Biking to the Sun
Finally she was pedaling her dream —
all the way from Montana to Canada,
across the Continental Divide
by Emily Sachar
Copyright 2007 Cowboys & Indians. Reprinted with permission.
To read about our Glacier-Banff-Jasper tour, click here
Not more than a few years after I learned to walk — I must have been about 5 years old — my grandfather insisted I learn to ride a bike. A dapper man, he wore his handsome pleated pants, starched shirt, and tie, and standing tall as a flagpole that Saturday morning, he gently commanded me to sit on the seat of a brand-new Schwinn and pedal as fast as I could. No training wheels. Just pedal, he ordered. So, I rode for my life, my heart in my throat, sure I’d end up in the hospital with more than skinned knees. I didn’t. Instead, after a few wobbly starts, I found my balance, and I felt the wind push my hair back into that swaying rhythm. I felt the tiniest bit of unknown power in my scrawny legs.
Soon, my bike was my proverbial horse. It took me everywhere, or perhaps, I took it everywhere. When I was 10, Gramps took me, for the first time in my life, west of Kansas City. No bike was involved, but the Rocky Mountains were, and so was something else I’d never heard of at the time: the Continental Divide. I saw a cyclist at the top of a pass, and I looked at that young man’s legs and at his bike, and I realized they weren’t such a far cry from me and my Schwinn. My dream, to bike across the Rockies, was born.
“One day, you will want to see the world without looking through a windshield,” Gramps had said that morning he taught me to ride. Gramps was right. More than 40 years have passed since the day I learned to ride, but finally, I’m about to realize the dream I seized on as a 10-year-old who’d been pedaling for five years. I’ve come to Big Sky Country from Little Sky Country, also known as New York City, to bike Glacier National Park in Montana and Waterton Lakes, Banff, and Jasper national parks in the Canadian Rockies in Alberta. In addition to my dream of cycling over the Continental Divide, I’ve come to learn firsthand the history of the Blackfeet Indian Nation that once inhabited these parts and surrendered it in bits for people like me. I will hear the history of the Great Northern Railroad, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the Canadian National Railway, careening over a series of century-old tracks built in part to entice Americans out West to see the very same majestic beauty that will soon transfix me.
I am here to surrender to the will of an itinerary I did not create, to the unpredictable power of the weather, to the pull of my eyes summoning me off-course to stare at a craggy peak or to listen to bird calls or to dart out to a gorge to see swirling water eddies like those at Mistaya Canyon off the Icefields Parkway near Banff. Stop, I will remind myself over and over, and revel in the deep red of an Indian paintbrush wildflower. Bike and enjoy. The windshield is not in your way.
I am not a long-distance cycling novice, but I am one of those pitiful athletes who have never learned to fix equipment. I am in proper physical shape to make this trip (I run about 35 miles a week and bike 80 miles a week around an urban New York park), even if I don’t know how to patch a flat. Maybe I’m out here with an agenda: After a long hiatus from cycling following a divorce from a two-wheeling road warrior, I was finally ready to ride seriously again. I turned to a 23-year-old group-cycling company, Bicycle Adventures of Olympia, Washington, to help me both get back in the saddle, as it were, and turn my two-nation vacation dream into reality.
I wanted tough cycling, nice hotels, and bike leaders who knew the mountainous West and who’d experienced a few decades of real life. I wanted to bike 50 to 80 miles a day, minimum. BA offered that, and much more — personalized meal plans, a stash of soft drinks of choice for every rider, and custom shuttle rides on non-bike days to spas and other venues.
Our group, which includes 12 other cyclists, meets at Grouse Mountain Lodge in Whitefish, Montana, home of a new annual cowboy poetry celebration. We hail from all over the country: California, Illinois, Missouri, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Washington, Oklahoma, and New York. Our two leaders have to be multitalented and multitasking. They can do everything from whip together a mean tortellini lunch with fresh grated Parmesan to help you identify wildflowers along the way — all the while keeping the pace up and over mountains.
The guests are on the trip for all kinds of reasons but one identical one: to see the beauty of these jaw-dropping national parks and to bike the Going-to-the-Sun Road, a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, over the Continental Divide. Our trip includes pavement pedal pushers, as I call them — men and women who want to race to each destination because the sheer thrill of a mountain ascended, then dropped, is largely about the time it took to do it. And then there are slow-goers like me, who move off to the side of the road to see the bug on a wildflower and who linger at every “exhibit,” as the pull-outs on the roads are called.
We spend Day 1 — gone for the next eight days will be any mention of specific days of the week — tooling around the western edge of Glacier National Park, testing out our rental bikes to make sure they’re ready for our Going-to-the-Sun adventure the next day. My day’s highlight is a two-hour rafting run on the Flathead River with Glacier Raft Company, one of four outfitters in the West Glacier area. Thanks to the deep geologic history of our rafting guide, I come away adrenalin rushing. Not even 25 years old, with biceps of steel and a script of geologic history that keeps the raft-goers laughing and humbled as we paddle as if our lives depended on it, our raft guide talks about the property on the mountain as if it’s his personal responsibility to safe-keep it. The 1964 flood. The 1970 fire. He’s so familiar with the facts, they’re part of his personal history — and now they’re part of ours.
