Island Park to Virginia City - Mud, Snow, and Motorcycles Only | MTBDR #1

It's summer, and that means it's time for our annual run at another BDR (Backcountry Discovery Route). We've been doing these for a decade now, and - at least for the western states' routes - we're starting to run out of options!

Luckily, the good folks over at RideBDR must have a sixth sense about these kinds of things, because just a few weeks before our departure, they released what they called the "final link in the Western BDR system," a 900-mile route from the southern border between Idaho and Montana to the Canadian border.

Getting There

As always, the BDR started with a long drive. This time, our mapping agent suggested a 12-hour slog, which turned out to be reasonably close. We arrived and found a spot near Island Park, about 15 hours after our departure. With food and fuel stops, that seemed reasonable.

Of note - only because it came up the next day - as it began to get dark, I flipped on the Diode Dynamics SS5s on the bumper. We were, after all, in deer country. But something didn't seem right. "Does it look like one of the lights is flickering to you?" I asked @mrs.turbodb.

Her confirmation that there was indeed a flicker was enough to get me over to the side of the road and out of the truck to inspect the wiring. About a year ago I rewired everything to use pure copper wire, but I wondered if some connection in my harness had jiggled loose in the intervening months.

But all the wiring seemed to be in good shape, so I pushed the flicker to the back of my mind; something to deal with when we returned home. I thought.

And So, We Begin

We woke up an hour later than I thought we would, a side-effect of my phone still being set to Pacific Time rather than the wrong time that Montana finds itself a resident of. It was actually the second time I'd woken up. The first was just as the sun crested the horizon, when I felt what I could only describe as a tug on the tent. Sure that I had to be dreaming, I ignored it. But then, it happened a second time. Pushing open the tent door, I discovered a moose - its head at my height, 6 feet off the ground - staring back at me. He'd been nibbling on our shoe bag!

Anyway, Marty eventually gave up on the shoe bag and drifted off to a nearby aspen, visibly put off by the diet of aspen leaves after the prospect of a synthetic bag. Sorry, buddy.

An hour later, we finally climbed down out of the tent to a beautiful day as the sun spread across our camp site.

After running a beach towel over the tent, we were ready to go. Conveniently, we were less than two miles from the starting gate for the MTBDR, a Chevron gas station in Island Park, Idaho.

The first few miles of the route took us almost immediately onto dirt. This was a nice change from the last several BDRs we've run, where it seemed that the first and last stages were full of pavement. And the views - of snow-covered mountains in the distance - were a sight to behold.

Of course, the snow also had us a bit worried. You see, we'd planned on running the BDR at the end of July, but as is sometimes the case, it turned out that a July 1 start worked better in our schedule, so here we were. Probably, we'd be fine. We hoped.

As we climbed toward the Continental Divide at Red Rock Pass, we'd been underway for all of 41 minutes, but it was time for breakfast. Pulling to the side of the road, @mrs.turbodb set about preparation of the cereal and fresh blueberries we'd picked from our garden at home, while I nonchalantly checked the current snow levels on the route.

"Huh," I thought, as I nonchalantly slid my phone back into my pocket. "Surely we'll be OK," I said, as a group of ADV bikers sped by, "There go three other guys on the BDR!" Plus, I mentioned, "It says they are opening the road through the Gravellys today."

This is where I should mention that knowing when a road will open - before driving 16 hours to travel them - is a good idea. We had not done that. But sometimes we all get lucky.

Breakfast complete, we packed everything back into the bed of the Tacoma and continued on our way. We didn't make it far before we had to stop again. Had to.

A week before our arrival it'd been well over 90°F in these parts, rendering the hillsides free of the white stuff, but for the last three days, the entire area had been hammered by rain at lower elevations and snow in the mountains. Everything was melting quickly again - and that meant that there was water everywhere. At first, hoping to keep the Tacoma from becoming a muddy mess, we eased our way through puddle after puddle. But after puddle number 328, we realized we were spending more time slowing down than making progress on the route.

It was time to have some fun.

Twenty minutes later, we were climbing into the Gravelly Mountains. We thought this would free us from the soggy terrain, but it turned out that we simply traded sandy puddles for something even sloppier - saturated, slick, clay.

This wasn't only a problem for us. Our newfound friends - with only one-wheel drive - were having a heck of a time just keeping their bikes upright as they tried to navigate the "just opened today" terrain. We all stopped several times to scout out the road ahead, wondering if we'd be forced to turn around by a still-flowing stream or an impassible bog.

Eventually, and after encountering a should-be-open-today closed gate - the BLM apparently unable to get a truck in to open it, given the road conditions - it seemed like we'd made it through the worst of the clay. Frankly, I think we were all happy for each other's company - the bikes leading the way and testing the terrain, the Tacoma bringing up the rear in case an anchor or tug was necessary.

Dismounting, we chatted for a while as we gazed further up the road. Here, it started climbing into the elevations that would have snow. Another unknown to overcome!

Of course, the motorcycles moved faster than we could, and while we'd follow their track through the snow for the next several hours, it'd be more than a day before we saw them again. For now, we had new mountain ranges to enjoy, and dramatic skies under which to enjoy them!

Just before reaching the this-is-where-the-snow-really-starts at about 8,400 feet, we made a quick detour to a ski hut that @mrs.turbodb had marked on the map. As with several places we'd visit along the way, the terrain surrounding this cabin was deemed "perfect for cross-country skiing," a sentiment that would be repeated during multiple stages of the BDR. Unfortunately, as with many of the places we visited on this BDR, the West Fork Cabin was locked up tight.

And then, we were into the snow. It started off reasonably tame - covering the grassy hillsides, the road still mostly clear. But as we continued to climb - first to 8,700 feet, and eventually topping out at just over 9,500 feet, even long stretches of road were blanketed in a heavy, wet snow.

It was beautiful.

As our route through the Gravelly Mountains climbed, then fell - and before it climbed again - our confidence grew. The snow we were encountering was generally not more than a foot deep, and with a reasonably wide road and some speed, it fanned out to the side like a quarter-mile long puddle. Dare I even say: it was fun. And in places where it'd melted, the landscape was spectacular.

Then, shortly after descending from 9,551 feet to 9,285.6 feet, we ran into trouble. I chided myself for counting chickens as I climbed out of the Tacoma to walk the next stretch of trail. This segment - an uphill climb along the northern face of the ridge - was covered in a drift that ranged from 6 inches along the edge to a little more than 3 feet on the uphill side. I knew there was no way we could maintain the center of the road, but I hoped that we could put one set of tires right along the outside edge - as the motorcycles had obviously done before us - in order to get us through.

If not, it was going to be a long way back.

Ultimately, I decided the risk wasn't worth the reward. As the road climbed around the hillside, the snowdrift only got deeper. Coupling that with the fact that there wasn't much snow-free surface to get purchase on - and what little there was, was super-saturated and soft - this wasn't the ideal situation for a 6,000-pound Tacoma. And so, at 2:09pm - about 60% through Stage 1 and knowing that we'd have a lot of ground to make up - we tucked tail and turned around. It was time to find a bypass.

While I'd been out walking the impassable road, @mrs.turbodb had been scanning our maps for a route that would eject us without requiring us to retrace the 100 miles that we'd covered from Island Park. And, luckily, about seven miles back, there looked to be just what we were looking for - a forest road down the east side of the Gravellys, eventually spitting us out at the highway. And from there, we could make our way north before rejoining the route. It'd mean going 75 miles out of our way, but that would thankfully avoid a second pass through all of the mud.

The remainder of our bypass was thankfully uneventful, although also quite boring. 50 miles of pavement - while aired down and covered in a thick layer of mud that prevented us from seeing anything but the windshield - was slow going. For all the positives of the Tacoma, it is sorely lacking in the full-self-driving arena, which meant that - unlike @mrs.turbodb - a nap was not a way I could pass the time.

It was just after 5:00pm when - now north of the Gravellys - we found ourselves back on the route, and with a decision to make: do we head south, to see the section of stage 1 that we'd missed with our reroute, or do we continue north in order to save time?

Anyone who knows us knows that we're a stubborn duo. We were here. We didn't know if we'd ever be back. There was only one direction to go. We were turning south. Into the rain.

Luckily, I got a 5-gallon jerry can of Tacojuice transferred into the tank just before a deluge poured down the hillside and threatened to clean all the mud off the truck that we'd so carelessly flung across its entire being, earlier in the day. And then, we agreed that we'd drive for one hour - until 6:00pm - and see how far south we could get.

All the way to the spot we'd turned around, we'd find out! And there - near a primitive campground that @mrs.turbodb had labeled on our map as "Clover Meadows Camp and Picnic Area," and that the BDR planners had named "Grizzly Bears - Don't Camp" - we decided it was time for dinner.

For us to eat dinner, not for us to be dinner.

Anyhow, as the kitchen area was getting deployed, I wandered off to take a few photos and do a quick once-over of the truck after a long day of mudding. It was - as I was trying to frame a shot of some nice light on the Gravellys - that I noticed a major problem: that flickering Diode Dynamics SS5 from the night before was now hanging by only its wiring harness. The mounting bracket had completely broken!

The problem was obvious as soon as I saw it. Diode Dynamics designed their SS5 bracket to incorporate their logo. While super cool, this meant that a big chunk of the bracket was missing most of the metal, causing what little was left to fatigue on rough terrain. Over time (I've had these for five years now), the metal failed. Luckily, I didn't lose the light!

We still had a couple hours of daylight after dinner, which was good because it meant we could skedaddle from the "Grizzly Bears - Don't Camp" section of the trail in order to find somewhere to hunker down for the night. In fact, we ended up making it within about 10 miles of the end of the stage, where we found a nice little knoll on BLM land that seemed like the perfect spot to call home for the night. As an added perk, it wasn't raining when we arrived - although it'd rain through much of the night - allowing us to get the tent set up while remaining reasonably dry.

It was shortly after 10:00pm when we finally got horizontal. There's no better sound than the pitter-patter of rain on the fly, and within minutes, we were asleep.

The following morning...

I'm pretty sure it stopped raining sometime around 3:00am. With my alarm rousing us three hours later, a slight breeze had done a reasonably good job drying out the tent, and soon I was drying off the last few beads from the rain fly as @mrs.turbodb prepped breakfast on the tailgate. By 6:40am we were on the road. An early start, but with sunrise at 5:15 and less progress than we'd hoped for on day 1, it felt nice to be moving. Surely, we thought, the worst is behind us.

It turns out, the worst was not behind us. As we descended into Virginia City, the roads - good through the high elevations of the Gravellys - passed through a band of keep-momentum-and-wheel-speed-up-or-else clay. This stuff was insane, completely undoing all the work that Mother Nature's cleansing rain had done the prior evening and overnight.

I'd have taken a photo but for the fact that stopping would have meant that we'd be stuck there for days.

Twenty minutes later - and with liberal use of the skinny pedal - we rolled into Virginia City. It'd taken longer than we'd planned, but Stage 1 was behind us. As we contemplated the cleanest way to exit the Tacoma in order to top off the tank with gas, we wondered to each other if every stage was going to be so eventful.

We'd find out soon enough. Stage 2 headed out of town only a block from where we'd entered.

The Whole Story

Island Park to Virginia City - Mud, Snow, and Motorcycles Only | MTBDR #1

Filed Under

BDR (Backcountry Discovery Route)(10 entries)

Montana(7 entries)

MTBDR (Montana Backcountry Discovery Route)(1 entries)