I got up early. The look out of the windows wasn't promising: rain over Holland Lake. I got ready anyway and swang by the lodge to pick up my breakfast, eating my PB&J sandwich right away.
Then I got on the bike and got going, slowly. As I circled around the lake I ran into Fixie Dave. We went together for a few kilometers until we had a "No Trespassing" sign - we had had a turn we were supposed to go straight towards Owl Creek.
After a while the road became a grassy single track and really lonely and beautiful. Eventually we got back on a major dirt road and started the climb up to Richmond Peak. The whole time it's a come and go of the racers from the grupetto.
Halfway up the climb to Richmond Peak it started raining and the rain quickly turned into snow. The snow stays on the ground and on the trees as I rode the single track going around the peak.
At one point there was some fresh Grizzly Bear poo on the track. This was a kind of a scary thought to have disturbed a big bear doing its thing.
Eventually, I reached the main road which iwas all downhill towards Seeley Lake. Now the real problems started for me and almost everybody else. We are all wet from the rain and snow and as long we were climbing up and navigated the tricky sections of track with our fully loaded bikes this wasn't an issue. But a few minutes of downhill made our wet hands freeze and it was hard to hold on to the handle bar and the brakes.
As you may remember I had forgotten my winter gloves in Swan Lake yesterday and I was looking for alternative means to keep my hands dry and out of the wind and I had to come up with a solution quick.
My first thought was to cut of pieces of my fleece pants and wrap them around my hands. But the fleece would have been soaked quickly and failed to provide a solution for all the way to Seeley Lake. Then I had the idea which saved the day: I slipped with my hands into the legs of my rain pants and this worked out fine as it protected the hands from the wind and rain.
Halfway down the hill I suddenly heard a rattling sound from the back wheel. I thought that the rack had given in eventually. But luckily it was just my right pannier bag which had jumped off the rack. Getting this fixed was a bit painful with cold hands, but after a few minutes I was going again.
I rolled into Seeley Lake and was looking for other racers who must have stopped somewhere and eventually I saw bikes parked at the gas station which doubled as an ACE hardware store and a pizza place. Nathan, Josh and Matt were sitting there already having coffee and pizza and I quickly joined them.
We started to exchange our Richmond Peak stories and poor Nathan had had to change a tire on the wet and cold downhill to Seeley Lake. Somebody had to build a fire in order to warm his hands. A little later Kevin came by who's warmest cloths were leg and arm warmers. Even though he had just spent an hour in the bathtub in the motel next door, he was still shivering.
I wanted to get going, but needed to fix the glove issue. I examined the shelves at the ACE and selected some bright orange rubberized Boss gloves and this made me a trend setter. The remaining five or six pairs were sold within the next 20 minutes.
Glowing in the rain with my new gloves, I got going, aiming for Lincoln for the night. It was a mostly rainy on the road over to Orlando and now two other problems sunk in: my burning butt and the pain in my left Achilles which had started on Day 2 in the afternoon.
As I rolled into Ovando around 6pm I was ready to call it a day with all the pain even though my legs still felt good enough to cover the 50 km to Lincoln over Huckleberry Pass. However, the general store and the Blackfoot Inn were closed since 5pm. I already planned to camp out on the porch when the inn keeper stopped by. Luckily he had forgotten something. He hooked me up with a room, the famous #1 were John Stamstad had stayed during his inaugural Great Divide Route time trial back in 1999. I forewarned the inn keeper that there may be other riders coming and wanting to stay here overnight and indeed by 9pm were had quite a group in the living room: Nathan, Kevin, Matt, Jon and Scott; Noah was the last one to roll-in. We had a good pizza party, tried to dry our stuff and went to bed early.
Holland Lake in the rain
Grassy single track
Snow starts on the climb to Richmond Peak
Snow stays on the tree and the ground at Richmond Peak
There is an inaccuracy with the route. The map shows loop going down to Hwy 83 and back up while in reality the route gets across the gap between the two yellow markers.