It was 42 degrees when we broke camp this morning- Buck had two cups of hot coffee and JD two mochas. It takes us about two hours to have breakfast, break camp and pack everything up so we hit the road around 9:00- also pretty typical for us so far. We had an immediate 1,300′ climb on a VERY rough and rocky road to finish the climb over the Whitefish Divide (Continental Divide crossing #2).
We couldn’t zoom down the other side of the pass due to the rough road with loose cobbles but it was downhill for a while and we did enjoy it! We stopped for lunch and Johnny D crafted a knife out of the same plant that Indians used for their peanut butter eons ago…
Our original plan was to ride about halfway up Red Meadow pass (around 1,300′) and wild camp on a stream so we could bathe- and we really needed to bathe. But once we got to our planned point, there was no obvious place to camp. We did find one nice place by a river but the mosquitos were more awful than usual so we passed on it. So we kept climbing, and climbing and eventually reached a beautiful lake with a campground right at the summit! The campground also had food lockers so we didn’t need to hang a bear bag- which is way harder than you might think given the preponderance of scraggly white firs. And a picnic table is so nice as opposed to foraging on the ground…
Daily totals: two summits; 42 miles and 4,000′ climbing
The road up Whitefish Divide:
The top of Whitefish Divide:
And the road down:
Lunch stop with Johnny D’s neolithic peanut butter spreading tool:
Some more pretty scenery on the way down:
These mountains are in Glacier National Park, just to the east of where we are riding:
The aftermath of an avalanche-
Red Meadow Lake- taken right from our campsite:
