The next morning I was ready to conquer this mountain! However, my bike was not. Overnight my rear tire went flat (it’s always the flipping rear)! My morning started with a tube change. The only tube I could find was still in the box didn’t even have a cap on it. I replaced the tube and crossed my fingers that I didn’t get a flat on my way up the mountain. I figured I’d either get a total flat by the time I got to where I’d start biking or it was a slow leak, and as long as I brought a spare tire and a pump, the worst case scenario was biking would be difficult.
The Lost Trail Pass was my second mountain, it wasn’t as tall as the Lemhi Pass, but perhaps because there was far less smoke and I could actually see in front of me, it felt bigger. We returned to the cabin we stayed at the night before, pulled into their parking lot so I could get my gear on. I have UV sleeves and on chilly mornings I’ll put them on both for protection from the sun, and a tiny bit of extra warmth. If I wear a sweatshirt or a jacket, within 15 minutes I’m sweating and regret the decision to bring it along. I opened the glovebox to get the sleeves and shrieked. There were at least six baby mice in our glove box and a mama mouse that was freaking out even more than I was. It came as a shock, I’ll admit, but despite my racing heart, I was calm in a crisis. I told my mom to grab paper bowls from the back and used a napkin to gently transfer the babies into it. I needed to first empty out the glove box to make sure I had all of the babies, and second, find the mama and get her out. I put the bowl with the babies in the glovebox with nothing else. Mama mouse came back in a panic and grabbed one of her babies to hide it back in the dashboard. I asked my mom for an almond from our snack stash and another paper bowl. I placed the almond like bait and waited for mama mouse to come back, then snapped the bowl over all of them, took the lot out of the car and into the nearby trees, and left them there. Mama mouse immediately went out to explore her new surroundings, but she did go back to the bowl to check on her babies. I wasn’t sure if there was another mouse, so we continued to be on high mouse alert for weeks. There was a baby hidden somewhere. Fortunately no smells emanated from the dash in the coming weeks. I’m sorry, baby mouse!
And that’s how I biked my second mountain pass, with my heart rate through the roof before I even began pedaling. It was tough, it felt endless. There were switchbacks around ravines and steep climbs. As I neared the top every curve felt like it just had to be the end, but it wasn’t. I had my bear mace and my bell. This road was paved, so the bell didn’t really ring on its own the way it had on the Lemhi trail. I rang it myself every 50-100 feet and kept music playing constantly from my phone. I pushed myself, fighting a continuous climb up, thinking about how this was supposed to be an easier mountain, how was it not easier? Then it hit me. That inner-tube…
I had a slow leak, not enough to make me skid out, but I was biking on a very squishy tire. I stopped to give the tire a pinch and found it was almost completely empty. I had foreseen this possibility. Instead of my usual back-up chargers I’d put a spare tire, tire levers and my hand pump in my handlebar bag, so I pulled over, put my bear mace accessibly in my cycling jersey pocket–I was not going to have a bear sneak up on me while I put air in my tire. I loathed every single car that passed me. They saw me struggling. It was obvious I’d broken down in the middle of the mountains and not a single one stopped to see if I was alright. If I wasn’t, I had no gear on my and I was about as far away from help as I could get.
I got the tire pumped as much as I could with my measly little pump. The best I’ve ever gotten it is about 40 PSI which is just over half the recommended pressure for my tires. Still, it was better than no pressure at all. I made it to my mom who was waiting a few miles up the mountain with pb and j on a flour tortilla (my go-to cycling lunch) ready for me. I gave myself some time to recoup. That ordeal coupled with the mice from that morning had made the past five miles some of the most difficult I’d experienced so far. I had a regular bike pump in the back seat, so I pumped up the tires to a better PSI and made a note to check them every time I stopped. I had no further problems, beyond wondering when this mountain pass was going to end. I saw cars and trucks puttering up the road, taking a curve or a switchback and continuing up the steep climb. I kept on thinking “it has to be soon. It has to be soon.”
The mountainside was so steep in places I didn’t feel so worried about bears. There weren’t a lot of places to hide on those sheer drops, but after them there would be a crevasse filled with berry bushes and I would jump back to high alert. Because of this, and because the road was populated, unlike the Lemhi Pass, I felt I could stop this time and take pictures. There were even the occasional historical markers I love to see. Finally I reached the top. Again there was a road closure due to fire vehicle traffic, but this time it wasn’t the road I was taking. I got to enjoy the downhill. We were back in Montana.
And enjoy it I did! I got as high as 35mph. My bike was steady, my tires were behaving, and I coasted about 20 miles. I think my mom was as shocked as I was that I biked up a mountain and still managed to bike nearly 50 miles in a day. We met up at about 20 miles and stopped at a campground shop in Sula, Montana for ice cream. We decided to camp there. They had showers and were decently populated, which meant bears were less likely to come clawing at our tent in the night, and the ultimate luxury, Wi-Fi! I did bike another twenty miles past the campground and backtrack. We were nearing Missoula and I wanted to reach the city the next day.
The Stars On the Horizon 