Day 12: a beautiful ride up Huckleberry Mountain

We were on the road this morning just a tad after 08:00 after a long, restful night sleep in our rustic little cabin. After a few miles of pavement, we turned off and headed east into the mountains. It was a beautiful, cool morning and the gravel road winded and rose gently but consistently up Huckleberry Mountain. At one point the road ended and we had to ride/push our bikes up a short singletrack until we hit another logging road. After a couple of hours we had climbed about 1,500′ and we took a short walk to Clearwater Lake. It was beautiful! We saw groups of deer on two different shores and the lake was a beautiful Caribbean blue green. It also had a very wide shallow shelf but alas, we did not fish it…

On the walk back from the lake Johnny D spied some huckleberries so we grazed on them (while keeping a sharp eye out for bears) for some time. For those that have not had the pleasure, huckleberries are like blueberries but they are easily twice as flavorful.

When we got back to the road, we met some fishermen coming down to fish with float tubes. They told us the area around Clearwater lake was loaded with Grizzlies and to be very careful. A bit later we passed a lady that had been picking huckleberries and she said the same thing- and that she saw a grizzly yesterday. All we have seen so far is grizzly bear scat…

We had to detour around extensive landslides/boulder fields so we took a logging road down and then headed into the little town of Seeley Lake. All in all, a beautiful day!

JD here with a personal tale: after about day 3 I felt some soreness in my seat and mistook it for a small bruise caused by the very rough and rocky roads over which we were traveling, and I thought I just needed to ride through it. However, by the end of yesterday’s ride it had become painfully obvious that I had developed a pretty serious saddle sore. I read about how to deal with such things on the internet and also reached out to experienced cyclist friends who provided me with great advice. So after proper overnight care, in the morning I put on both of my riding shorts, used a liberal amount of chamois butter and changed the position of my bike seat. Also, during today’s ride, I tried to take weight of the sore side whenever possible. All these measures seem to have really helped, as I was not as sore at the end of the day as I was yesterday. So I send my thanks to Nick B, David K and Coach Darryl.

Daily totals: 39 miles and 2,500′ of climbing; cumulative: 439 miles and 23,808′ of climbing

Obligatory scenery photos: