Day 36

Mileage: 50
Total mileage: 3174

Montana must have read my blog post from last night and decided that it was going to alter the definition of extreme, because that's what I got today.

I'm very happy I elected to find a covered porch last night because while I was sleeping, an enormous storm rolled in. Thunder, lightning, pouring rain, the whole 9 yards. I stayed quite dry through the whole thing on the church porch and was up and gone before the congregation started arriving this morning.

The plan for today was a hundred mile ride over three mountain passes and back down to 5000 feet tonight. That didn't work out so well. I started my climb out of Dillon and rode about 20 miles, to the top of the first pass, without incident. The whole way up, I could see the mountains ahead of me covered in clouds and could hear the thunder echoing down in warning.

I realized that I was going to get a bit wet and resigned myself to a watery slog, but as I was coming to the top of the pass, I saw a piece of grape sized hail go skipping down the pavement, bouncing about 5 feet high on its first impact and continuing down the hill like a bouncy ball. I groaned, not this again. On one side of the road there was a fairly steep drop off of about 6 feet into a ditch and on the other side was a grove of trees. The hail was large, but there wasn't the force of any wind behind it, so it didn't really hurt even when I got hit. Regardless, I knew that hail is a pretty good predictor of a dangerous hail storm, so I tucked myself in under a large pine to wait things out.

The wind started to pick up, but the sound was different. Instead of the gusty howling I've been listening to for a week, it was like a constant roar. About the same time, I noticed the wind change directions abruptly like it shouldn't be able to. It suddenly clicked and my stomach dropped out from under me. Tornado. I was on the wrong side of the road. I picked up my bike and sprinted to the other side where I dropped my bike in the ditch, ran 50 feet back down the road and jumped in myself, lying face down. I started to think I was being silly when I heard the sound of trees cracking in the grove where I had just been hiding. It was ripping through the trees and sending big branches flying everywhere. I stayed down in my ditch for a few minutes, but besides a 30 second window where the air filled up with dirt, I was untouched. My bike was right where I left it and the tornado continued along across the countryside. I finally got my wits about me and managed to snap a picture before it disappeared over the hill.

Rattled, I did the only thing a sane person would do, I got back on the bike. I had run a little bit down off the pass so I rode back up to it and stopped. The valley in front of me was filled with formidable looking storm clouds and the wind was now blowing towards me. I had 20 miles to go until I was over the next pass, so I flagged down a car coming the opposite direction to ask if it was passable. He laughed in my face and said that he had just driven through a huge storm, hail, wind, rain, no visibility, the works. I believe his exact quote was 'if you try to ride through that, you'll be drowned.' It was already cold, so drowning didn't sound particularly fun, which left me either hitchhiking back to Dillon or hunkering down while the storm passed.

I've been carrying a tarp in my bag this whole trip for this exact situation, so I opted to hunker. I quickly found two trees and pitched my tarp between then, staking deeply into the ground and rigging it with some really well tensioned truckers hitches. Not a minute too soon, I got under it as the hail started coming down. The bigger stuff was about marble sized while the majority was about pea sized. For 10 minutes, I sat under the tarp, cold but dry, while the hail piled up around me. Then it turned into a really windy thunderstorm. During a lull, I went outside and peeked around to see nothing but black clouds in every direction. Since this was going to take a while, I decided to get comfortable and got out my sleeping bag. I ended up taking a two hour nap during that vicious storm and finally getting up when it was over, packing everything back up and getting on my bike again.

In the wake of the storm, the wind had shifted and not in my favor. I'll spare you the details because you've heard this complaint before, but headwind, slow progress and frustrating all apply. While I was making minimal progress up the second pass with the wind in my face, yet another storm blew in over the mountains and I was caught out in the open. This one wasn't packing hail, it was more of a slush with ice that stuck to my jersey and arm warmers. I guess you'd call it sleet or freezing rain, but it was the first time I'd encountered it on this trip. Wet, cold and icy, I finally got up to the top of Big Hole pass around 7500 feet where the wind stopped and I cruised downhill the remaining 11 miles into Jackson. I was done for the day. I couldn't feel my fingers and toes and I just felt battered. It was already 6 o'clock and I had no interest in riding 20 more miles to Wisdom in the rain.

In Jackson, things started looking up. I ate an enormous roast beef dinner at the local cafe and it only cost 12 dollars now that I'm out of tourist country. Still, I was having trouble getting warm even though I was changed out of my wet clothes and sitting in a warm room. Miraculously, Jackson (population 38) happens to have a hot springs! It's channeled into a nice pool at the resort right across the street and only cost 8 dollars for entry.

Man it was amazing! There was a huge lounge with couches and a television playing the Olympic trials next to a crackling fireplace. I went outside into the spring and spent probably two solid hours just hanging out in the 106 degree water with a couple from Butte Montana. We got to talking and I learned that the fellow was a copper miner who worked sorting the 'moly' (molybdenum) from the processed copper. Later, in the bar, I met a cattleman who raised black Angus beef cows, so between last night and today I've met pretty much all the big Montana professions.

At the bar, I showed my picture of the tornado to a few people and learned that those are extraordinarily rare here, to the tune of 3 in the last 40 years. I suppose I'm just really lucky!

When everything closed down I went back across the street to the cafe where I ate earlier. I got permission from one of the owners at dinner to sleep on their porch tonight, so I'm out here getting ready to go to sleep. Hopefully tomorrow has more cooperative weather! G'night!