Welcome to Kalispell, the land of understatement. Is there an amorous look in the eye of that back one?
Why a prologue? Because the frequent flier award flights to Kalispell, the start town for the Ridge of the Rockies tour, were limited. The shortest most direct flight was also the most available and used the fewest miles - with a catch of course. The hitch was that it was a late-in-the-day arrive-at-midnight kind of flight. The tour registration was scheduled for Friday September 6 with the first riding day Saturday September 7. Rather than arrive late on Thursday night and have Friday spent recuperating and registering, I decided to fly in Wednesday night. This allowed me to plan on two local rides in advance of the official tour.
On Thursday I planned to assemble my bike then go for a shorter ride to ensure that it was working well. The PacTour folks were there early and set up the bike assembly station which included the requisite supervision:
Calling Thursday's ride the "shake-down run" turned out to be all too apt. There are bike paths here in Montana - which is a wonder and is wonderful.
However it seems that they were built initially with concrete paving, which ineluctably means seams between sections. Seams which seem to grow more pronounced over time.
The trail next to Flathead Lake was adorned by this really cool old building (so to speak)
It seems like everyone is making the most of these beautiful late summer days in Montana
With bike ready to go a longer ride was an option for Friday. Rachel M, a fellow PacTour rider who lives just over the border in Tennessee, said she was interested in riding in Glacier National Park on Friday. There is a well known route in Glacier called the "Going to the Sun" road which you may have heard of. Its one of those National Park must-sees like Half Dome, Old Faithful and the Redwoods. Well I'm as much a bucket-list copy-cat as the next guy - it sounded like a great idea. An idea whose implementation was threatened by Delta Airlines giving Rachel the inverse experience as I got. Remarkably similar to the upside-down world of Stranger Things including the slimy monster. Her sensible plan to fly out early Thursday morning was hit with multiple cancellations, and when she finally arrived Thursday night at midnight her checked bicycle was nowhere to be seen. So Going to the Sun wasn't going anywhere for her.
Lucky for me she had prepaid for a rental car, so had little motive to cancel it. She proved a true friend to my bucket-list inclinations by suggesting she could take a hike up at Glacier and give me and my bike a lift. As long as it didn't cause a problem with her being at the airport when her bike was expected at 2:30 it would all be cool. Using RideWithGPS (a bike ride route mapping/planning website), I was able to see that if I did the big climb then rode all the way back to Kalispell it would only be about 90 miles. That seems doable these days, so I suggested that Rachel could just drop me off then her time was her own.
We high-tailed it up there and I got out on the road around 9:30 AM.
Since the sun hadn't made it over the ridge it was still in the mid 40's. I was wearing my summer kit - bare arms, legs and head. Brrrr. Makes me want to pedal harder though to try to warm up, so that's a good thing.
After riding for an hour or so I was able to get some sunshine - so hey! the road name makes sense after all.
At this point the traffic was fairly moderate and more than once I passed some folks who had stopped at an overlook and were soaking in the scenery and majesty and silence. And I had to say to myself "Hey, I get that ALL THE WAY UP."
The notch in the mountains seen above is Logan Pass, the destination. About 10 miles and 2500' elevation from where this shot was snapped.
Purdy, purdy, purdy! Not too hard to see why its such a popular destination.
Half an hour later, I'm considerably closer to the pass although that road is still pretty far away:
One of the most spectacular road building feats I've ever seen:
Panoramic shot from the FULL parking lot at Logan Pass:
What followed was a 20 minute descent. By this point the traffic was quite heavy so I'd resigned myself to a pitiful experience stuck behind lines of cars. But there were a surprising number of opportunities to get around them, and there were some pretty big gaps between the groups. So it turned out to be pretty doggone fun. After seeing all that traffic though, you have to wonder about the logic of touring this area with gas guzzling vehicles while the glaciers melt from climate change. I wonder if the carbon dioxide from the cars going through the park every day would be enough to melt these glaciers if it were in an enclosed system.
Coming off those peaks is the headwaters of the Flathead River. It's waters have that green high-alpine tint.
National Parks provide the best places for a pee break:
Eventually that river enters McDonald Lake.
After existing the park I started on the route planned by RideWithGPS to get me back to Kalispell. RideWithGPS did a good job of getting me on back roads away from park traffic:
But I started to wonder when it told me to take a left on Parker Hill Road which wasn't paved:
Since it's route choices are usually based on what other riders have done in the past, I persisted even though the road quality kept getting dicier:
Eventually I discovered the real reason "hill" was in the name when it dropped of into the valley below:
Of course that meant I had to ride the final 20 miles with a full belly. But it was worth it.
