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Day 11 – The Snowy Divide
Posted by eschroeder03 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on 29-05-2010
This morning started out great as we rolled out of our 70′s style motel beds around 7:00 to go eat a hot breakfast at a local shop. This was our first morning adventuring out for our 1st breakfast. You may be familiar with our occasional 2nd breakfast at a restaurant. This was a treat. Place called The Pit Stop at the end of town, this place reminds me of an old place called “Greasers” if any of you have ever ventured there. I got the biggest biscut i have ever seen topped with sausage and gravy with two eggs on the size for $5.50. Best breakfast at the price i have had in a long time, and the other guys all agree.
After breakfast we looked outside at the rain coming down in 35 degree weather, waterproofed the best way we knew how, and said lets do it. Jeff’s parent’s would shoot ahead in the car, stop and take pictures every half mile or mile of us passing them (great action shots in the drizzily cold) . Soon enough the uphill to the Continental Divide came, not as bad as we thought, at least nothin compared to Lolo Pass from the other day. The challenge was the higher we got the colder it got and soon rain turned to ice, then to snow. At the top of the divide, 30 degrees, snow/ice and lots of adrenaline making it to the top in these conditions. We took pictures of our feat.
Then things turned for the worse, David (Jeff’s dad) joined us for the descent, but going 35 mph downhill in sleet is not the greatest. The face stung so bad from the wind and the cold plus the sleet bouncing off my face and body felt like thousands of needle’s being pressed into my face at once, or similar to what i would imagine being torched by a sand blaster. Nothing pleasing.
We made it 20 mile or so in these conditions, my mind racing and continually asking why am i doing this. We are fighting soo hard to stay strong and keep going, one of the things that kept us going for soo long is that there could be a motel in Simms to stay at (30 miles from the divide). Untill we pulled over for a break to walk around so we could regain feeling in our toes (as i was not sure if i even still had toes), we were told there was no such accommodation in Simms. We were destroyed and contemplating what we are going to do to avoid any chances of Hypothermia. With our decision we felt like girls or cheaters (but just taking advantage of our current resources 
), but we voted to shuttle the bikers in 2 trips to Great Falls, Montana (45 miles from where we were at the time). Ben and Scott volunteered to stay behind and keep biking as we could only take 4 bikers on the car at a time.
As we got a hotel in great falls, we waited for Ben and Scott to return from the 2nd trip. Once we all got changed we found a Golden Corral across the street from us. Turned our frowns upside down. We were sooo pumped for the domination that was about to take place. As typical Americans, we stuffed ourselves to where we couldn’t move anymore, our heads were on the table in satisfaction. Torn with how there was still good food left but no room to put it in our stomach.
As we were relaxing and blogging in our room, we saw on the weather channel that we are currently sitting in the coldest place in the USA. What luck. Plus the rain storm on top of us. It looks like rain for 2 more days. We are going to try and make it to Fort Benton tomorrow (40 miles) in another cold, windy, rain day. We are trying to power through what we can without feeling lame. But sitting in the Hot tub in our hotel does not add to our hardcore stories to share with people we met.
We met a great guy from South Dakota named Abel yesterday. We invited him to stay with us in our hotel for the night. He work for a log construction company. Another great guy with some more hardcore stories to tell that we have yet to live up to it seems like. Continues to be a trip revolving around the people we are meeting. This is great.
