Pancakes at Midnight – Acts of Kindness and Alien Encounters at the 24-Hours of Rapelje

I SIT ACROSS from Tyler, and between us is a short, half-eaten stack of pancakes. “Sit” is a loose term for how I am slumped in my chair over what have become, during the last half-hour, drying lumps of rock. His plate has been emptied and refilled several times. It is dark outside. The longer I sit here, the harder it is to get the fork to my mouth.

“You need to do one more lap before you take a nap,” says Tyler, my best friend and support crew for the race. Former best friend. I have serious doubts I can stuff the rest of this pancake in my mouth and crawl back to the tent—riding another thirteen mile lap seems out of the question. The only thing still clear through the fog of my mind is the suffering I’d just endured completing lap seven. As I sit, pain shoots through my knee, up my back and across my ass. My fingers don’t grip things like they did just twelve hours before, making pancake eating more of a challenge. The fork comes up, laden with pancakes. It teeters at apogee as if the pancakes are making one final stand against their demise. The buttery-sweet scent hits my nose, and my stomach gurgles its discontent. The pancakes nearly win their freedom. 

Between bites, I glare at Tyler. It’s all the violence I can muster.  I’m not upset at him because he’s pushing me. His job is to lounge around all day drinking beer, getting rid of unsightly tan lines, and, from a position of empathetic disassociation, tell me that I have to ride another lap. Resting is allowed in a twenty-four hour mountain bike race. In fact, it’s almost inevitable. It’s also inevitable that my body won’t go five more laps after sleeping (if I wake up at all). I’m not upset that Tyler is doing his job of pushing me to my goal of twelve laps. I’m pissed because he’s right and because no matter how terrible I feel, in a few minutes I’ll be back out on my bike in the middle of another lap.

Striking Gold – Exploring the Wealth of Trails in Helena, Montana

WITHIN FIVE MINUTES of rolling into Helena, Montana, I come face-to-face with one of the “local personalities”. I’d met up with my Missoula-based riding mates Dan Poole and Tyler Hibbard at Dan’s mom’s house. Dan’s mom wasn’t there. Instead, local artist and family friend Ken DeRosa meets us at the door. A flannel shirt hangs off his slight frame and he speaks in excited bursts through a matted gray beard.

DeRosa erupts into a story of how his 7,000-mile road trip around the southwest was cut short by a chemical spill on his leg. He holds out his hands, his fingers making a circle the size of a tennis ball. “Got a little on my britches, and the next day I had a hole in my leg this big,” he says.

He spends the better part of fifteen minutes talking about the curative powers of Israeli Frankincense. “The same stuff as from Jesus’ time,” he says. “I put no more than a couple drops on my leg, and the next day, it was half-way healed.”

In some towns, you have to hit the local watering hole to meet the eccentrics. In Helena, they might show up in your house.

Trail ‘Grams – Images of Eastern Montana

WITH SPRING CREEPING out around the country, I wanted to drop a little shot of trail stoke from the Instagram feed.

To most people passing through, eastern Montana looks flat and boring. That tall, waving grass, however, hides some sweet singletrack. Maybe these photos will persuade you to pull over the next time you’re passing through the prairie.

Sunset magic on a trail outside Billings, Montana. Billings’ tag line is “trailhead of Montana” which seems questionable when first driving in past all of the urban sprawl and oil refineries. Five minutes on one of the trails just outside of town will make you a believer. Not only are these trails cared for by an awesome group of riders, but they are a model of working with land-owners to create something special.

Jeff Handlin overlooks Bighorn Canyon from Sykes Ridge in the Pryor Mountains. This climb was one of the hardest and most rewarding rides of my life.

Trail decorations: wildflowers seem to line every trail in Eastern Montana.

Lonely trail. This trail doesn’t look too exciting, but eastern Montana singletrack keeps its secrets.

This is why Montana is known as Big Sky Country.

Some roads aren’t meant to be understood. Sometimes getting to the trail is an adventure in itself. This stretch of gravel outside Acton leads to some of the best trails in eastern Montana. Again, the image doesn’t even hint at the flowing descents, or the challenging climbs that reward riders with spectacular views. Believe it or not, there is a bermed-out DH run that can compete with many of the lift-access resorts.

Road food: eating for fatness. Exploring trails in Montana adds a ridiculous number of miles to your odometer (both on the bike and in the car). Luckily gas stations provide fuel for both.

Keep up with my adventures by following @SingletrackNomad on Instagram.

Farewell, Mountain – A Riding Retrospective on Monture Trail, Montana

This article first appeared in Mountain Bike Tales in August 2010.

MY FRONT TIRE SKITTERS along the cliff-side edge of the trail. The bike shutters as its tire’s side-knobs claw at loose dirt. Kicked-up pebbles fall into the abyss. I imagine myself following them. Instead, my tires grip and swing the bike back under me. I roll to a halt. Between gasps, I look back at Aaron Teasdale, one of my two riding partners on this adventure as he cranks his way up the trail. Beyond him, the steep-sided valley we are climbing spreads out like a giant bowl. The trail snakes down the bare face in a series of switchbacks to a forest of ponderosa and fir trees. We lost Rod Kramer at the base of the switchbacks, lured from the trail by a field of wild huckleberries and a patch of grass for a nap. I haven’t been out of my granny-gear for the last several miles. Maybe Kramer had the right idea after all.

Aaron Teasdale leads the way into Montana’s contested backcountry.

I take a drag on my hydration-pack and get only air. This is not good. Beads of sweat roll off my head and splash on my bike frame. We’re approaching 8,000 feet and it’s still upwards of ninety degrees. My pack isn’t just out of water; it’s out of food. I already ate one of Teasdale’s gel packets to get this far—I’m not sure how I’m going to get back.

Teasdale comes to a panting stop behind me. “You okay?” he asks.

I nod. “I was looking around, instead of at the trail and almost went over.”