June 5 - Gramps and Granny Decide to Ride Adventure Cycling's Great Divide

Is it a Road Too Far?

Socked in by Weather in Whitefish

The Silver City Kitty (Kitty) and Corre Caminos (CC) first started talking about riding Adventure Cycling's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route over six months ago.  Our plans went through several iterations, but we finally decided to ride as much of the route as possible, given our time limitations, going from North to South.

We really want to do this, but there are times we ask ourselves, "Is this a bridge too far?  Are we really capable of doing this?"  Well, we won't know until we try. 

We trained and we planned.  We promised ourselves and each other to be flexible, given that we both are in our mid-60's, CC has knee problems and Kitty has only been riding a little over a year.  We carefully packed the necessities a little over a week ago, and loaded them into a friend's car.  Then we spent four days on the road, helping a friend move from Silver City New Mexico to Montana.  We finally arrived in Whitefish last night, to flash flood warnings, thunderstorms, and rain, snow and ice.  So much for well-laid plans.

We are both eager to get on our bikes.  It feels like the prologue to the trip is taking too long, and we want to get started on the first chapter.  Unfortunately, the 7-day weather forecast on the Weather Channel in our Super 8 motel room is filled with pictures of clouds and rain.  We think there was one picture that showed a little sun peaking through a cloud, but that was a few days out.

Thank goodness we talked about the need to be flexible.

We just finished a yummy breakfast at the Buffalo Cafe in Whitefish.  CC is returning our rental car at the airport while Kitty is at the Whitefish library, where she is about to be asked to relinquish the computer because my one hour limit is up.  Thus the terse entry. 

Our plans for today are to pick up our bikes, sort through and repack our stuff, and see if there is any way we can reduce the weight.  It looks like there may be a short window of lighter rain tomorrow morning, so we are going to head south to Bigfork.  We talked to the Forest Service yesterday and they said Whitefish Divide still isn't open, and they are supposed to get another 6 to 10 inches of snow today.  So we will start our journey south from Whitefish instead of from Roosville.  Maybe someday we'll start in Banff and do the part of the trail from Roosville to Whitefish.

Our plan, then, is to ride south on the road to Bigfork.  There is a state park there - and we may camp out.  If the weather is bad, we will see if there is a room we can stay at.  From there we will head out to Seeley Lake, again on the road.  Given the weather, we are pretty certain Richmond Pass is snow-covered.  Perhaps the silver lining to all this bad weather is that we won't be spending time in bear country right now.  And we will bypass the beautiful but infamous Richmond Pass.

This is beautiful country, even with the gray, rainy weather.  People have been friendly and helpful.  And we are still getting along well together.  Now if we can only get some better weather, we'll be all set. 

As silly as it seems given the weather we have right now, one of our big concerns is wildfires.  We drove up past the Whitewater-Baldy fire soon after we left Silver City.  The huge plume of smoke looked like a mushroom cloud.  We had talked doing this trip South to North - and that would not have been possible given the fires.  We also hear reports of fires in Colorado.  Given that the snow pack in the Rocky Mountains was lighter than usual this year, this may be a bad year for wildfires.  It is certainly starting out that way. 

Time to sign off for now.  So long from Kitty and CC.  We'll post another entry as soon as we get access to a computer.