Wet roads and wind

The brightest orange

Is the highway median

Laid out on wet pavement

Beneath autumn leaves.

          ------------

Clouds of gray drift in

Above still-green birches

Of the bitterroots

To wash away the summer.

                ------------

“REG. 3.07”

The sign flashes red and green

Outside Ron’s Gas and Go

As the trucks push on

To Kootenai National Forest

In clouds of dirty mist.

The hours of wet, cold and monotony are fine times for philosophizing and poetic musings. I’m in a better mood when the sun is out and the road is easy, but I can only go so far exulting over beautiful sunrises and pristine landscapes before the writing gets damn boring.

So now that I’m sitting comfortable in a warm, dry place, I’ll go ahead and thank Mother Nature for being such a burr in my ass in the days that I pedaled out of Northwest Montana, across the Idaho panhandle into eastern Washington.

I got to enjoy about 12 miles of steady biking after I left my campsite north of Missoula before the brutal wind set in. It was like someone had put superglue on my tires. I could crank for all I was worth and go maybe a mile an hour faster.

Highway 200 follows the wide and blue waters of the Clark Fork through pastureland and stands of conifers. The wind kicked up whitecaps on the river, meeting the rain-swollen flow head-on. Unfortunately, the thousands of cubic feet of flowing water were much better equipped to resist the blustery air than I was.

I hadn’t packed enough water. The Clark Fork was a tempting refill option, but I was reluctant given the number of farms in the area. Eventually, I pulled up at a farm stand that was closing down for the season.

I asked a guy loading stuff into his pickup if he had a hose out back.

“There’s a spring down the road,” he told me. “It’s the best water in the world.”

The water ran out from a faucet in a rock wall beside the tracks.

A BNSF train thundered by as I filled my bottles. I took a drink. Indeed, the water was pure, almost sweet.

A truck pulled up with a bunch of empty jugs. I got moving again.

The wind let up a bit by the afternoon, allowing me to finish the day with about 75 miles of progress. I did an additional four miles of pedaling to get to my campsite, located along a tributary. A sign said that there was potential chemical contamination in the water, so I skipped the boiled pasta dinner I’d planned for myself.

I was the only person in camp excepting for an RV parked at the other end.

That changed around 8 p.m. at night when an SUV pulled up about 100 feet from my tent.

I peered out and saw the guy in the cab. A light was on, like he was reading something. I was a little annoyed, but figured he’d drive off soon enough. I made note of my bear spray nearby. If he was thinking about doing a little axe murdering he’d get a face-full of capsaicin. 

I felt a certain reluctance to go to sleep with the truck out there and its little light. Finally, I decided I had to see what was up. I walked over and waved through the window. The guy waved back.

I introduced myself and asked how he was doing.

He was out of the house because he’d been in an argument with his girlfriend and didn’t feel like staying at her place. The argument had been going for a couple days, he said, and he’d been parking in the same spot where my I’d set up the tent.

We talked for a while about different parts of the west where we had traveled. It turned out that he had rafted the same section of the Green River that I had guided that summer.

I was reasonably convinced that he was not the axe murdering type and went back to the tent.

There was a cold drizzle the next morning. On the way back from the campground’s outhouse, I saw the guy walking outside with a handgun holstered at his belt (for the bears, he said.)

I started down the road again with numb fingers. Double dump trucks and logging rigs flew by, kicking trails of spray up off the pavement. The Clark Fork was a dead fish gray under the rain-swollen sky.

I crossed into Idaho for the third time on the trip and kept going to the massive Lake Pend Oreille, whose shoreline I’d be following for almost a day.

The map showed me a campground that was about a mile and a half out on a peninsula. When I got there, I found that it had just closed for the summer. I ended up camping on some public land on a wooded hill across the street.

I went into Sandpoint the next day, a city that my Rand McNally atlas identified as the most beautiful small town in the U.S. Much of the scenery, such as views across the lake, was shrouded in the fog. Traffic was busy along the narrow road and made for a harrowing pedaling until I got to the bike paths.

I splurged on some hash browns and hot coffee in town then peddled across the lake on a two-mile long highway bridge. When I got to the other side, I realized I’d been going the wrong way. Rather than face a stiff headwind, I decided to go on the south side of the lake and rejoin my course near the Washington border.

One disadvantage of this plan was that the south side of the lake turned out to be relentlessly hilly. I was exhausted by the time that I got back on course.

Finally, I got back on the main road and crossed the border to Washington. The area was wooded and it was easy to find a tent stop. It would only be a couple days until I got to visit friends in Wenatchee and Seattle. Now that I was out of the mountain states, I figured there would be easier going and looked forward to some more leisurely days ahead. I soon found out that Washington would have plenty of challenges of its own to throw at me. 

Across the Bitterroots

Moon over my camp south of Lost Trail Pass

I didn’t feel half bad considering that I’d pedaled 100 miles the day before.

It was another shivery morning, but I was able to spare myself some suffering by warming my hands in an electric drier inside the camp bathroom. Spoiled.

I definitely felt stiff as I got back on the bike but the air was invigorating. The road followed a riparian zone of trees and farmland below the sparse, arid hills above. In a few miles, I came upon a sign marking the 45^th parallel — exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. It brought me back to childhood summers in Rangeley, Maine, which happens to be at the same latitude and has a colorful sign up outside of the Pine Tree Frosty to mark the invisible line.

While Rangeley was a couple thousand miles to the east of me, I was excited to pull into Salmon, Idaho, which I’d already heard stories about over the summer. Specifically, I’d heard about the Salmon River, a.k.a The River of No Return, with its hardcore whitewater. I’d join fellow raft guides around someone’s laptop and watch hours of rafts and kayaks going up against the massive waves, rocks and keeper holes, often getting stranded, flipped and generally carned-out by the river’s fury.

I counted down the mile marks to Salmon with growing anticipation. My priorities included buying some real food at a grocery store, and maybe grabbing some Internet time for myself as well.

Going back on the busy roads was a bit of a shock after having minimal traffic for over a hundred miles. Cities also tend to have steeper hills than wussy highway grades, so I found myself puffing hard to get to the supermarket, which was maybe a hundred feet of climb from the river in the center of town.

I'm always crossing the line

I loaded up way more food than I needed and set off for a quiet riverside park where I could gorge myself in peace.

I discovered that my brakes were getting worn when I went back down the hill and found that it took much longer than it should have to come to a complete stop at an intersection. It occurred to me that this might be something I’d want to look at before I went down the next mountain pass.

That was, if I could make myself stay in town that long.

Being amongst civilization again was disorienting rather than reassuring. Suddenly, I couldn’t just take a leak wherever. I had to worry about colliding with people and vehicles again. I felt self-conscious about my oddball bike rig with all the gear hanging off as well as my scraggly appearance. I sat alone at a picnic table by the river where I ate more food than most people go through in a day.

It was about 45 miles to reach the Montana border in the north. I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it over the 7,000-foot Lost Trail Pass that day, but I was already feeling restless with the time that I’d spent in town. I decided to skip the library or finding a good bike shop in town. It could wait until Missoula.

Salmon River, looking north toward the Bitterroot Mountains

I left town under a broiling sun, feeling bloated and lethargic after the picnic table food binge.

The Salmon River was a beautiful traveling companion. It wound blue and sparkling through the dry hills and canyon cliffs. I’d see fly fishermen here and there standing out in waders. One thing I didn’t see was Epic River Carnage: no massive standing waves or homicidal cataracts. The most adrenaline I could see in this section was little fast water riffles, which would barely make Class I.

Every once in a while, I’d see the familiar sight of a trailer loaded down with rafts, but none of them were in the water. The good stuff must have been somewhere else.

Landscape shot near the Salmon River

My showdown with the Bitterroot Mountains started with a gradual incline on the way to Lost Pass at the Montana border. For several miles, I kept going up steadily. I stopped at a couple historical signs to catch my breath and get water. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had been in the neighborhood when they’d crossed the Continental Divide. Being on a known map and more or less contained within civilization, I felt a bit coiffed compared to these grizzled historic forebears. No doubt, Meriwether Lewis had smelled a fair stretch worse than I did at this point in his expedition.

Camping looked like it might be an issue. The road was hemmed in by private summerhouses, which made me worry about finding find a tent site without trespassing.

The got steeper, and soon I was in low gear standing up on the pedals. The road switched back again, and again. When was I going to be in Montana?

As tired as I was, I still thought I might be able to crank it the rest of the way up the pass by nightfall. I even went past a turnoff to a national forest campground so that I could make more distance. After a couple more miles of grinding uphill struggle, I decided that Montana could wait another day. I'd done close to 80 miles.

The best place I could find that wasn’t on an impossibly steep slope or in someone’s backyard was a patch of forest in the edge of a new subdivision. I dragged my bike over a guardrail and guided it past the trees with plastic ribbons around their trunks. In another year, my tent-site might be the living room for yet another roadside mcmansion.

I started the next morning with a five-mile grind up to the 7,000-foot Lost Trail Pass into Montana. Each time I got to the top of a switchback, I expected to see the top — only to see more road winding up ahead of me.

