Not a long day by any means but we did go over 6800’ though not over the divide so we are still in the Pacific drainage. We were shooting for the Llama camp and now that we are here I can’t possibly imagine going any further today because this place is made for CDT thru hikers and GDMBR bike packers. 7 or 8 well fitted cabins, shower facilities, bike repair, outdoor fireplace and …. the cutest f’n llamas around. I thought they would be bigger.
Big climb we had and for more than half of it we were traveling Stemple Pass County Road. All was good until we turned off and within 50 yards we were off the bike on a 14% grade that only a fat tire bike could ascend. Once it leveled out again we remounted and continued until the next “too steep” section and off the bike we jumped. Maybe we didn’t jump.
Anyway, there were sections where even pushing the bike was a chore trying to find the right combo of hand holds to balance the bike and keep pushing forward. The girls have smaller panniers and they are smaller than I am so I was challenged to not hit parts of my bike with these long legs.
We did not go over the divide. We were within 200 vertical and maybe a 1/4 mile of the divide proper and then the route veered down and it was braking for a fair amount of time and balancing in the quads to absorb the many ununiform sections of the route.
Tomorrow we hit hit Helena and move onto Section 2.