We awaken on Day 2, and I set out early to check out a spot along Lake McDonald that is known for its perfectly flat skipping rocks. The rest of the morning will be a tough challange: our ride over the Divide.
Mention that you’re biking the Going-to-the-Sun Road to anyone who’s heard of it, and you’ll hear a plethora of admonitions. The drop-offs to the valley floor below are terrifying, one man in a tractor-trailer tells me. The park rangers will kick you off the road if you don’t make it to Logan Pass by 11 a.m., says another (that’s when bikers are whisked away to make way for massive tour buses). Don’t skid out of control where the waterfalls plummet near the roadway, coating the pavement with a veneer of slick Montana glacial melt, remarks another. When you consider all of those comments and the fact that we will climb 3,500 feet over 16 miles, one final comment sort of rings in your ears: You’re doing that? someone says in a stupefied voice. What on earth for?
Well the beauty, for one. On Going-to-the-Sun Road, the beauty comes fast and furious: a pair of mating butterflies at my right, wildflowers in every color imaginable to my left, a turquoise lake on one side, clouds overhead the color of cotton puffs. History and adventure for a couple more. Going-to-the-Sun Road is a ribbon of meandering concrete running from the Middle Fork Bridge on the west of Glacier National Park to the “town” of St. Mary on the east side. Completed in 1932, it is widely considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century. It passes through almost every type of terrain in the park, from large glacial lakes and cedar forests in the lower valleys to windswept alpine tundra atop the pass. Mostly for its history — but also for its beauty, adventure, and engineering — Going-to-the-Sun Road was added in 1983 to the National Register of Historic Places.
The climb starts out teasingly slow, offering only a premonition of the steep switchbacks that await us. Once the major ascent begins, however, my senses are so overwhelmed with the sight of towering snow-covered peaks and waterfalls crashing to earth just off the road and the sounds of birds calling in the distance that I almost forget my pounding heart and tired legs. I find myself looking at the shapes of the glaciers, which remind me of Rorschach inkblots. Rivulets that look like pieces of thread but are actually massive waterfalls run down the mountains in the distance; these will eventually cascade into even bigger waterfalls when they converge.
For the first time on this trip, I ponder the difference between seeing this spectacle on a bike, with my 300-degree sweep of the world, and seeing it in a recreational vehicle or a massive tour bus, behind a windshield, as the vast majority of Glacier’s roughly 2 million annual visitors do. My answer awaits me in a brilliant red-and-yellow brown-eyed Susan, a wildflower that seems to smile at me from the side of the road as it sways gently in the breeze.
Something else happens on a bike. One gets the chance to see the subtle changes in a landscape unfolding as nature intended — slowly, very slowly. I think about how long it took to make planet Earth in these parts: the undulating folds of stone and granite pushed up by geothermic forces, the steep crags at the top of mountain peaks formed by erosion, the glaciation from millennia of deep freezes and slow melts. Some of the oldest, and most colorful, rocks on the planet are exposed here. I decide that I owe it to Earth to see her work in a manner befitting the creation: as slowly as I can without falling off the bike.
I make it to the top of Going-to-the-Sun Road in about two hours, and I’m greeted by my fellow bikers and also by park ranger Jeffrey Sussman, who gives many a cyclist a hearty pat on the back. I weep with pride and joy, and it won’t be the first time I do so on this trip.
So our trip unfolds — roughtly 330 miles of cycling spread across five heavy biking days, one rest day, and two half-cycling days — I learn how many more gems await us. The lakes, falls, trees, and glaciers of Glacier National Park turn out to be the Christmas stockings of a trip that unwinds with jaw-dropping beauty. Our 51-mile ride on Day 3, for instance, takes us through Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta to a hotel that looks like a Swiss chalet, the Prince of Wales Hotel. There’s a reason something this grandly European was built out here back in 1927.
In the 1910s and 1920s, Glacier National Park in the United States and Waterton Lakes and Banff national parks in Canada were marketed to Americans and Canadians as alternatives to visiting the Swiss Alps — hence the Bavarian-style architecture we see about and the kilts worn by seasonal hotel employees who hail from dozens of European countries. The view from my porch at Prince of Wales defies description. Mountains practically hug Waterton Lake, lining its shores like colorful, beautifully bound books, each serving its role in the geologic and scenic tableau. Sunset comes in hundreds of shades of pink and purple.