Several drivers coming down from Montana shot me thumbs-ups and gave me inspirational honks. It was late morning by the time I reached the crest of the hill.

There was a visitor station and a small ski resort set up on the border. If I’d have wanted to bike a couple miles out of my way, I could have made it to the Continental Divide, but decided I’d rather use that time to get closer to Missoula, which was 90 miles to the north.

One important priority I took care of was checking my brakes. I adjusted the clamps so that even if they weren’t the best, they would put out enough drag so I could slow down and steer myself out of trouble. I practiced stopping a couple times, took a deep breath, and then started down the other side of the pass.

Finally!

The rhythm of the wheels turning blurred into a constant thrum and I felt my eyes tearing up in the wind. I didn’t turn a pedal, but every muscle was clenched as I flew down the curves. It was awesome.

I tried to use the brakes as little as possible. I leaned hard on the curves (though maybe not as hard as I would have if I’d been riding without gear.) Sometimes, I let myself drift over center line in order to make a turn. Every gram of my concentration was locked on the asphalt stretch in front of me, the dashes on the pavement coming at me slowly at first, than speeding up, finally rushing past in a blur of gray and yellow.

The mountain forests gave way to farmland. I’d gone through 10 miles without pedaling a whit. The next four miles were a more gradual downhill and I barely worked at all.

The road eventually flattened out to a scenic ride along the Clark Fork River. The Bitterroot Mountains towered to the west.

One thing that I wasn’t a fan of was the traffic. Vehicles coming and going from their ranches and vacation houses flew by my left side. There was precious little margin to work with and it cut into my enjoyment.

As I worked my way further north, I found bigger towns with strip malls and cars backed up with stoplights.

Fortunately, there was an intermittent bike trail that let me avoid some of the mayhem. Even so, I found a tough wind that started shoving me around. I started to slow down.

It got later and later in the afternoon, and all I could find was commercial development and nothing that was available for camping without going way off course. It'd been about 85 miles so far. I was so tired that it was turning into a colossal effort just to go another mile

Bitterroot Mountains as seen from Montana

.

Finally, I took a road to a recreation area in a canyon to the west. There was no camping allowed, a sign explained. Well, screw it.

I trundled my bike up steep bluff where I hoped it would stay out of sight and set to getting my tent set up. Of course, as soon as I set to work, I saw a couple hikers coming down the other side.

I sort of shrugged my shoulders at what I was doing. They moved on. I didn’t think they were about to turn me in.

Finally, I threw my bag inside my tent and fell into the sleep of the dead. 

Camp: undisclosed location, south of Missoula

100-Mile Push for Salmon

The road toward Salmon going through the Idaho National Laboratory (Sept. 2013)

My hands were so cold I could barely make myself enjoy the sight of the sunbeams playing along the mist rising off the Snake River nearby.

It was another shivery, dew-drenched morning. I walked out onto a dock, dipped my pot into the fetid water with its gray floaties and set about making oatmeal. My numb fingers barely worked the stove.

If there was something to be grateful for, it was that there was no wind. It would be relatively flat going today. With any luck, I would be able to make a good part of the journey to Salmon, Idaho, another 145 miles ahead of me. Towns, camping and water would be few and far between.

I pedaled out from my campsite wearing several layers and heavy mittens, peddling hard for warmth. I veered across some railroad tracks and through the tiny burg of Roberts, Idaho where I’d bought beer the day before.

A mile later, I went over I-15. A local had suggested some back roads that I could take north, instead of peddling in the highway breakdown lane. The route didn’t appear on my map, so I was going on faith that I would eventually intersect Highway 28 after 12 miles and be on the right track.

The landscape was farm after farm, most of it had been harvested recently, so they were acres of nubs. 20-foot stacks of straw bales flanked the massive parcels, like buttresses against an attack. I could look across the fields to the traffic on I-25. Beyond lay snow-capped mountains to the northeast.

Hawks wheeled in the blue sky, searching for voles or field mice.

Tent site by the Snake River

By the time I hit Highway 28, I was feeling warmed up and in a pretty good groove. The sun chased off the morning chills as it climbed higher. I flew past Terreton without stopping, but pulled up at a convenience store in Mud Lake to refill water and satisfy a junk food itch.

Only a week into my trip, I was already beginning to develop a disturbing pattern around gas stations. It was easy to leave my bike unlocked outside where I could see it, go in and spend cash on some plastic-wrapped commodity, bombing my body with simple sugar and fat. Usually the stuff was overpriced too.

