Thanks for making me stronger

Excuse the cheesy Christina Aguilera song quote, but the last couple of days have had some fairly sustained climbing. But I have to say my body is starting to feel stronger and better equipped for the task, but more on that later!

I think when I left you last we were departing the picturesque Holland lake. What followed was perhaps the most scenic and satisfying ride of the trip so far. But from the start of the day we were climbing on and off for ten miles or more, before hitting a non stop five and half mile climb of more than 2000 feet. But the weird thing was; as the gradient was manageable, and in spite of the heat, I enjoyed it. And the views on the way up, well I have nothing on this camera phone to do them justice, but they were stunning. And the rough single track descent on the other side of the pass...Well that really was my cup of tea.

So we crashed and sped our way down to the town of Seeley Lake, where we found the campground on the edge of the lake itself. Huckleberry smoothies I can tell you are the future, and swimming in lakes continues to be my favourite post ride cool down. I tried to capture an image of the lake at sundown.

Today the views may not have been quite so epic, but the 66 miles was my biggest day yet. And once again we were climbing straight out of the door from Seeley Lake, most of the way to the cute and very western town of Ovando, where we had a lovely lunch and made the most of a huge salad with real green things in it!

Then ten miles of prairies and we made the foot of the real test. An eight mile climb up and over huckleberry pass. Man did I sweat, as I will show. But despite that I felt strong all the way up and have really found a rythym to my climbing now. However even after you defeat the pass it has a few stings in the tail until you roll into the town of Lincoln. Lincoln being one long strip along the highway of bars, motels, and various Americana where I am writing from to you now.

One thing to note, just before we made the pass, is that we have been quite lucky. The summer is really dry and hot here, and they are having problems with wild fires. We passed one a few days ago, and at the foot of huckleberry pass there was a base camp for fighting another up above (lots of trucks, helicopters, men etc.). We had to speak to the chief about using the road. Luckily despite having being told by someone it might be shut for a week, they had just reopened it.

But I have to mention one major disaster I didn't avoid. It looks like the single track downhill yesterday claimed the life of my e books screen. I am gutted. If I start riding on my own again, it means I have no entertainment, and I'm just left with the thoughts in my own head, and god damn that's a scary proposition.

This is made more relevant as I have really enjoyed riding with Chris and Rick, but they are going to take the alternative route bypassing Helena. So I have to decide if I want to see it and whether to strike out on my own again. Choices.

As I mentioned earlier I am getting stronger (although I am utterly beat right now) but there are some other intriguing things going on with my body and I'm not really sure the photos do them justice either. One is that my name may as well be salty Shannon. Check out the now tie dye shirt from today. Man do I need my electrolytes when I can get them. The other is I have developed the fore arms of a tanned Greek fisherman, and with gloves on I'm afraid also the pale paws of a drug addict in comparison. Ah well! Onwards and almost certainly upwards.

Cup of tea?

Ok so iam going to try and write a quick blog update while i have a connection out here. So corrections will have to wait till later.

Whitefish was a cool place to hang out. Lots of options to stuff your face too which is of course important. Ricks friend who is the state senator lives there as well which proved handy to go pick up a few things. Oh and the Frank Lloyd Wright building...I saw it... But surely that's not his best though right???

The road out of Whitefish is pretty long dull pavement, and of course damn baking hot. So camping at swan lake it was a relief to jump in the lake. We also ran into a family of cyclists in the campsite. It was a bit like having dinner with the Swiss family Robinson, this lot were road touring but carrying some serious gear. Put it this way they like to compete in 16hour paddle races, so carrying around bottles of chocolate wine chilled in ice in their packs seems to be no issue.

The weather changed in an instant last night though. Within ten minutes of going to bed a gale was blowing in and rain coming down. The balmy evening blown away.

And yesterday consisted of more boring highway but we have at last turned off road again. However we had lunch at a restaurant which i think likes hunting, check out the photos of every dead animal you can imagine. And I guess that's kind of Montana.

