A Long Ride To Whitefish

An early start with ominous skies. It rained hard last night and the clouds are low and dark this morning. I am packing a lot of layers today.

We rolled through Eureka and headed south along Tobacco Road. Beautiful rolling ranchland, with the mountains looming right above the valley floor. Lots of white tail deer, and a couple of turkey families.

A quick jaunt on Hwy 93 and then onto Graves Road, which eventually became a sweet paved single lane road for 10 miles of gradual climbing. Of course all good things come to an end, and we turned right and crossed what was left of a bridge that had washed out and headed up. Way up. 1500 feet later we hit the top of the pass and headed down. Way down. But not before some great scenery.

Lunch was waiting around mile 55. Which is when we learned about the second climb. Which was 13 miles long. Wilbert, Jasper and I headed out together. About 2 miles into the climb my back wheel froze solid. It turned out that I had broken a spoke and it got caught in the chain. I pulled it out, wrapped it around the rest of the spokes and we carried on.

Eventually we peaked out on Red Meadow Pass. A nice little lake welcomed us to the top, but I couldn't resist the next lake down the backside for a little dip. Call it a mile 70 reward.

On to Whitefish. A real nice town, for sure. Reminded me of Durango actually.