Today's ride was to be on the Continental Divide Trail, about an hour or so west of Bozeman. The original plan had us doing an out n back towards Toll Canyon, then doing a loop on the other side of the road. On the drive out there nobody said anything, but we were all a little worried as the clouds were already building in the mountains all around us, even had a little rain on the drive. We got to the trailhead and it wasn't looking great, but not raining and not too threatening. It was damp feeling and in the high 40's so getting motivated to get out of the nice warm truck to ride took a little time, but we did it. A group of about 10 younger guys were headed the other way on the trail with full backpacks and trial tools, heading out for some extended trailwork. We took the obligatory picture of Erik at his first CDT trailhead, I made him smile on the second take, either that or he had just farted, thats still up for debate.
The trail tread was totally different than yesterday, basically a crushed granite surface with big chunks of granite all around us, very reminiscent of our rides at Lake Tahoe, thankfully no puddles at all. It started out on a typical western climb, up a good 1000 ft of well graded trail with some switchbacks. We then headed across, rolling nicely along more great trail through the pines. It started to rain a little bit more, not too hard but enough to get things wet. We finally started down and eventually I got cold enough to stop and put on my rain jacket, which made things much more comfortable. We finished the downhill, through some actual rocky stuff down to the gate which signaled our point of our return. We headed back up riding at first then hitting a rocky section that required a little hike-a-bike, more for me than Erik, I know the altitude has knocked him back a peg or two, but he's still SO much stronger than howie or me.
I get to the top, eat a bar, wait a while longer, howie should be here, uh oh. Still not quite worried enough to go down and have to re-climb, I catch sight of him walking around the bend, not surprising as it was pretty steep n technical, but he's walking his bike funny, holding up the rear end. Im hoping its just a flat, but my hopes are dashed when i hear him say Im done. The poor brown stumy groaned under the wait of the well fed harp seal and finally yielded. Turns out the head of a bolt that held part of his suspension sheared off then all hell broke loose.
Luckily the way the route went, the turn around point wasn't that far from from the road we would be heading back on with the truck, so howie turned around and started walking to the rendezvous point. I caught up with Erik, he was starting to get a little worried about us. We finished the 1200 ft climb back up and traversed the trail before the final decent. As any one who knows Erik's and my riding style, he had to wait up a couple times going down. As I approached him at one point, I noticed three very attractive mountain biking ladies just below him on the trail, each starting to take off their top layer. My first impression was that Erik was a much bigger stud than I have ever gave him credit for, but turns out he saw them, pulled off to give them their standard right of way, they saw him and pulled over for a break and they all realized that they had over dressed and really need to loose a layer. Thats when i pulled up. Erik and I then proceeded by them, enjoying the last half mile of downhill back to the truck. We found howie a few miles down the road, right where the GPS showed he would be. Since howie was out of commission and we were a bit wet n cold, we just headed back to Bozeman. We needed a few things in town so we stopped in before heading back to camp.
There was a classic car show going on, some absolutely amazing cars and a really cool band playing. We checked out some of the cars, i fell in love with a shelby GT mustang, amazing vehicle. Erik saw an older 280Z just about the same age that he had built up a number of years ago. Erik was looking for a few warmer layers and ended up finding them, so off we went to the grocery for a couple items before heading back to camp. We cleaned up bikes, started to dry out stuff, and get the spider down and ready for service in place of the fallen brown stumpy.
On to Curly Lake tomorrow, should be a true epic.
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