Day 4 begins with an unavoidable five-hour van ride but lands us, after a delightful short hike and 28 miles of cycling, at Lake Louise in Banff National Park. We’ll spend a day here “resting.” I begin my morning on Day 5 with an unscheduled solo ride to Moraine Lake to see the sunrise. This gem of a glacial lake practically asks to have its picture taken with its otherworldly glacial light blue color and postcard setting. Surrounding the lake, massive mountains shoot upward straight from the water’s edge, looming like giants as they reach the clouds. I scramble up some rocks to sit on a bench overlooking the lake. Moraine Lake gets three stars in most any guidebook — its lovely aquamarine sparkling in a pile of enormous Rocky Mountain rocks. Easy trails around the lake and canoes for hire make it a breeze to find new vantage points.
A delicious breakfast at the elegant Deer Lodge is followed by a six-mile round trip hike first to one of two tea houses perched high above Lake Louise and then on to the Plain of Six Glaciers. With its red-painted chairs on its rustic wood deck, the lovely, quaint tea house offers a variety of teas, elixirs, cakes, and scones. I fill up. Then I take the little-advertised .6-mile hike out to the glacier, a bowl of snow and ice that envelops all who take the time to sit on the steep bank of gray rocks that offer the geologic equivalent of “stadium seating.” I’m looking at the movement of nothing, save a waterfall off in the distance, when I hear a crashing sound, a cascading avalanche tumbling to Earth about one-half mile off to my right. Why, I wonder over and over, is Nature always humbling us? Why is Nature so capable of silencing us when we can’t silence ourselves?
Days 6, 7, and 8 of our trip carry us more than 150 miles along the Icefields Parkway, the lone major roadway through the northern portion of Banff National Park in southern Alberta and Jasper National Park to the north. Jasper celebrates its centennial in 2007, and if I felt comfortable taking a hand off the handlebars, I’d blow kisses to every mountain I pass. The parkway gets its name because it passes within viewing distance of 25 small but notable glaciers and seven icefields, high-altitude ice-covered plateaus from which glaciers “flow.” Though movement is all but imperceptible to the eye, glaciers do indeed move. The ear picks up on this daunting force of nature as the ice creaks, groans, and scrapes its way along.
Here, the slate gray peaks of the Lake Louise area slowly give way to mountains in rich hues of browns and reds. But it is the geometry of the peaks that most compels my eye. First, I spot a butte that seems to be made of sausage-shaped stalagmites shooting up toward the moon. Then, another glacier comes into view, towering above us at more than 10,000 feet. We will cycle along the North Saskatchewan River with its bubbling rapids to the Columbia Icefield, having also followed the Bow and Mistaya rivers to the Saskatchewan River Crossing.
The lone Mount Coleman appears on my left; it looks like a simple stone pyramid, but as I bike the 12 miles it takes for a close-up view, I discover this mountain, like so many, is actually an intricate series of jagged shapes merged on multiple vertical and horizontal planes. Farther along the roadway, we see the Castlets, more jagged peaks that jut from the top of other mountains. Evergreen forests below, mountains up top, the scene for three days is one of sheer splendor, changing in a measured cadence of colors and shapes.
We are treated to golden sun and blue skies until we begin to approach the massive Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park, shared with Banff and with the province of British Columbia. We face a steep eight-mile ascent enduring biting cold and powerful head winds. Finally, though, another successful climb awaits as well as a piping hot tortellini lunch (complete with Italian salad, maple-leaf cookies, hot tea, and garlic bread).
I walk on the Athabasca Glacier and learn deeply disturbing statistics — that U.S. and Canadian glaciers are melting at a dizzyingly rapid speed, the curse of global warming. Just 100 years ago, more than 150 glaciers covered Glacier National Park in Montana alone; today, only 27 named glaciers remain. Between 1885 and 2000, the Athabasca lost about 60 percent of its volume, and in the past few decades, it has lost an average of eight meters (26 feet) each year. Experts say that if the glacier continues to recede at its current rate, there will be very little glacier remaining in 100 years — a grave concern. The Columbia Icefield is a hydrological apex; waters flowing from its glaciers reach the Pacific and Arctic oceans and the North Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson Bay. Now comprising 200 square kilometers, it is a critical water reservoir for much of the western United States and Canada.
With climate change and other impending goodbyes on my mind, I start the 35-mile ride on our final day. The names of specific mountains and waterfalls have already slipped from my mind. The muscle aches I’ve savored as a sign of my labor and hard-won accomplishments will soon abate. I know the baby grizzly bears we saw on the side of a road early one evening will continue their quest for adulthood. I know, too, that as the years pass, the winter snows will keep coming and the spring and summer thaws will welcome a new crop of cyclists to the mountains of Glacier, Waterton Lakes, Banff, and Jasper national parks, even as the glaciers recede and we grieve their loss.
My turn cycling the Northern Rockies is now a part of my personal history. I quietly look heavenward to thank Gramps for getting me up on that bike some 40 years ago. He was right about the windshield, and so much else.