Michael McCoy - Cycling the Great Divide: From Canada to Mexico on North Americas Premier Long-Distance Mountain Bike Route

CYCLING

THE GREAT DIVIDE

CYCLING

THE GREAT DIVIDE

From Canada to Mexico on North Americas
Premier Long-Distance Mountain Bike Route

2ND EDITION

MICHAEL MCCOY

AND THE ADVENTURE

CYCLING ASSOCIATION

This book is dedicated to the memory of Mike and Dan Moe of Laramie,
Wyoming, who lived and died for adventure. They were the true
trailblazers of mountain biking the Continental Divide.

Mountaineers Books is the publishing division of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas. 1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201 Seattle, WA 98134 800.553.4453 www.mountaineersbooks.org

Copyright 2013 by Adventure Cycling Association

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

First edition, 2000. Second edition, 2013

Copy Editor: Colin Chisholm

Design and Layout: Jennifer Shontz, www.redshoedesign.com

Maps by Adventure Cycling Association

All photographs by the author unless otherwise noted

Cover photograph: Michael McCoy cycling the Great Divide route in southern Montana Chuck Haney Photography, www.chuckhaney.com

Frontispiece: The primitive road leading to Cabin Pass, which separates the Flathead and Wigwam river watersheds of southern British Columbia Teddy Kisch

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCoy, Michael, 1951

Cycling the Great Divide: from Canada to Mexico on North Americas premier long-distance mountain bike route/Michael McCoy and the Adventure Cycling Association.Second edition.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-59485-819-2 (pbk)ISBN 978-1-59485-820-8 (ebook) 1. Mountain bikingContinental Divide National Scenic TrailGuidebooks. 2. Continental Divide National Scenic TrailGuidebooks. I. Title.

GV1045.5.C69M33 2013

917.804dc23

2013008637

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-819-2

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-820-8

Researching and mapping the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route from 1995 through 1997 was a team effort. The coach of the team was Adventure Cycling Associations then executive director Gary MacFadden. Gary, who helped dream up the vision of this route in the first place, gave me, the team captain, an astounding degree of support and flexibility regarding my timing, scheduling, and choice of where to call home. For that, he has my gratitude and respect.

But before Gary could give me the go-ahead, he was compelled to convince his own bossesthe Adventure Cycling board of directorsthat this route was worth funding. Consider these words from longtime board member Matthew Cohn of Helena, Montana, written to me in June 2010: Mac, the board of directors at the time went out on the limb to approve the use of Adventure Cyclings meager resources to develop this trail. It took two or three meetings to get everyone on board and take the leap of faith in you, Gary, and the staff. To focus our efforts on a nonroad trail back in the day was taking quite a chance. Obviously, huge thanks are due to those good people on the board.

And without Trailblazers, Adventure Cycling members and non-members who contributed by sponsoring favorite segments of the route at the rate of $100 per mile, the Great Divide route would not have become reality. The list of Trailblazers is unfortunatelymake that fortunatelytoo long to list here. Moreover, the list is ever growing, as new Trailblazers come on board to support Adventure Cyclings ongoing work on the Great Divide route.

Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI), of Seattle, was the largest single sponsor of the Great Divide route. Through their Great Outdoors Grants program, REI contributed an impressive $40,000.

Gettingand expectinglittle more than a thank-you for their generosity, Flanagan Motors of Missoula, Montana, donated the use of a new Jeep Cherokee for three years. Without this gesture the costs to research the route would have been much higher.

The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) were extremely supportive of our efforts. Particularly helpful were personnel at USFS Region 1 headquarters in Missoula; Ray Hanson of the BLM in western Wyoming; and Forest Service district rangers along the route in Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico. Others offering assistance included the staff at Travel Montana; Steven Elkinton, Long Distance Trails Manager at the National Park Service in Washington, D.C.; Bob Lillie, USFS, Durango, Colorado; and Gary Nichols of the Park County (Colorado) Tourism Department.

Nonagency individuals and groups providing advice and/or assistance included the Girl Scouts of Troop 817, Whitehall, Montana, under the leadership of Judy Strom; John Gatchell of the Montana Wilderness Association; Bill Harris of the Colorado Plateau Mountain-Bike Trail Association; Michael Hutton of Timberline Bicycle Tours; Andrew Miller of the Fraser Valley (Colorado) Partnership for Trails; Philip Novotny of B.O.B. Trailers; Martha Roskowski of Salida, Colorado; and Ted Stedman of Denver. (Some of these individuals are no longer in these positions and/or reside in these places.)

Adventure Cycling staff member Julie Huck and former staffer Suzanne Hanlon led the first group tour to take place along any part of the Great Divide route, in 1996. They brought back to the officemuch to my joysome of the first verification that, yes, cyclists are going to have a lot of fun on this route. Daniel Damby DAmbrosio, then editor of Adventure Cyclist magazine, did a terrific job of keeping the Adventure Cycling membership apprised of the Great Divide routes progress, while not enough can be said for the efforts of routes and mapping director Carla Majernik, cartographer Jennifer Milyko, and the rest of the routes and mapping staff, who prepared the Adventure Cycling maps and the maps contained in this bookboth the originals and the Canada maps new to this edition.

Travel Montana, the states tourism-promotion arm, funded a press trip in October 1994, with writers and photographers from publications including Outside, Mens Journal, Bicycling, and Sports Illustrated riding proposed sections of the Great Divide route in Montana. The resultant slew of articles helped a great deal in creating public awareness of the project.

Adventure Cycling life member Dr. Al Farrell and Steve Ready, then organizer of the annual Interbike trade show, gave assistance, monetary and otherwise, by providing Adventure Cycling a venue at which to announce the dream of the Great Divide route to the cycling world at Interbike in September 1994. Tim Blumenthal, then executive director of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), included Gary and me among the approximately 100 individuals invited to participate in IMBAs National Mountain Bike Advocacy Summit at Biosphere II, Arizona, in January 1996. Here again we had tremendous opportunities to spread the word of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.