Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Day 18 & 19 & 20 & 21

Tuesday, August 11th,

ZERO miles & ZERO Feet up it was a total REST DAY at the Ratterman Cabin Thanks!

Wednesday, August 12th, 48.3 miles and 4220 accumulated vertical feet up.

About 42 of these miles were on a gravel road that was a grade above the GDMBR standard and as a bonus today only 4 moving vehicles passed us stirring up dust and the Wild Fire Smoke was only about 50% of the previous 3 or 4 days. Tonight we are staying in a RUSTIC out of the way Cabin that I would not recommend, but there is rain in the forecast & there is nothing else around here!!!

Very nice house or bigger cabin next door, nobody was around, really nice thunder storm overnight but very little rain.

Thursday, August 13th, 57 miles and 4082 accumulated vertical feet up.

What a day! If you’re not out here riding the GDMBR, there’s no way you could believe this stuff.

Any day we ride over 4000 accumulated vertical feet up, it’s a hard day especially when the ACA throws some wild single track at you like they did today!

The day started out generally just like most, get up, make oatmeal, pack bikes and get rolling down a gravel road. It wasn’t long before we started to understand that today there was going to be some surprises.

Lots of beautiful streams to cross—all had bridges

Saw a Grizzly Bear standing on the gravel road just after this creek, it stood up on hind legs, Scott and I both started yelling and it took off into the woods, we think it was about 150 feet in front of us it was not fully grown

Then some Lunch and we both took a 2nd Lunch to go wrapped very nicely in foil

I believe I was in this area a few years ago for a wonderful horse packing trip.

I’ve been missing all this natural beauty most of the trip

The Ride With GPS navigation says “take sharp left onto Trail”

This was the view from the top, it was worth the climb but we were BEAT!

Finally made it to the top of our section today

Trail started going down and opened up, THIS WAS AN UNBELIEVABLE SINGLE TRACK DOWN HILL DUMPING US OUT In Seeley Lake

This was exciting to ride down hill for at least 10 miles

Stopped to take some pictures on the way down

So lucky to have friends like Rick & Julie to let us camp on their campsite at Big Larch Campground on Seeley lake, so grateful for home made chili and cornbread for dinner, thanks hope to see you in Tampa next February

Friday, August 14th, 29.7 miles and 1547 accumulated vertical feet up. 854 Route Miles to date and this is the 3rd week complete👍

This was a planned short day. I needed to stick in 2 short days because of the availability of overnight locations and because of the large amount of climbing we have been doing and the climbing ahead of us. But!!! As we were starting the day from Big Larch Campground it started to rain, the rain built up into a steady soaker. So imagine gravel roads, lots of hills, wet phones, water spraying dirt from the road everywhere including in our eyes, in our mouth, soaking our hands and feet and legs, the good thing was, it was warm weather! Wet but not cold. We stopped in the town of Ovando Montana for a late 2nd breakfast. The waitress told us about a Community Church where we could sleep in the basement!!!

By 2:00 the rain stopped, and we left the restaurant and went to the church.

Rain falling on us bikepackers for 3 hours, here is one of the Cottonwood Lakes

The door was unlocked, instructions for overnight bikers taped on the windows, including make yourself at home, no more than 6 overnight bikers, feel free to use the kitchen (very modern and recently up dated), use the restroom and shower and laundry, and WIFI, donation of $10 per biker please and clean up after yourself. Great end to A day when more farmers and wild fire fighters were praying for rain than there were bikers praying for NO rain. 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️🚴‍♂️

Last short note: almost every day we have an encounter or 2 with other bike packers along the trail, we are weirdly getting to know them in our brief encounters. Today we met a new young couple from England they started at the Canadian border and are moving south. It’s their Honeymoon. Today they communicated to us that “Justin” is now behind us and is riding with “Larrs”.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone!