Holy moly, what a neat experience!
It turns out, every year, the Going-To-The-Sun Road is just too high and too deeply buried in snow to remain open. This is the main drag through Glacier National Park. The road is 50 miles long, with a really tight and high stretch in the middle, making it difficult to maintain in the face of heavy snow, avalanches, high winds. Pretty rough place in the winter.
But as warmer weather hits, the snow starts to melt, and once the roads are mostly clear, the park opens for the season. It is usually at least another month or more before the big road is fully open.
Until then, they have this pretty slick idea in place. They still have the blockage only at the very top of the peak, but they close the road waaaay back, more than 15 miles from the closure. The road is completely closed off to cars and trucks. But cyclists and hikers are free to travel its length, almost to the closure!
The only thing you really have to be aware of is the wildlife that likes to stand in the road. They obviously haven’t gotten the memo that the tourists are back. There were a few points in the road where we felt deer were about to chase us off but they eventually decided to move out of the way. FYI… a dorky bike bell does NOTHING to get them to move off the road. You just have to ride and hope they run off away from the road. 🫣
Other than the occasional bit of jaywalking wildlife, you can hike or bike right down the smooth two laned highway, at whatever meandering pace you want, and just soak up the absolutely beautiful surroundings. Stop at a moment’s notice to check out a waterfall of gurgling snowmelt, rushing down the mountainside to join all of the other snowmelt meeting at the bottom and engorging the river, itself twisting and turning through the valley far below.
It was already an overwhelming visit, and we were able to see maybe 15-25% of the park due to the road closure, but what we saw and experienced just blew us away.
And then to be able to just cruise through it for miles and miles as the road climbed and twisted and curved its way up through the valley and up the sides of the mountain, up 2200 feet over that 13 miles, was really something to be blessed to be able to do.
Oh, and if you will take a glance at the map of the route below, you’ll note that this was an incident free day!
We rented a pair of e-bikes from a local outfitter, and they were really pretty fancy bikes. Good suspension, disc brakes, fully integrated battery. Good, thick tires. The pedal assist bike could be off, and just be a very heavy bike, or it could be in one of four settings: providing 25% of the thrust, 50%, 75%, and almost 100%. The pedal assist really made the relentless uphill climb quite a bit easier, and they could have made it effortless at full power, but the battery would have pooted out long before reaching the top.
The bike really made the climb quite a bit more comfortable (that’s Ben’s opinion!)!!!
MY opinion is that the seat was made stone. It literally felt like someone took a piece of granite from the mountain and chiseled two small indentations, which I guess they thought seemed “close enough” to human butt cheeks and then added a granite thong to it, just for funsies. I don’t believe for a minute this bike was designed by a woman OR for a woman. It hit hard in ALL the lower, delicate woman parts. How can the first 15 minutes of peddling uphill cause the fattest part of my butt to bruise and bones in my pelvis, which at one time were flexible enough to birth babies, be shattered? 😱
Honestly, the pain was so bad that I didn’t care how dorky I ended up looking if it saved my tush. I was just on the borderline of cold when we started out, so the first thought I had about shoving one of my shirt layers down the backend of my pants wouldn’t work or I’d freeze to death. I had the perfect little pillow in the truck that I use for my lower back and that would have fit nicely down my pants and would have softened the butt punches, but it’s miles back in a random campground parking lot. Honestly, I even thought about taking the helmet off my head and strapping it onto the seat to see if that would add any cushion. I couldn’t get the straps on the helmet tight enough to stay on the world’s smallest thong seat. 🙄 The rest of the contents of my pack were useless. Granola bar, nope. A can of bear spray, definitely not helpful here. Chapstick might help my butt later but would do nothing to help now. All useless items for the problem at hand.
Even more annoying was that Ben kept taking pictures over his shoulder as HE effortlessly glided up the road. If he would have asked me ONE more time to smile before my sore neither region made it to the top, I would have seriously considered making him sleep outside the Airstream that night. Luckily he’s learned to read my facial expressions over the last 33 years.
I have much greater respect for those who ride bikes on a regular basis. I am convinced they must have been born with cast iron undercarriages, or gooches, or grundles, or even the other word, whatever they have going on down there, it must be tough.
As we slogged our way up the hill, I was making good use of the electric assist, and Ben, to his credit, kept checking in to make sure I was ok, but my dang butt just kept getting more and more sore. We would stop for a scenic view or to check out a water fall, and it was a great break for my butt and bits, but then we would get back on, and I was back to trying to find a tolerable, never mind comfortable position.
We finally reached the top, or close enough because I started seeing huge piles of snow on both sides of the road above us. That was enough for me to call it because the temp kept dropping too, so we had a quick breather and a protein bar, and started our way back down the mountain. And it was DOWN, all the way and FREEZING! And of course the sun had disappeared by then and dark black clouds were moving in.
Luckily, my legs were not needed for pedaling for a while, which was bliss because I didn’t feel them anymore anyway. What I wouldn’t give for my butt and lady parts to go numb too but oh no. UGH. At least I could raise my sore fanny off of that murderous, granite hard, torture device called a seat and coast down with my weight on one lower pedal or the other!
Down we coasted, on and on through the same twists and turns we had just navigated. Passing the fellow electric bikers meandering their way up the road, as well as the hard core, no electric assist bikers, sweating and pumping up the long slow grades under their own power. We even passed a few families, with kids in carriers on the bike, being towed behind in a little carriage or in one case, tethered to Dad’s seat post with their own bike, dragging and bouncing along behind Dad, as he worked his way up the hills.
We rode 26 miles total, through just beautiful country. We definitely plan to come back to Glacier someday with the kids, but next time I am bringing my own seat and extra padding! If you edit out all the bitching about the seat, it was a stunning day with an almost overload of beautiful sights.
The evening included regular intervals of Advil, ice and a heating pad.
TaterTotTales 