The water for the coffee was on the boil before fist light and I took the unusual preparation of taking a morning shower before riding to ensure I would be limber and ready to ride at a brisk pace right from the start. Today we would ride the famous “Going-To-The-Sun-Road”.
For those of you who have been to Glacier you know how magnificent the landscape is on this road and how steep it is in places. For those of you who have not, it is a road with views on par with the drive in to Yosemite Valley. The most impressive part of the road itself is the section called the “Garden Wall.” Imagine you wanted to drive out of Yosemite and the only way you could do it would be to blast a pathway diagonally across the face of El Capitan. The Garden Wall is not so high as El Cap but road travels across an open rock face for several miles and the overall size of the geographic feature is much larger than El Capitan. The Going-To-The-Sun-Road (GTTSR), named after one of the peaks close to Logan Pass, was the section that I had been looking forward to. It was the “Hollywood” part of our ride: A breath taking vista around every corner, a challenge worth preparing for and a genuine sense of reaching out and ‘touching creation’ the whole way.
Today would be a demanding day: We had to ride a thirteen mile approach to a 7 mile long, 6% grade to attain a 2,125’ elevation gain to summit Logan Pass. Followed quickly by a miles long descent down the steep, narrow and heavily trafficked Garden Wall section and then ride another15 miles, supposedly all before 11:00 AM. So an early rise was essential. The part that did not make sense was that time for departure was slated for 7 AM. No one in our group except Lance and Ryan had a hope for making that distance in the time allotted. The time constraint came from a Glacier NP rule that no bicycles were allowed on the GTTSR along McDonald Lake from 11AM to 4PM, as this was the prime time for RVs to travel along the narrow, winding road and the Park Service had learned that keeping bicycles off the road in that time slot avoided accidents.
After breakfast and a couple of cups of my extra strong French Roast coffee my engine was running and I was the second person out of the gate. It was clear, cold and crisp with the sun’s early morning light making everything brilliantly colored to the eye. I barely felt the cool as I rode across the St. Mary’s River on to the GTTSR.
The Rider's Eye Point of View
A few pictures for my album and a few hoots of excitement for good measure and I was on my way. We all quickly fell into our usual order, except for me. As I had expected by the end of the ride my fitness and hill climbing in particular had improved. My legs which had been sore and achy had now strengthened and I no longer was waddling from stiffness as I had been in the early part of the ride. (Back at Waterton Park I could have been mistaken for a giant penguin in bad light) Now I was riding in the front third of the pack as we rode along St. Mary Lake. Everyone was snapping pictures as the lake was sheet glass and the reflections were amazing.
St. Mary Lake (photo courtesy Google)
With our brisk pace our group quickly reached Rising Sun Campground and the road started to steepen some. One last overlook of the lake, a few more pictures and then I set about the business of trying to complete this assigned ride in the time allotted. At mile 13 we had a water stop and I was feeling good, riding well, keeping up with the middle of the group. It was here that the road took on the grade that it would keep for the rest of the way to Logan Pass, abut 6% and with the last 2-3 miles steeping further to about 8%. At this point I did fall back and rode the remainder of the ascent by myself for the most part. I passed by Jackson Glacier, Siyeh Bend with its Glacier melt water pouring off Siyeh Peak. Siyeh Bend was the last big Switch back before the final pull of two miles or so up to Logan Pass. Here is a link to view a map of the day's ride, start to finish.
http://home.nps.gov/applications/glac/roadstatus/roadstatus.cfm
The snow capped peaks and glaciers, some so pointed that the landscape suddenly reminded me of watching “When The Grinch Stole Christmas” as a kid with its exaggerated mountain peaks that were pointed enough to pop a balloon. At And then I was there…the visitor’s center to my left, people wandering all over and the sign: Logan Pass, Continental Divide, 6646 Feet - 2025 meters. I joined my ride colleagues in having my picture taken in front of the sign for prosperity.
Logan Pass Local, Right (Tony Sleva)
After a quick check in with Sharon, who was parked at the visitor's center to let her know that I had summitted, I started my descent down the Garden Wall. The ride from Logan Pass to Lake McDonald was almost twenty one miles and the Garden Wall portion was easily half of it. The road was built as a WPA project during Depression. Completed in 1933, the Going-To-The-Sun-Road had just recently celebrated its 75 years. The road is narrow as the cars of the day were much smaller. The ‘guard rail’ is a two foot high stone barrier on the cliff side and the road has diagonal drains crossing it about every 500’. A close look at the pictures will detail that the Garden Wall is what is know as in German a Are'te or rock spine, caused when to paralellel glacier carve the rock on either side of a high ridge, leaving the knife like edge which can be seen at the peak on the Garden Walls Ridge line; WPA stone work, foreground, R.
Two Views of The Garden Wall (Tony Sleva, L; Google, R)
As I started down, the cooler air of the valley combined with the wind chill very quickly made me cold so I stopped put on my wind breaker. Being as big as I am I very quickly accelerated to 25 mph and could have gone as fast as I wanted, perhaps as much as 40 mph. I was applying my breaks though as the road had a lot of traffic and people out of their cars taking pictures. I did my best to stay off the brakes as riding the brakes on a ‘road’ bicycle can result in heat being transferred to the inner tube and heating it to the point that it ruptures causing an immediate and potentially catastrophic flat tire resulting in a crash: fortunately that did not happen.
Looking Towards West Glacier and The Road Yet to be Ridden
(Photo R, Tony Sleva)
Our Que notes advised us of road construction and around mile 6 of the descent there it was. A complete road resurfacing and stone guardrail replacement was being done in some sections.
