Glacier Ride

We biked through Glacier on the Going to the Sun road. It is 50 miles long, and bikers have to be off it by 11:00 am. In order to finish the ride we tried to leave by 6:00, which meant getting up at 3:30. We packed our bags, ate breakfast, and had route meeting in the dark and left before the sun came up.

We spent the morning climbing up to Logan’s Pass. Our favorite part of the ride was about half way through the climb when we stopped at an overlook. The sun was just coming up, and there was a rainbow between the mountains.

As we climbed closer to the top it got colder and colder, but the hard work was keeping us fairly warm. We biked into some dense fog and up into some low clouds. We got a rest at the top, but when we started again we were soaked and freezing.

 The ride down was a very different experience. Visibility was down to less than an eight of a mile, and we were moving much faster. We braked the whole way down, trying to pulse them to preserve our brake pads. We tried to stay moving at around 20-25 miles per hour, slow enough to see the turns just in time but fast enough that traffic wasn’t trying to pass.

When we had made it about half way down we were too cold to keep going safely. Several other groups had already stopped, and we could smell our break pads melting. With the rain and the fog, all we could see was the road. We pulled off at the loop and joined the other bikers shuttling out of the park on the free busses. We were cold, tired, and wet, but also exhilarated from the ride and stunned at the beauty of the park.