Even when there was a supermarket on the relatively isolated route I’d chosen, such stops cost time. I felt wary about leaving my bike with the tent and other gear outside.

Convenience stores, with their ease of access and ready supply of quick, prepackaged foodstuffs were the go-to.

Long miles have a way of building up an insatiable desire for industrial, extruded polymers like Oreos or Twizzlers. Some of this can be explained by the fact that burning mad calories on the road, lends itself to a craving for the most calorie-dense foods available. That isn’t the whole story though. No, I was trying to fill something.

There were the lonely hours at the pedals with no company but my bored and often restless mind. The satisfaction of a good day of biking is hardly a guarantee; not like the guaranteed sugar rush and endorphins from that first slug of Dr. Pepper — however fleeting that satisfaction might be.

Even walking among the store shelves with their flashy colors and dazzling variety was a kind of escape, a denial of the austere nature of my journey. The fact that I got so caught up in this, speaks to the fact that I was going about something wrong. I wasn’t keeping my mind on the ride. I believe that giving up comforts and finding the strength to thrive without them is an important part of adventure. Yet, every day I undermined the sacrifices made on the trip stuffing my face full of soul-drugging crap straight out of the bowels of commercialism.

The question was whether I could ride beyond the gravitational pull of these desires, or whether such needs would begin to accumulate around me like dead weight until they finally dragged me down to right where I started.

When it came to weight, I decided to revisit my original model where I took my dry bag off my back and strapped it to my backboard with the rest of the gear. Though this meant more risk of weaving, I figured it was an acceptable trade for the flat, empty stretch that lay ahead.

It was one of those infinite desert roads that stretches straight out to the vanishing-point on the horizon and summons all those Americana fantasies about the open highway. Two desiccated mountain ranges rose up on either side, the faintest hint of snow around the tall peaks. It was maybe 100 more miles to Salmon. There wouldn’t be so many distractions for a while.

One constant companion that joined me somewhere around the Idaho border was the squeal of my front axle. Even after I applied graphite lube the night before, it continued its loud, high pitch shrieking as I went along, like a dull blade bearing down into my sanity.

Another mechanical woe was the fact that I could no longer get into my highest gear. Every time I made the last shift, the chains made pissed-off grinding noises and the pedals spun around helpless.

I’ll be the first to admit that going into this trip with more bike mechanic knowledge would have been an unquestionable improvement. As it stood, I figured I was better off on a noisy bike that I could pedal pretty well, than screwing around with it and making things worse in the middle of nowhere.

Shifting all the weight to the back of my bike was great as far as my spine was concerned, not so great when it came to the risk of flipping ass over tea kettle and getting flattened by an oncoming semi. I focused on mitigating the bike’s desire to wobble and cause trouble. The gear was obviously uncomfortable jammed together on the backboard and wanted to slide to one side or the other. Much as I wanted to make adjustments, I also knew it would be a colossal pain to stop peddling, find somewhere to lean my rig and do the necessary tweaks. To slow down was to lose control, and this kept me peddling steadily for many miles.

 Not that there was anywhere to stop. Both sides of the highway belonged to the Idaho National Laboratory — a facility for nuclear research amongst other things. Not surprisingly, this land was off limits for camping.

I refilled water again at a small convenience store that may have been the only reason why there was a town on the map. I bought a hit of Fritos too.

Whether I was traveling in the right kind of Zenned-out bliss or no, one thing for certain was that I was kicking ass in distance with 70-something miles down by mid-afternoon. A bit of tailwind helped considerably, so did my frustration about the pathetic 30-mile day from earlier.

The town of Leadore was in 30 miles, a sign announced. I figured I’d camp somewhere in the backcountry before that, then go the rest of the way to Salmon on the next day. The thing was that I was feeling uncommonly good. I powered up a gradual incline to the 7,186-foot Gilmore Summit, where I put my dry bag on my back again, then I flew down the other side — drunk on gravity and the wind on my face. Even so, I knew it wouldn’t last forever. My legs were already tired, and were bound to ache like a mother later that night.

I kept seeing great places to camp and kept passing them. The mile markers kept putting me closer to Leadore, which would be just about 100 miles from where I’d started peddling that morning. Maybe I’d camp at the other side of town.

So it might have been had it not been for the $5 camping spot in the center of the town. I looked at the freshly mown lawns, thinking about how nice it would be to have water and all the other conveniences right next to me. Still, I could be the badass who did more than 100 miles and still slept on a bed of gravel. I leaned against a picnic table, caught up between whether I should peace out or pitch tent. The camp owner came out and I finally decided on the latter.

They had showers.

Bike portrait at Gilmour Summit