Even though we are back in the wild though, it's not that wild. We have camped by the beautiful lake Holland lodge where yesterday we had cups of tea, in armchairs in front of a log fire. Back country living! And pancakes for breakfast this morning.

This morning though I heard the most amazing sound echoing through the campsite.  The eerie and blood curdling howls of wolves. Incredible.

Right 2000 feet of climbing today. Vamos, yellah!

Massive Montana

I'm over the border. Hurrah! And I'm now having a little bit of a rest in Montana after the first hundred miles or so. But I have something nuts like six hundred plus to do in this state. Anyway so far it's been fun and with a few tales to tell.

So getting over the border was a laugh. I got to stand in a line of cars up to the checkpoint while people stared at me like I was a nutter. Then the customs official tried to get me to sign a visa waiver form until I pointed out to him what I had handed him inside my passport was a six month visa. He said he thought it was just part of a British passport!

That said you could easily sneak past border patrol round there in the mountains. I don't think it will be the same when I get to Mexico.

So straight over the border and into Eureka for some food. Nice little town, and good grub at jax cafe. I also posted home my Canada map (one of six maps I'm carrying) which felt satisfying, even if it is the smallest map. So err yeah mum, look out for that.

So after faffing round at the border and posting stuff I still had only done twenty miles and had thirty miles to go to get out of Montana farm lands and back into them mountains. And thirty sweaty miles later I arrived at Tuchuck campground on the other side of Whitefish divide.

Within minutes of arriving I met a friendly Californian fellow divide rider who said he was riding with another Brit. Anyway to cut a long story short I have spent the last couple of days riding with two really cool guys Chris and Rick.  Rick is a thirty five year plus navy seal vet and raising funds for vets families, and I will post the link to his charity when I get it. Both he and Chris live in San Diego, with Chris calling himself a Briti-can as he is now an American citizen which means when riding we can chat about all things British so he can reminisce, and then decide that surprise surprise no he is better off living in southern California!

I took a photo I will put on here, of a tree by the river in the campsite, which may not look much, but Rick explained it was bound by the kootenai Indians to give it the knobbly appearance, and effectively was a church. Which I thought was kind of cool.

I also took a photo of the guys bikes. My god they are traveling light compared to me (and I have met people with way more weight than I). They just utilise these really cool frame bags. No big panniers, no trailers. I guess it's like the second world war, the yanks have all the cool kit!

First stop after the campsite was polebridge. Go if you ever get the chance go there. It's an old mercantile store and restaurant. And my god not only does it look cool with its charming looks and resident porch chipmunk community but they do amazing sticky buns, huckleberry bear claws, and the prime rib I had for dinner followed by huckleberry pie were just immense. Honestly a fantastic place.

After we had dinner though the one weird moment was when I was approached by some guy who claimed to be from Colorado with a real strange manner who had been staring the whole time we ate. I'm not sure whether he wanted to fight me or F#!@ me. Anyway call it serendipity that this was the one time in my life I had a navy seal with me haha!

Polebridge is also on the edge of glacier national park so we took a detour through the park, which had some really nice back roads. I'm also going to claim I saw a wolf. Well Rick saw a big pure black wolf. I saw something flicker through far away bushes, but hey, I saw a wolf right.

Oh and this gets me onto my favorite subject bears. We saw plenty of bear scat on the trail and also wolf prints. But Chris and Rick had five bear encounters in seven days in Canada, unbelievable! But of course none while I was riding with them.

Anyway glacier park has what's claimed to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world. The going to the sun highway. So I rode that too... For like a mile and a half, till we took a photo turned round back to the bottom, had a milkshake, then high tailed it down the highway to reach Whitefish, actually having to come backwards down the divide route. A good 65 mile day Chris tells me.

Today I will be checking out Whitefish, and from what I saw having dinner with Chris last night, it's a cool enough place and essentially ski town USA. I will update. Keep the peace people and love to you all from Montana.

The Border Run

And I'm back in my tent once again as I write this, preparing for my early morning dash to the border.

