After a good night's sleep in a nice bed, I was up to an early start: I was rolling through Whitefish before 6am. It's all flat from here to Ferndale and most of the roads are paved. I started slowly to get my juices flowing and after a while I got going pretty steadily. Halfway to Columbia Fall I met up with Kevin Montgomery and we rode together to Columbia Fall.
There we meet John Hurly and Dave Nice(with his fixie) who had spent the night under the roof of the pergola in downtown Columbia Fall. All together we followed the smell of bacon and soon we had breakfast.
The bikes parked outside signaled to others coming along and soon we are about 10 riders having breakfast. I paid and stocked up in the super market next door. The cashier told us that there were a few guys coming through last night who were very serious: the leaders of the race.
Half an hour on the road and rain started. I keeppt on pedaling for a while overtaking Steve McGuire and Jon Billmann who were fiddling with their rain gear. Eventually it rained so hard that I stoped, too and sliped into my plastics. Shortly after that I make my first navigation error, missing the turn into Bachelor's Grade, and add an extra 5 km to the day's trip.
I got to the Swan River gas station and convenient store and this turned into another big rider meeting. Some stay longer for lunch, but I pressed on after loading up on cans with Starbucks Espresso and Cream. Usually I don't like their products (not to mention their newly defined semantics of some basic English words and their ignorance of others, such as "small" or "medium"), but this stuff is good during a long ride: calories and refreshment. Before I head out, I was changing gloves and left my winter gloves behind which will cost me the next day.
Shortly after Ferndale, I hit dirt and soon the first climb up the Mission Range starts. It's a piece of work and at the top I stoped with Kevin and ate the sandwich I picked up in the morning at the super market in Columbia Falls.
We had some nice downhill to Swan Lake and then the roads keept on rolling. At mile 174.8, I missed the turn. As it later turns out, quite a few racers put in some extra miles here.
At some point I looked down towards my back wheel and I'm shocked about the state of my rack. The main braces are bent and it looks like the rack could collapse any moment and break the spokes of my back wheel. From now on I suffer rack paranoia. Later I stopped for half an hour and go through all the screws of the rack but it doesn't help with my paranoia.
Then we hit the second climb of the day which culminatesd in some grassy section as shown on the photo on the right. The downhill to Hwy 83 was pretty tough as the road is freshly graded and has a very soft surface.
When I got to Hwy 83 and it started raining again and I was compelled to look for the Swan River Lodge. But there's no sign at Jetty Rd and so I pressed on towards Holland Lake. Steve and Jon caught me on the highway and we rode together to the Holland Lake Lodge.
At the lodge, we got a very warm welcome by our fellow racers and the staff. Even though the kitchen was already closed for an hour we still got soup, salad and dinner rolls which I washed down with some fine Pilsner from the Fatherland. We also got lucky with accommodation, Steve, Jon and I shared the Lake House.
It started raining mid-morning, Flathead Mountains in the background
The sky is all clear by the time I got to Swan River
Looking back to Glacier National Park from the Mission Range
Swan Mountains from Mission Range
A beaver damm on side of the road ...
... and a creek flowing towards Swan River on the other side
The grassy road made me crawl up this hill
There is an inaccuracy with the route. The map shows it going along Hwy 83 for a few kilometers while in reality the route follows some forrest roads West to the highway which are not on the map.