Narrow Road
The road was now unpaved and with a lot of large road base creating an uneven, coarse surface to ride on. We were stopped at a control point and traffic was being shuttled through by a pilot vehicle. By the time our turn came after about 10 minutes everyone from our ride had caught up and we went down as caravan. The road was so rough and we were moving so fast that I chose to stop at one point to let the motor vehicles go by me as I was feeling like I might lose traction and slight out. After the vehicles had passed I continue on and in about two miles I was back on the pavement.
Having traversed the Garden Wall and now down in the Lake McDonald region of the park we road in with myself bring up the rear a half mile back. It was now past 11 o’clock; we rode on and as I got to the Lake McDonald Rd., Jim Williamson was waiting at the turn. He advised me that the group had ridden ahead and come to the traffic sign advising th at bicyclist would be fined $300.00 for riding being on the road way for the next 7 miles between 11AM-4PM, and that everyone returned and had gone in to the Lake McDonald village.
I found most of the group in a small grassy park beneath some large trees. Lance, Ryan, Tony and Nick-the-Wrench, our Eastern contingent had gone and gotten some pizza for lunch and the rest of us were debating about lunch. A few of us went into the Lodge for lunch. The food and service were only OK. One of the interesting things that I had started to notice was that there were many foreign nationals working seasonally in the Park, especially from Eastern Bloc countries such as Serbia, Moldova and the Ukraine to name a few. (I learned soon thereafter this was common in many of the National Parks and to the Rocky Mountain and Northwestern states in particular.)
After lunch we returned back to our little park which was actually a small grassy island formed the center of the approach to the lodge. It was comfortable and most of us chose to hang out there for the remaining two and a half hours we had to kill before we could get moving again. We talk, some napped, bicyclist named Keith who had been taking the same path as our group since way back in Whitefish and with whom we had become friendly with showed up and he and Mike Williamson had a long discussion.
The Lake McDonad Lodge; we spent the afternoon on the grassy "park" located to the right side of the photograph. It is half again as large as you can see. (Google)
After about an hour Lance came riding up on his bike kind of fast and without stopping he road straight over the curb, banging his wheels rather hard and came right in to the park and hurriedly announced that a woman had fallen in to the river and that Tony had jumped in after her! Both had safely been recovered after a short and difficult passage through some rapids and they were pretty banged up and freezing. Lance was looking for Sharon to get Tony some dry clothes.
Lance found Sharon, grabbed some clothes for Tony and they drove up to Avalanche Creek with Jim Williamson coming along in case a bicycle needed to be ridden back to our location. Those of us who remained behind were of course concerned and somewhat nervously waited to learn more. The time was now 4 o’clock and we were free to ride on. Around 4:15 or so our beleaguered friends returned: I saw fom the distance that Tony was walking, but with obvious difficulty and discomfort. Several of our riders rushed up to him. Seeing that he was both OK and now overwhelmed I complied with Sharon’s request that the rest of us now continue on to today’s destination of West Glacier Campgrounds. So back on the bike and on onward to West Glacier.
I had learned in the minutes prior to my departure that a very sizable woman from Ohio had been attempting to walk down to the river’s edge, ostensibly to soak her feet Tony later said, and had slipped on the mossy rocks and had bounced in to the rapidly moving water. The following is a photo sequence of the river bank where the entire event occurred. The distance is less than 100 yards from entry to extraction.
The photo order is from right to left.
Extraction Point..................................................Rapid........................................................ Entry Point
As I rode the remaining miles to West Glacier, parallelling Lake McDonald, I did note that the road was fairly narrow and that bicycles on the road did cause some cars to hold back and wait for a straight section of road before passing. In fact, at one point a large pickup truck passed by and the passenger stuck his arm out the window and gave me a ‘thumbs down’ gesture; Welcome to Glacier National Park I thought! I learned later from other of our riders that other incidents, more aggressive in there demeanor had occurred as well. Clearly the locals did not like bicyclists on ‘their’ road. It was the only time it happened on the entire journey. Go figure.
Lake McDonald (Google)
I arrived in West Glacier Village, located just outside of the park and stopped for a breather. I saw Al, Lloyd and Susan’s bikes parked and I searched around for them and found them in a gift shop. They had decided to get our heroes a commemorative award honoring their actions. So we looked at what were mostly a bunch of the usual tourist knick-knacks’ and finally settled on the idea that we would buy them some Glacier NP Shot glasses and a bottle of Crown Royal, know to be a preferred beverage among some of our new hero’s. So we all pitched in and decided to present them these tokens to them at a spontaneous presentation at dinner that night.
Our Final Camp Site at West Glacier Campgrounds
We rode a couple more miles to the campground, set up camp and got showered up and of course continued to chat about the day’s ride and all of the excitement of the day. Tony was driven in to camp since while in the river his knees had struck several rocks as he hung on to ‘Brenda’ from Columbus and his knees were stiff and swollen. For Tony, the ride was over; he would ride the last day with Nick-the-Wrench in the mechanic’s car for the final stretch back to Whitefish, a drive of less than 30 miles and later he will see a doctor to determine if any lasting injury has occurred.
So at Dinner that night Al Knopik chimed on his water glass, gathering in our attention and paid honor to Tony in particular and to Ryan, Lance and Nick for their roles that they played in the rescue; it was a proud moment for all of us. Looking back, if the road had not been closed to bicyclist for the afternoon, Brenda may not have survived her ordeal; hopefully she appreciates her good fortune. So aside from fighting lung disease the American Lung Association of Washington can take credit for a life saved in the immediate moment, on a journey intended to save lives in the future.
Whodda thunk it?!
No comments:
Post a Comment