I was on the road a
little earlier than Bryan but he soon caught me and surged ahead. I
was past trying to match tempos and just focused on tapping out something I
felt I could achieve without wrecking the machine further. The
first climb of the day was a pleasant gentle affair, through lovely pasture
with a smatterings of cows, before affording great views of Mt Fleecer, with
the town of Butte at its base. On
descending into Butte I missed the contrived entry and had to backtrack and
negotiate a short segment of tight singletrack, eventually parking outside the
local Safeway. It
had been a bloody cold morning, so a large cup of hot soup, some drinking
yoghurt, and some good quality bagels hit the spot. It's
so hard to find unsweetened bread in the US so I bought a whole bag of bagels
for later, along with my usual resupply bits and pieces. Bryan
turned up at the Safeway a little later, having first scoured various
establishments for coffee.
I headed off and
soon Bryan caught me up, then surged ahead again. I
was enjoying dictating my own pace, content in the knowledge that although I
was on the verge of falling apart, everything still seemed to be holding, for
now. Even
the saddle sores I'd accrued in the first few days were behaving in the context
of the different set of knicks. A
few bagels later I was feeling unusually good, reeled Bryan in and surged over
the next climb, catching another rider I'd met at the bike store in Helena,
Tyler Ubinger, before walking sections of the bald hill that takes one to the
Fleecer ridge decent. I
rode this down to the tree line, then (painfully) hobbled the rest. Bryan
came past me riding the whole thing. Chapeau! I
think I could have managed it too, however if I'd KO'd myself courtesy of one
entirely predictable segment I would never have heard the end of it.
Bryan and I
continued our decent down to the road and the Wise River store for another
episode of resupply, a game also played out by Tyler, who arrived shortly after
us, and Nic and Peter, naturally there before us. Bryan, Nic, Tyler,
Peter and I now faced a pretty solid march on sealed roads up a long valley,
with the outpost of Polaris, as well as some swanky lodges, waiting on the
other side. Bryan
and I had plans to go a little further down the other side and camp in Bannack
State Park. We
set off together-ish, but I didn't try to hold the others with their fandangled
aero setups and watts to burn. Although
sealed, into a headwind this climb was a real beast.
After
what seemed like hours I crested and cruised down the other side in fading
light and was torn as to whether to cut the day short of the kms I needed and
spend a night in lush digs at the Hight Mountain Lodge. This
was a pivotal moment for me. I
knew that if I bailed at this point I was basically conceding I didn't have
what it took for the Tour Divide in the time frame I'd nominated. In
the days that had already passed I was OK up to about the 160 km mark, but the
extra hours to get over 200 were proving a real struggle. In
any case, I'd made a casual agreement to bivvy with Bryan at a certain spot and
I didn't want to let him down, so somewhat reluctantly I let the driveway to
High Mountain Lodge slip past as gravity pulled me into the darkness of a wide
expansive valley, quite unlike anything I'd seen thus far - an alpine desert of
saltbush and sage, of darkness, stars and the silhouette of distant peaks. It
was truly tranquil and beautiful!
An hour or so later
I pulled into Bannack State park, and cruised the camping area to find no other
Dividers present, but there were an elderly couple who'd been following the
race and we chatted for a little while before setting up my bivvy. Just
as I was settling in Tyler arrived. He'd
booked a room in a lodge near Polaris but missed it in the dark, so ended up
pitching here as well. Nice
campsite, I liked it!
(237 km, 3188 m)
Bryan Bergstedt
Fleecer Ridge
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