Journey through the Rockies: 2018 Tour Divide Post-Race Thoughts

I started driving down the main road to the Mexican border with Jeff Sharpe at around 1:00 in the morning for a 2:00 northbound departure.  I was thankful for his willingness to provide transportation at that early hour and he mentioned he wished more riders would get an early start because the heat of the day was a surprise to many. The stretch between Hachita and Antelope Wells is remote save for the occasional Border Patrol vehicle. The area has a high density of rabbits, and Jeff did his best to dodge them, but one after another kept meeting their fate after making erratic rabbit decisions at the last possible moment. By the time we made it to Antelope Wells, 10 or so had been taken out. As we got out of the car at the border, we looked at the front end of the car and saw one rabbit had hit the radiator square on and the radiator was leaking cooling fluid at a steady rate. I had plenty of extra water for the first day and gave a bottle to Jeff to top off his reservoir before he hastily drove back to Hachita. We agreed that if his car started overheating, I’d catch up to him shortly on the road and give some more water so he could make it back home. He left. Suddenly it was dark and quiet.

 

Fires burning near the border several miles to the west sent a layer of smoke near the road. This was how I wanted to start my adventure, with no people, and no grand depart, just the start of a personal adventure and journey into the unknown. I’ve never been relatively isolated for such a long time in my life, and that aspect intrigued me about an individual time trial (ITT). I predicted that I wouldn’t be bothered by it, but there’s only one way to find out.

My Dynamo-powered bike light, coupled with my helmet light, provided more than enough illumination for the dark start. I quickly learned of the large animal population near Antelope Wells by shining my head light off the road and seeing different sets of eyes reflecting back. Groups of eyes together were usually deer, or pronghorn. Small eyes were often coyotes or rabbits, and eyes higher off the ground were generally cows, or perhaps buffalo which can occasionally be seen in the area. The high density of rabbits that Jeff and I encountered on the car ride, also had to be negotiated on the bike. Because of the slower speeds there were less erratic suicidal bunnies to be dealt with…except one. I saw him a ways out and veered my bike to the left, he jerked left, I veered right, he jumped right. I made a last minute swerve that must have baffled the bunny because it jumped straight up in the air and it landed on top of my left thigh. I thought, “Look rabbit, I’ve got enough crap on this bike and I don’t have any room for freeloaders.” It bounced off my thigh and went on its way with both of our heartrates one notch higher.

**

While pulling into the Beaverhead Work Station in the Gila, I could see massive forest fires ahead with a plume of smoke that would rival Colorado summer thunderheads. I talked to the Forest Service employees on duty and they had just received Montana-based smoke jumpers to cut line in front of it and the two other fires in the area. I asked about the exact location of the fire and the details were not available as the fire had recently started and had grown rapidly. Just eyeing it, it seemed like 15 miles to the NNW which would put it close to the route ahead. I asked for the Forest Service employees’ best judgment for my situation and he said he would wait it out and not go ahead. I decided that I would continue on the route and if things didn’t look good I would turn around to the work station to wait it out. As I got closer I judged that the fire was burning 5 miles to the west of the route, but the smoke was pushing east and seemed thick due to the winds. I decided to camp well short of the fire and would make my call in the morning based on the winds. I woke up and even though the winds had shifted direction, the smoke was still thick in the air. I decided to push ahead with my buff over my nose and mouth. The shift in the winds had laid down the size of the fire considerably, and save for 10 miles of thick smoke, I was able to push through on route.

**

The miles out of Grant were easy and fast, but there’s a catch, no shade on the road for about 120 miles. As the sun started to heat up the day, I had these thoughts “dear sweet baby Jesus… When you finish blacklisting Dr. Huxtable from the gates, can you please invent shade in New Mexico?” My prayers were answered shortly after in the form of a random tunnel on the way to Cuba mostly in the middle of nowhere. Since I was a kid, the adventure meal of choice has been a chicken or beef ramen noodle packet crushed up dry. I sat down in the shade of the tunnel and pulled out the trusty dry Ramen packet and thought back to early memories of riding my BMX bike into the mountains of Washington State as a kid to explore the unknown, and taking a snickers and two packs of Ramen to tide me over.

As I got closer to Cuba, still in the relative middle of nowhere, I saw a vehicle parked on the side of the road with signs for snow cones and snacks. The woman driver was from the nearby Navajo tribe and happily served me a snow cone from the back of her vehicle. As we were talking two trucks of men drove up.

Navajo Men: “There’s only restless Indians around here, you better have a gun.”

Me: “I always have two guns, it’s the Wild West.” (They didn’t need to know I was referring to my bro session biceps that would be relegated to T-rex arms over the next few weeks.)

