Tour Divide Part 2: Helena → Pinedale

Day 9: Helena, MT → Sagebrush CG (86 miles, 8300 feet)

Today we got a slightly earlier start (7 AM) because of forecasted afternoon thunderstorms. The climb out of Helena was straightforward, and although there was a little hike-a-bike at the top, we made it to Basin by about 1 PM.

The hike-a-bike.

Shortly after we arrived, it started raining heavily. Fortunately, there was a sheltered picnic table downtown that served as a very nice lunch and rest spot.

After a couple of hours, a woman named Judy drove up in a large pickup truck—she has been supporting the Tour Divide for many years—and offered to open up the community center for us. The community center was a modest affair with many snacks laid out, and during the race Judy opened it up for people to sleep in.

It looked like a pleasant place to stay, but the rain was letting up, so we continued on towards Butte.

In Butte, we stopped briefly at Safeway to resupply and—finding the hot bar closed—we biked to the nearest Pork Chop John’s, the local fast food restaurant recommended to me by a friend from Butte. After dinner, we used the last of the daylight to make it to Sagebrush Flats, a day-use area where we camped.

Day 10: Sagebrush CG → Elkhorn Hotsprings (77 miles, 7400 feet)

Departing Sagebrush Flats, we debated our plan for the evening. Snow was forecast above 8,000 ft starting at 8 PM or so and continuing to fall until the next afternoon. Ideally, we would stay somewhere in the vicinity of Elkhorn Hotsprings. However, today was a Saturday and as a result, Elkhorn Hotsprings was booked. Did it make sense to stop early in Wise River and stay in the community center? Should we push on to Bannack State Park and risk tomorrow’s peanut butter mud? We started biking with these questions unanswered.

There were two climbs prior to Wise River; the second was the infamous Fleecers Ridge. The descent was as heinous as we imagined — negative 26 percent grade on a loose fall line trail.

However, we descended with the only casualty being the loss of my camera lens cap and arrived in Wise River at about 2PM. Arriving we resupplied at the local convenience store, inspected the community center, and ordered chicken tenders at Wise River Lodge. While waiting for the chicken tenders I again checked to see if Elkhorn Hotsprings had any open rooms. And they did! I quickly booked the $75 room for the two of us. Included in the reservation was access to the hotsprings and breakfast. What a terrific deal!

We chowed down on our chicken tenders and chatted with an older fellow. When he learned we were biking from Banff he exclaimed: “You’re biking from Canada? You must be a tough son-of-a-gun and I know because I am a tough son-of-a-gun!”

After lunch, we pedaled the 30 miles or so up to the Elkhorn hotsprings. It was a hard effort. We had a significant headwind for the first half and pacelined it. The downside of pacelining is it encourages one to push on the pedals slightly harder than they would alone. We ultimately made it to the summit, rolled down to Elkhorn, checked-in, bathed, and caught up on family calls in the lodge.

Most of the other patrons were from the surrounding area — we talked to one family who had moved from California to the Bitterroot valley where they had a large garden and homeschooled their two kids.

Day 11: Elkhorn Hotsprings → Bannack State Park (26 miles, 660 feet)

Today we woke up to half an inch of snow on our bikes and decided to have a relaxed morning. I walked downstairs at 6:30 AM or so and a number of random folks sat down at my table to chat for a moment before proceeding about their day. One fellow named Jason had completed the Tour Divide in 2023. If the racers have one Tour Divide approach, Jason had the opposite. He had stopped in Jackson for two months to visit with friends before continuing south to Mexico.

Summertime snow.

We sipped coffee, ate a leisurely breakfast, and then went for a soak in the hotsprings. With precip still falling after checking out of our room at 11, we continued to hang out in the lodge. I read the various books laying around including picking up the bible and flipping through Genesis. Not raised in a religious household, I have only ever read bits and pieces of the bible — I was struck by both how quickly the story proceeds and how long everyone lives in the old testament: “The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters” [5:4].

At about 2 PM we started the roll and stopped briefly at “Ma’s” down the valley a couple miles — “If you forgot it Ma’s got it!” the sign read.

We rolled on for a couple of hours until we arrived at Bannack State Park. It was only 4:30 or so, but out of mud concerns (up to that point the road was paved) we decided to make Bannack our endpoint for the day. Bannack State Park includes a nice visitor center that sells huckleberry ice cream bars for $1 and a well maintained ghost town.

We camped in the Bannack State Park campground which was pleasant enough except for a couple RVs that ran their generators late into the night. When I am on the bike, I find it easy to resent all the motorheads that make noise with their various mechanical toys.

Day 12: Bannack State Park → Lima Reservoir (116 miles, 5600 feet)

We departed Bannack with some apprehension about the fabled peanut butter mud. By and large we were able to bike through everything, but the road surface certainly slowed our pace. We first passed by Grant, MT before going up Medicine Lodge Creek to its headwaters and then down Big Sheep Creek to Lima, MT.

In Lima, we were blessed with a hose in the public park which we used to give the bikes a needed wash. Also in the park we bumped into Ethan, an XC pro returning from a race who had seen a bunch of Tour Divide riders and pulled over to offer his help as a mechanic. He loaned us a floor pump to check our tire pressure.

All the restaurants in Lima were closed so I ate my first legitimate gas station meal of the trip: gas station burrito, hot dog, corn dog, and an ice cream bar.

From Lima we biked another 30 miles or so to the far side of Lima Reservoir where we found a workable campsite that did not require stepping over barbed wire. It was a chilly night, and after eating a quick dinner we retreated into our tents.

Day 13: Lima Reservoir → Squirrel Creek Guest Ranch (101 miles, 3500 feet)

The next morning started with pleasant rolling through Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.