I was having quite a good time in Fernie so it took me a little while to adjust back to the solitude of the road this morning. Hot dusty roads once again. I can't quite believe just how hot the Canadian summer is. Every day so far bar my rest day yesterday the sun has been blazing down on me, and as I have been losing altitude it has just been getting hotter.

And I will have to try and get a picture at some point of just how much dust a monster logging truck throws up. It's like a sandstorm that leaves your mouth parched and you can forget riding on for twenty seconds or so after they have passed as you can't see nothing. Essentially a lot of the off road routes I'm using are gravel or dirt tracks implemented by the logging industry.

Oh and I can tell the miles are adding up a little now, with just a smidgen of chafing. There is nothing as glamorous as standing on the side of the road, with a tube of Vaseline in one hand and the other one down your pants. I'm glad you don't see people for hours at a time on this route.

Anyway for lunch I stopped at the dairy bar restaurant. It's ace. One of the best burgers I have had in ages, and the lads won't like me saying this who I went on a stag to Barcelona with recently, but even as good as burger nas! And as I'm leaving Canada I thought I better try poutine. Now essentially this is fries with young cheese gated on them and gravy poured over. And that's exactly what it tastes like, chips n gravy but with melted cheese. Maybe I was just starving but it tasted great. But not as good as my lemon ice slushy. Oh yeah!

And a little more hot dust later I have found a campsite on a place called loon lake. My family will know all about loons. And by that I mean they are a kind of Canadian species of duck that somewhere we stayed in whistler had hundreds of them decorating the place. But they probably do know all about the other sort to. Trouble is there are no loons here. Either kind as far as I can tell.  However the lake makes an awesome swimming pool. I cannot tell you how good that felt. What really surprised me though, an indication of just how warm summer is here, I reckon the lake was warmer than swimming in the Caribbean sea. But there is a little dock you can swim out to and sun bathe and dive from. Happy times.

So tomorrow the border, Montana, and 3 days til Whitefish is the plan. Hopefully they will let an unemployed vagrant in like myself and my six month visa is worth the paper it's written on.

I was also told to watch out for strange hill billy folk in Montana until I get down to Whitefish. Strange as in the deliverance style rapist strange. Reassuring words. As if I didn't have enough to worry about with bears, cougars and loons!

Well Rested

Today has proved a seemingly international kind of day. Breakfast with a German, dinner with an Aussie, and drinks with some Canadians and Americans. Oh and lunch with me and well just a chocolate milk. I refuse to pay 10 dollars for a tiny sandwich. And where was I that charged such exorbitant food prices, I'm sure any of you winter alpine enthusiasts can guess.

On my rest day, I got back on my bike obviously, and went the 3 miles or so down to fernie ski resort of course. And I had an absolute blast. Putting your bike on a ski lift is THE best way to get up hills. And I was loving all the downhill and no pedaling. The mainly green and blue routes I did had lots of twisty, rooty, Rocky single track, which once I had got back into that style of riding was so much fun. Basically it was like all the good bits of a Welsh trail centre with none of the slogging your guts out up hill. I don't want to put panniers back on now! 

Thanks to the lifties there for giving me some idea of the routes my bike would be up to (they have some routes there for people who don't want to see tomorrow, or at least without a tree branch stuck in their chest cavity or another fifty or so equally horrific injuries just looking at the routes bring to my mind) and helping me out in learning how to load my bike on to the lift. A new experience. Also the lady who sold me my ticket and explained some of the routes to see the best bits of the mountain. Including the location of  their 'resident moose', who I didn't see, but I love the description of as a resident. Like the dude had a mortgage on his particular patch.

And one more shout out to an outstanding Canadian Darren, and his lovely wife Sharon, and their American friends Connie and Kevin who were such fun company for me and my Aussie dinner companion Camilla. Darren was very generous in donating to my charity page so sincere thanks. Right I need to go find my map to the US border.

