Dilly dallyin' the divide

Bikepacking the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route

By Stio

May 30^th, 2018

Words by Jenna Mahaffie | Photos by Jenna Mahaffie, Chris Fogler & Conor Canaday

Bikepacking is “Yes, I’ll take a double patty with extra cheese,” after the 100 squats you have to do on leg day. It is the chance encounter with the brewery owner who says, "We’re closed today, but you guys look like you deserve a beer.” It is the connoisseur of convenient stores; the perpetuator of long stories about high school; the friend who introduced you to people you'd follow to the end of the earth as long as they had directions from the local Post Office worker and maybe Gaia Pro. It is; at once, the gas station corn dog that looks way better than it tastes and the paintbrush that coasts dead fields in bright yellow during the last fleeting moments of the day. It is the good stuff that burns even though it’s wet and the crickets who join in your meal as you dine on a potent slop of your wildest dreams. It is the access to our public lands and the exploration of friendships that grow from doing really hard things as one.

I’m never quite sure how to describe my bike trips to friends once I return, but that’s a start.

As all great adventures seem to begin when you’re a millennial, our trip on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route started as a late night text chain between friends.

“Guys, I don’t know much, but there’s one thing I know for sure. I’m riding my bike from Canada to Mexico this summer, and you’re coming with me.”

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (or GDMBR for short) follows the length of the North American continental divide beginning in Banff, Alberta, and ending at the US/Mexican border patrol station in Antelope Wells, New Mexico. The route is 90% off pavement and scales over 200,000 feet of elevation gain and loss - kind of a monster to say the least. With a full time job pushing pixels here at Stio, I knew I could only join for part of it – but I also knew I couldn’t miss out. I decided to join my friends in Northern Montana and push as far south as my PTO would allow. Plus, Montana is known for its bike friendly nature, good beer and small towns with big stories. My previous adventures throughout the Big Sky state had led to some of my favorite moments spent on two wheels. With the starting point in driving distance and a friend in Whitefish who would shuttle my car, it was all systems go.

Unfortunately, wildfires ravaged the Northern Rockies last summer. My arrival at the border to meet my friends was a smoky one, and with fires scouring the northern part of the route, we spent some time trying to figure out how we would reroute through the state. But, as previous experience has shown, rerouting is the beauty of bike travel. Sure, we wouldn’t be passing through some of the quaint towns and views I had read about, but getting off route meant getting off the beaten path, and fortunately, that’s what my friends were all about.

Day one on our new route took us through the Flathead Reservation, a beautiful section of remote forest road on native land. Rain on the first day led to clear skies and a sunset worth 1000 photos. We set up camp on a ridge overlooking the foothills of the Flathead National Forest with not a car, person or town in sight. To this day, I’ve experienced few campsites that have compared. With around 40 miles under our belt and some sore legs, we spent the first night rambling along to any chords we could play on my friend Conor’s mini-guitar under Montana's infamous big sky.

The next few days routed us slowly through the northern part of the state. It’s important to note that the idea here was not to crush miles - as long as we were spending the day on our bikes, it didn’t really matter how far we made it. That’s always been the joy of traveling by bike to me. With a loaded down rig, there’s no rush to get anywhere, just a desire to see the world at a slower pace – a human powered road trip, per se. Sure, when you tell people flat out that you’re going to bike some absurd distance from one state to another, they’re stunned. But when you get on a heavy bike with conversational friends, good maps and nowhere to be other than in the present, unimaginable distances become achievable. That's not to say it's easy, but time seems to slow when the only goal of the day is to get a little further than you were the day before.

Perhaps my friend Chris said it best: “"I'm not an 'avid cyclist' or whatever. Just an explorer whose preferred method of adventuring is by bicycle."

River swims, hilarious interactions with small town convenience store cashiers and long, slow climbs defined the trek before our rest day in Missoula. It’s in those uphill moments – those hills where you spend a few hours churning up a mountain pass at a slow, heavy cadence – that some of my strongest relationships with my friends have solidified. This trip was no different. No distractions, no phones, just a mutual goal of getting to the top. “I heard there’s an ice cream bar up there,” we’d joke, “And a party. Just for us.”

With one of our friends living in Missoula, we decided we wanted to take a “buffer day” to hang out with him and give our legs a rest. A hard climb led us down to the outskirts of the city. With 10 miles to go, an hour before Big Sky Brewing closed, and a paved bike path to crank down, we decided to let our two-wheeled ponies do a little running and get there as fast as we could. Sweaty, dirty, and exhausted, we arrived at Big Sky Brewing to a big “CLOSED FOR CLEANING” sign.

“Shit.”

Plan B: Tacos maybe? Dive bar beers? Just as we were weighing our options, a man opened the locked door.

“We’re closed today, but you guys look like you deserve a beer.”

The next few hours consisted of a personal brewery tour, free beer and good beta on forest roads and smoke conditions around the area. Turns out our new friend was the owner, Bjorn, and a fellow bike adventurer himself. The 24 hours that followed were a whirlwind of sleeping, eating and talking about how we should really all buy a group house in Missoula and never leave. My friends even ended up winning their category at a spur-of-the-moment decision to compete in a local Wednesday night race series. That night finished with a tub of victory beers and big laughs alongside the Big Sky Brewing crew.

With rejuvenated legs, warm hearts and a reclaimed trust in the future of humanity, we left the good people of Missoula to continue winding our way through the state. We spent the night in Ovando, MT, dispersed amongst a sheepherders wagon, a teepee and an abandoned historic jail. We ate fried chicken at Trixi’s, an old restaurant off MT-200, aptly named for a famous rodeo queen and horse performer in the 20’s. We swam in the Blackfoot River, rode singletrack along the official Continental Divide Trail and attempted to break into an old fire tower in the hills above Helena. We met a nice guy named Bob who let us camp in his backyard and use his flushing toilet. Our waitress at Blackfoot Brewing paid for our post ride beers because we looked like we had had a long day (we had). We watched the solar eclipse at 98% totality in Basin, MT, with two new friends who had just returned from the 36th Annual Cow Testical Festival in Clinton, MT. They bought us a round of bloody mary's and advised that "chicory is a great substitute for coffee" and to "never stop loving anyone you've ever loved" as we watched the astrological event of a lifetime through garage sale welding goggles.

And then, somehow, it was time to go back to work. Back to normalcy, out of Montana, off the bike. A $2.99 cake that said “Happy Birthday Steve!” and a night at roadside KOA was my send-off back to Jackson, while my friends journeyed on to the land of tacos, green chiles, and the southern border.