Navajo Men: “I wouldn’t stop anywhere around here if I were you.”

Me: “Only at snow cone stands 40 miles from civilization.”

I left shortly after headed for Cuba.

**

Before starting, my goals were to have zero crashes, zero navigational errors, ride 14 hours a day, and sleep 6 hours a night. I also wanted to see how my mind dealt with being relatively isolated for several weeks, something I haven’t experienced before. I wanted to push on when the weather was bad, and keep moving through towns if it wasn’t late enough in the night to stop at a hotel. Click here if you want to read my pre-ride blog BLOG POST.

After the long slog up Indiana Pass in Colorado the trail plateaus towards the top. During one of the downhill sections I was weaving around some rocks in the road and found myself channelized towards some dinner plate sized rocks. I lifted the front end to go over the rocks and suddenly found out that my bike had other ideas about what was going to happen. My front tire stopped cold sending me half over the bars and half over the side of the bike. The momentum turned my body enough in the air that the first point of impact was going to be my shoulder. I tucked my arm in and impacted near my shoulder and hip and was able to mostly roll out of it with nothing more than soreness for a couple of days. The rocks were close enough to the side of the road and a 30 degree drop-off that after the bike hit, it careened over the side and began to tumble. The force of the impacts assisted by the weight of my kit was enough to do some damage to the bike. The first thing I noticed was my Garmin Edge mount was busted. Just before leaving home I decided to put two of my wife’s hair ties in my crash kit along with gorilla tape and zip ties. The hair ties and tape were good enough to secure the mount to my aero bars and were actually strong enough to stay that way the rest of the journey. Although I didn’t notice it immediately the bike sustained more damage. As I started peddling to the top of the pass I noticed gears popping and snapping along with a grinding noise. I quickly noticed that a spoke was broken, but couldn’t sort out the shifting issues after making many micro adjustments to the indexing knob.

It was now starting to get dark as I began the long downhill section into Del Norte. About half way down as I was applying power to the pedals I heard a snap as the chain broke and was suddenly lying on the ground. I didn’t know it at the time, but my rear derailleur hanger was bent during the crash and likely contributed to my current situation. I was about 10 miles out from Del Norte in the dark and had to decide whether to play with my chain, or coast the rest of the way to town. Because I needed to go to the bike shop in the morning for repairs anyway, I chose to coast it in to Del Norte. The road was about as perfect of a grade as I could have hoped for and it kept me in the 10-15 MPH range most of the way into town. As I got closer to town the grade became flatter so I pushed my bike like a scooter with my leg which kept the momentum going. I arrived in town around midnight, got a hotel and went to the bike shop when it opened at 9:00. I’m glad I brought two derailleur hangers in my spare parts kit because the bike store didn’t carry any for my Cutthroat model. The work was done at 1 P.M.; I was cursing losing a half day to repairs, but thankful that the crash didn’t happen in a more remote location. It would have taken a while for me to figure out the hanger was the shifting culprit.

**

After nearly running out of food earlier in the ride, I made it a point to always carry more than I needed. This morphed into carrying about two day’s-worth of food during the second half of the ride. I didn’t mind carrying the extra five or so pounds and it always gave me a better option for snacks and meals as my tastes grew to dislike certain foods and crave others. I also carried more water than most riders at seven liters. Again, I wasn’t so concerned with carrying the extra weight, and I never had to get water from a river and risk giardia. It was nice to know that if a planned resupply point was closed, I didn’t need to worry about it and just press on to the next with plenty of food and water.

I entered the great basin imagining a desolate moonscape with crazy winds and no signs of life. I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually beautiful country and I enjoyed being so far away from civilization. Just past a uranium mining facility I saw four wild horses. They saw me riding on the road and began to ride beside me for a mile or so; such a cool sight to see. I stopped to take some photos and I sat down on the ground to eat some peanut M&Ms and saw all four horses lined up next to each other staring at me. I couldn’t figure out if they were waiting for the M&M handout I wasn’t going to give, or they wanted to play a little more. I got done with the snack and got back on my bike. I wanted to try and fire them up to see if they would respond and gave my best YAW YAW YEEEE HAW then sprinted off on my bike. The horses began to stir and one jumped up and kicked near the other horse. They began to run alongside me again for another mile, then broke off to attend to some other pressing horse matters. This encounter put a big smile on my face as the sun was setting, time to turn the headphone music up a couple of notches and press harder into the sunset towards whatever encounter this journey would bring next.

