Woke to another beautiful bluebird day in the park. We thought our legs were good to go for a bike ride on the Inside North Fork Road. The gravel road has a gate closure at the 6-mile point at Camas Creek, but can easily get a bike or hike around the gate. A really nice ride without worrying about vehicles. On this ride we only had 1 car pass us the entire ride & that was only with a mile or so left in the ride.
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| Huckleberry bush |
No critter sightings...though we did see lots of fresh bear scat. Makes one a bit nervous as you ride along spotting huckleberry bushes with ripening fruit next to a huge pile of scat. We started wondering if you can pull the bear spray while riding. Thankfully we didn't need to test the theory on this ride.
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| Camas Creek |
About 15 miles into our ride we spotted a group of 4 bicyclists ahead of us. As I rode past the group, I thought I heard something that sounded like 'nice bike'. Of course, Bill decided to stop & chat with them. A good thing too. It turns out one of their bikes had a flat tire. According to the group the e-bike rental shop doesn't provide any type of repair kit when you rent the bike.
We both thought that wasn't a good thing considering the lack of cell service & the remoteness of some of the rides. We actually pack a repair kit that includes a patch kit, extra bike chain, & spare tire. Our bikes are also tubeless...only worry about breaking the frame or pretzeling a wheel when we ride in the mountains.
Bill helped get the tire patched and pumped back up so that they could ride back out. The family of three was from Wisconsin & visiting family in Kalispell, MT. The odd thing was their family member was with them & her attitude was ''no worries someone on a bike, horse or hiking will be by to help.'' She was a rider & didn't carry any tools while riding in the backcountry! Seemed unwise to us since we were 15 miles on a rode that was technically not open to traffic. Anyway, they were thankful and said that they would drop by camp with something special later in the day.
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| Mountain Views |
Off we headed up the trail as they made their way back to Fish Creek. We rode another 2 miles before deciding to turn back toward camp. It was going to be a 34-mile ride by the time we hit our site at Fish Creek...the longest ride to date. Ride time was 3 hours & 22 minutes with elevation gain of 2786 feet.
Our batteries had about 30% left when we got back to our campsite. The trailer's solar had charged the lithium batteries back up to 92% which was a great since the two EMB's drained the trailer batteries back down to 60%.
Ready for another ride.
As a side note the Wisconsin couple with their daughter dropped by with 2 4 packs of Cold Smoke & a bottle of North Fork Whiskey from Glacier Distillery. Really very nice of them. They said that the text message that they had tried to send to the rental company actually got received and the owner had headed out to 'find them'. They met at the closure gate as he was unloading another e-bike.
They had also met another person on the road with an issue with their rental...the bike chain had broken so he still had to rescue someone. Always be prepared to self-rescue! You never know if someone will be passing by any time soon.
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| Harebell |
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| Tall trees that survived fire |
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| The road ahead gets narrower |
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| Fire killed trees still standing |
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