Days 16-17: Lava Mountain

Day 16

We made the most of our day in Helena by staying at the Park Avenue bakery for quite some time and using it as home base for running several errands in town and doing things on the internet (such as paying bills, blogging) before we left. In fact, we stayed there so long that by the time we left, we had already eaten two of the days meals there, and the street out front had been re-paved while we were inside.

While in town, Katelyn met two other southbound bicycle tourists from England who had arrived through the smoke. After hearing about their experience, we were glad we got a ride through it.





Before leaving Helena, we made a detour to see the cathedral of St. Helena and took a few minutes for quiet and prayer before departing into the wilds again.



Our first map instruction leaving Helena was "Bear right on Grizzly Gulch." We left town to go ride a short day and camp part-way up an extended climb that we would finish the next day. The scenery was different here than we had experienced on our trip previously - more open, less underbrush, and fewer trees in some places.



We camped in a patch of woods on the edge of a forest service road and ate dinner up on top of a cool rock outcropping above camp. We also discovered a new flavor of Knorr rice sides that we had never tried before - Spanish rice with tomato-based sauce... mmm.

Day 17



We woke up and kept climbing until we got up to the Lava Mountain 4x4 trailhead. This was another part of our route where the maps offered an official alternate route to avoid tougher terrain, but we decided to take the main route on this one even though the terrain was supposed to be difficult. In the end, we were glad we did, but it was indeed difficult.



We were not ashamed to push our bikes in lots of places, especially in spots where the trail consisted of a 4 foot deep rut filled with boulders.



However, there area also lots of places where we both surprised ourselves with some of the slightly more technical parts that we were able to ride. In the end, we were glad we did this slow, challenging, but beautiful section - and we felt a lot more hardcore afterward for having made it through and even honed some of our technical skills along the way.



On the way down the mountain, we rode down a valley with some cool old mining ruins.



We rode to the bottom of the valley and stopped for dinner in Basin, MT, a town famous for its "health" radon mines.



We ate at one of the two restaurants in town, the Leaning Tower our Pizza, which had photos of other Divide riders who had come through.



We had a great meal and also squeezed in a few games of Connect Four.



That night we rode about 5 miles beyond town to a large but eerily deserted Forest Service campground called Mormon Gulch full of dead trees and dry stream beds. Our only company were a herd of cows who were grazing the campground. There were no bathrooms, no water, no picnic tables, only fire rings, but the price was right (free).

*****

As of my writing this post, we are beginning day 21 in Lima, MT (pronounced like the bean), about to head East toward a campground on Upper Red Rock Lake in the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge. I am stopping the post here and plan to continue catching up soon.