**

Up until Wyoming I had an incredibly dry ride, which I was thankful for. No real snow except a short section in the Brazos of New Mexico, and no mud to speak of. As I made my way towards Union Pass first came the mud, then the snow. Because of the La Nina year, Colorado and New Mexico had a very low snow pack, while Wyoming and further north had an extremely high snow pack. I started pushing through snowfields for several hours negotiating the Union Pass area. At several points I found myself post holing down to my thigh and occasionally deeper. My bike would not push at all as I was breaking new trail and the front tire would just dig in and laugh at me. During several sections the only option for progress was to throw the bike forward, lock the breaks take two plunging steps in the snow and repeat. Whatever time was saved from the lack of rain and mud earlier in the ride was balanced out by three hours of pushing near Union Pass and four hours of the same past Brooks Lake. Although I saw a few tracks in the mud on Union, I didn’t see any signs of prior passage through the snow and it was working me over pretty good. I thought that by the time the Grand Depart (GD) riders made it here, it would hopefully have melted considerably for them. I was so thankful to make it to the highway junction after Brooks Lake and I carried on to the Togwotee Lodge for a well-deserved meal and to bring life back to my numb feet.

**

I left Flagg Ranch north of Jackson Lake, Wyoming at an early hour. As I was winding through the thick forests and heading towards the Idaho border I turned a corner and saw a black mass moving away from me on the road ahead. My first thought was that it was a small black bear. I slowed my bike and turned a second corner before stopping. The black animal stopped 40 meters from me and turned around to square up on me. It was not a bear, but a 125 lb. black wolf with a beautiful coat and creepy eyes. I squared up on my bike standing tall and stared back in a match of dominance as my hand moved to my bear spray. The wolf broke her stare after 4 seconds and moved into the woods. Seconds later a larger 150 lb. multi-toned grey wolf followed behind her into the woods. This image was pressed in my mind like a photograph as I pushed through Idaho and into Montana.

**

Half way through Montana I began encountering southbound GD riders. I hadn’t seen any riders in weeks so I was excited to talk to some humans that knew what a bike was. I talked to the leader briefly, a stalky Brit whose quad was bigger than my chest. He was in good spirits, looking fresh and powering up a section that I couldn’t even ride with ease. Most were motivated, joking and excited, which I liked, but some were struck with a sickness of sorts. I could see the quitter’s cancer in their eyes. There was a similar pattern of events that would happen next. They would complain about multiple things, the wet or cold weather, their bike kit, their sore legs, their desire to go home in an attempt to gain sympathy, or to further justify the master exit plan they had been formulating in the miles prior. This is an illness that can be contagious, so I would do my best to point out the exact opposite of their own observations back to them, the best remedy, then leave shortly thereafter. Although these interactions were few, they were ones that I wanted to avoid. I ended up putting in my earphones, cranking up the tunes, and waving to most of the rest of the riders as we passed throughout Montana in the rain, hail and sun.

**

Passing into B.C. it began raining and hailing for six hours. I was starting to nod off on the bike just as a small break of sun came through the clouds. I got off, laid on the wet ground and was sleeping in 15 seconds. I was awoken by hail pelting me in the face; time to move. Besides the border guard, I didn’t see another human all day, just the wilds of the Canadian Rockies.

**

On my last night of the journey, I found myself pushing my bike up the Koko Claims portion of the Fernie reroute. As I was nearing the top I decided it was time to make camp just as some rain began to fall. My bivy sack and sleeping bag combo had served me well on the wet nights so far, so I set up shop under a large evergreen tree, covered my bivy over my head like a cocoon and was fast asleep. I woke up around 3:30 feeling cold, which was unusual because my sleep setup did well on nights down to 21 degrees in the mountains of Colorado. I soon found out that it had rained non-stop all night and my sleeping location had turned into a creek of sorts from the slope above and was taking on water. I got up for the last day of the ride and began to sort my kit and noticed my Garmin charging cable was cut in three pieces. It was working fine the night before so some rodent must have chewed through it during the night. After 20 minutes of splicing and rewiring I began negotiating the rest of Koko Claims. Several avalanche debris fields and a lot of mud from the rain made for an interesting reroute. It would continue to rain and snow for 16 hours straight turning the road to Boulton Trading Post from a relative cruise to a frustrating muddy soup.

I finished later that evening and was so happy that my wife and friend Danny were there to meet me. I ended the race feeling stronger than the day I started and somehow managed to only lose 8 lbs. Although I had a total of four crashes, I was happy to have zero navigational errors. I pushed on into the stormy weather, and skipped staying in towns if I arrived too early. I did fine alone on the ITT and actually preferred this experience vs. what I imagined the grand depart and ride with fellow racers to be. My body did fine with 5-6 hours of sleep, but started to revolt with less than four. Everyone’s Tour Divide is a completely different experience, and I couldn’t be happier with mine. At the end of the day I got everything I was hoping to get out of the ride, and so much more.