. I knew the bike was in rough shape. When I tunned it up the day before, I wasn't super happy with how it was running but it was the best I could do without replacing components. Once at the bike shop we started to really delve into the bike and saw the damage all of the sand, mud and snow did. Being on the Divide the bike shop has seen a lot, but were still impressed with the level of attention my bike needed. While the bike was in the stand we started to talk about the race and it turns out over 30% of the racers dropped out which is way higher than normal and they are getting non-racers coming in everyday asking them to break their bike down and ship home since they were quitting which is also not normal. It made me feel better because the last 2 weeks kind of sucked and I wasn't sure if I was just being weak or if I didn't understand what I signed up for, but it turns out I just have bad timing and picked a super rough year, which I can live with and it helps puts everything into perspective. I rolled out of Helena and started my double pass climb immediately. It was slow going but atleast the bike felt semi normal and didn't sound like someone put marbles down the garbage disposal.
I went over Grizzly Pass but stopped short of Lava Pass which I went up and over the next morning. The back side of Lava Pass was super rough, I could have used a full suspension bike on it. It was a super long and steep decent with a lot of loose rock, somewhere about half way down the pass my bike and I decided to separate. I don't know exactly what happened but I ended up on my back about 15 feet away from my bike. My knees and shoulders hit the ground first taking a majority of the impact before my head hit the ground. I had a lot of adrenaline in my body as I layed on the trail for a few moments and got up and checked the functions of my hands and feet which seemed okay. I went over to the bike which was facing the wrong way, it was banged up, and the handle bars and seat were out of position, but that's an easy fix so I took off back down the route leaving a small blood trail from my leg behind me.
I didn't do a ton of miles after that as I was a little shaken up and just wanted to crawl into my tent and sleep because I was super exhausted and feeling off (every nurse reading this, just cringed at that last sentence). The next day I got up and moved down the trail and didn't do too many miles as I was still tired and set myself up for a breakfast in Butte, MT the next day. Butte is an old mining town where they actually mined in the town itself (or more accurately, under the town) and there are dozens of head frames still dotting the cityscape that used to lower miners underground. I stopped in Butte on the CDT in 2019 to meet Frizzle and Dylan for a festival and it was fun to be back in another familiar town. I didn't even need GPS to move about the city to find a big breakfast and resupply. It would have been fun to spend the night in town and have a few beers while exploring the city again but I wanted to get some miles in since the last 2 days were shorter than planned. I left town and headed up a fire road. The grade on the road wasn't that steep, but I wasn't moving fast and by 4pm I set up camp because I was out of energy and didnt feel good. I knew something was off because I have never setup camp at 4pm in my life and was contemplating quitting since I was feeling so bad. I was able to text a friend and told them I thought I had Covid, we went though all of the symptoms and it didn't seem like it was Covid, but sure as hell seems a lot like a concussion (oops, I probably shouldn't have drank that beer I packed out). Well shit, that's not good. I chugged some water and went to bed early and didn't get going till 9am the next morning after 12 hours of sleep. I took it easy on my way to Wise, MT. I had the option to take an easier route along the river instead of the ridgeline, which I did to give my body a break, and was in camp by 7pm for some more rest and relaxation.
*All non-selfie pictures of me in this post were taken by Tasman Alexander.