The national refuge early in the morning.

We made it to Big Springs, Idaho, for lunch and ate in the town park before continuing the route towards Island Park.

Along the powerlines between Big Springs and Island Park.

From Island Park, there was a nice rails-to-trails section along Warm River, and then paved roads to Squirrel Creek Guest Ranch, where we spent the night. We had not originally planned on staying at Squirrel Creek; the description as a “Guest Ranch” had led me to believe it might be a somewhat pricey affair. But right before the ranch turnoff, we caught up with a bikepacker who extolled Squirrel Creek’s merits, and we decided to give it a look. It was a good choice. We were able to pitch tents amidst aspen trees for $15 a night, and another $7 purchased a shower.

Over a dinner of burgers, we chatted with two folks from Minnesota who were biking northbound. They were both retired and felt no compunction about deviating from the Tour Divide route when it suited them. Finding the Great Basin an unattractive prospect, they rented a U-Haul and drove that section.

There were also two people from the Netherlands who had been biking mostly on dirt roads starting in Argentina. As part of their route, they had ridden the Peru Great Divide, a route I had ridden in 2022.

Michael, the pharmacist from Breckenridge, was also in attendance. The last time we had seen him was when he passed out taking a nap near Holland Lake.

Our waitress, Chalayne, was also a character. When I called her “Ma’am,” she was quick to ask whether I was using the term “in a respectful way or because she was old.” I assured her it was the former. The proprietor of the ranch, who was also the cook, Bob, had been running the guest ranch for the last 35 years.

Day 14: Squirrel Creek Guest Ranch → Colter Bay CG (54 miles, 3500 feet)

Today was a half day. We began with a climb into Wyoming on a dirt road in the process of being regraded, which meant the road surface was soft and a little muddy. Our climbing speed was therefore reduced to below the top speed of a mosquito (4.5 mph), and we were harassed by the buggers for the entire climb.

Things improved once we began our descent, and we had some very nice gravel riding along the Snake River before joining the busy Rockefeller Parkway that stretches between Yellowstone and Yosemite. We made it to the Colter Bay Campground on Yellowstone Lake at 1 PM. We considered pushing on further, but many folks had recommended this campground, so we decided to make this our stopping point. While the campground was nice and the view towards the Tetons across the lake was beautiful, I decided that our night at the more modest Seeley Lake campground, where we were within walking distance of the lake, was superior.

The sun sets on Yellowstone Lake.

Day 15: Colter Bay CG → Strawberry Creek Cabin (81 miles, 7100 feet)

The next day we purchased cinnamon rolls and a new propane bottle at the Colter Bay store before continuing on our ride. The morning light lit up the Tetons nicely, and we had a pleasant ride up to the Continental Divide on the road that leads to Dubois. We ate a short lunch at Brooks Lake but did not dally long due to the mosquitoes. Our second climb of the day was up Union Pass.

Right before we turned off the highway towards Union Pass we saw two riders going Northbound. I pulled across the road to say hello and to give them our 7-day Teton National Park Pass which in turn had been given to us by the Dutch folks we talked with at Squirrel Creek Guest Ranch.

They told us about the existence of the Strawberry Creek Cabin, a cabin built and maintained by the local snowmobile organization which was open to the public and was located near Strawberry Creek on the far side of Union Pass.

We had a hot and steep climb up Union Pass (and mosquitos!) and then some pleasant rolling above the treeline.

Easy rolling after making it over Union Pass.

We made it to Strawberry Creek Cabin at about 5PM and the New Zealand guys we had seen on and off since day three also joined us in the cabin.

We learned that the Kiwis hailed from the North Island which is larger than the South island but less populated — as a result a minority of the roads are “seal” (the Kiwi word for paved). We also learned that New Zealand is running into an issue where foreign investors from China and India buy up farms in New Zealand and convert them to tree farms and then sell the carbon credits.

Strawberry Creek snowmobile cabin.

Day 16: Strawberry Creek Cabin → Parking lot of WY 353 (86 miles, 2000 feet)

We had an early start the next morning and a pretty fast descent of 55 miles towards Pinedale which took four hours.

Brunch at the Wrangler Cafe.

After brunch, we rolled over to the bikeshop where we cleaned our bikes with their hose, modified our tire pressure, signed the tour divide poster they had posted, and purchased a new bottle of chain lube. Fortunately we did not need any service done on our bikes. The employee at the bikeshop told us that the maintenance schedule for the whole day was full by 10 AM. After 10 AM, a tour rider had come in and bribed the bike shop with a “large sum of money” to fix their bike by the end of the day. We saw the German father/daughter pair at the bike shop. They were both on 40mm gravel bikes and were less than stoked with the rocky nature of the route. As the daughter told us, “We hate gravel right now”.

With the afternoon heat rolling in, we retired to the Pinedale public library where we had a pleasant afternoon charging devices, writing postcards, and reading about the local disapproval with the public land sale clause in the Big Beautiful Bill.

At 5:30 PM we began moving again. First, we resupplied at the local store for the next two days (we assumed our next real resupply would be Wamsutter on the far side of the Great Basin). Then we purchased cheese burgers for dinner and after consuming them began rolling south towards Basin at about 7PM. We were a bit nervous about a fire that had been reported right off the Tour route. However, we pressed forward and shortly after passing Boulder, WY we spoke with a local who said the fire had been largely put out. We pressed on past the location of the fire which was indeed now just a blackened patch of earth, and camped in a parking lot about 30 miles from Pinedale. The parking lot was only a passable camp area; it had very hard ground and I dented one of the tent stakes while trying to pound it into the ground with a rock.

Maps:

• Caltopo