Fried to Fernie

So my short time in Elkford is done and it's back out on the road. Not before an interesting time in the hotel pub the night before though. The small crowd in there were definitely locals (not to mention all driving home i reckon as well, so i won't be riding around anywhere after dark while I'm here) and my one or two well deserved beers became without choice more like 4, and some guy who would start singing at the top of his voice randomly insisted on buying everyone black Russians. This made the two and a half mile climb straight out the front door the next morning a bit bleeeeuggh!

But once that was over it has been a steady downhill ever since for the fifty miles into fernie. And the first half down to sparwood was really lovely just following the fording and elk rivers down the valley. I kept my eyes peeled for bears in the glades high up but no joy yet. Check out the hunting sign shot to s#$@ in the photo haha.

But in sparwood I did find a big beast. Checkout the size of the mutha truck in the photo below. The world's largest apparently. And having been past a mine on the way to sparwood, I can say that there isn't much sign of industry out here, but when the Canadians do industry they do it big! Sparwood was weird though, seemed mostly to be a mall car park with this truck in it.

Anyway the day was getting hot so I pressed on to fernie. In theory this was an easy 20 miles or so down the main highway. And in reality it was. But what I remember was being absolutely baked by the sun while riding into a warm headwind, and monster rig after monster rig driving past making me feel pretty vulnerable to a good squishing.

When I made it to fernie only a couple of hours later I was very relieved. Fernie being a famous ski resort it was somewhere I had been keen to check out. But at first it looked like it was going to be another north American town on a grid system with lots of dull boxes for buildings. But actually as I rode up and down its grid system some of the residential areas turned out to be lovely and feel well lived in, and not simply thrown up. And the old downtown area is pretty too, lots of old big square stone and brick buildings down one street.

I'm staying at a place called the raging elk hostel. It's kinda cool, i can see with its in-house cinema (meaning big telly and sofas), pool tables, bar etc. It would be real popular in ski season. However right now it's deserted, I haven't seen another guest all evening. I have a 4 bed room to myself. Result. Some of you will also be pleased to know it's an impressive $25 a night compared to $320

Anyway tomorrow is a rest day but I have a plan :-)

Bears

Nope, still not seen one. But when I arrived at the trail for elk pass a grizzly had just been spotted. Tord, a guy doing the great divide who pulled into the campsite I stayed at last night a few hours after me saw it twice though, once a lot closer than he would of liked as it popped up out of a bush beside him. I did see lots of bear scat right on the trail, you can tell from the hundreds of berry seeds in it. So they really are out there.

So I have now arrived in Elkford, camping last night at a place called Tobermory (hehe) recreation site, just below the pass. The campsite was essentially a bench and a cabin, but it's all cool as it costs nothing.

However...just to continue with a theme from an earlier entry..Mosquitoes....argh! I have already used a full can of bug spray, but have still been well chewed.

The plus side of the campsite though especially on such a hot day was the bath. See attached photo.

Coming up to elk pass yesterday and my first crossing of the divide I passed boulton creek trading post. Which sounds cool. But translated into 'English' means campsite shop. Still it was the first shop for two days. However there was certainly no fresh fruit or veg, in fact the chilled section consisted entirely of soft drinks. But a hot dog and a carton of cold chocolate milk for lunch and I was a happy man.

The trek up to the pass was pretty steep in places but all in all, despite a little pushing up the 'vertical wall' it wasn't too bad. However you end up following pylons along the top for ages before you hit the divide and cross from Alberta into British Columbia. And the view. Well... trees, bear scat, and a gate to be honest. But coming down the other side I popped out the trees and some of the views were breathtaking. I'm finding that every now and then I need to stop and look around, as I get so focused on the trail i can almost pass entire mountain views by, and believe me it's worth stopping and taking in what an incredible place this is.

Today has been a reasonably easy 40 mile cruise into Elkford and in reality was only a half day ride. Despite some horses trying their best to cause a traffic jam on an otherwise deserted road. And now I'm here it is so good to have a shower and a proper feed. I also got to fulfill an ambition, ordering a slice of pie in a proper diner. Result!

Oh and forgive me if any of these posts are a little confusing, they're all being done on my phone.  Time to go for a snooze then a well earned beer in the pub downstairs.