Messages

1

Routes / Re: Food, Bears, and the GDMBR

« on: April 21, 2018, 08:13:38 pm »

For us it meant pulling all the food and cooking gear (as well as soap, toothpaste, trash etc.) out every night  and putting it into bags and hanging them, then redistribute it all back into the packs in the morning.  It's a few minutes work each evening and morning to get everything how you want it but not that bad. We didn't bother with separate clothes for cooking but we did try to cook away from the tents. There are enough places to stock up along the way that you usually don't need to carry that much food. Once your in S. Wyoming you move out of grizzly country, black bears range down to N. New Mexico.

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Routes / Re: cycling from Seattle to Weiser, Idaho (route help!)

« on: March 28, 2016, 03:49:46 pm »

I rode most of the Iron Horse a few years ago and you should be fine on 32's west of the Columbia.  The stretch that runs through the Yakima Firing Range can get soft and sandy (and muddy if it's been wet) but you'll probably want to head south before that, maybe take route 821 from Ellensburg to Yakima? The Iron Horse east of the Columbia is another story; sand, big rocks, and goat heads.

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Gear Talk / Re: Great Divide Gear Questions

« on: October 25, 2015, 06:22:12 pm »

I've ridden sections of the Great Divide and other bike pack routes with cable disc brakes (BB7s) while my riding partner used hydraulic (Shimano) and both worked fine.  There is a lot of downhill on the GDMR and the pads will wear so you need to manually adjust the cable brakes to compensate for the wear. (Hydraulics are self adjusting.) Its not a complicated task but its another bit of on the trail maintenance you need to preform. Getting cable discs dialed in can be a bit difficult, I ended up running full length compressionless housing (Jagwire, I think) and I had trouble with loud squealing but Swiss Stop pads fixed that. Cable brakes would probably be easier to field repair if they got damaged but in thousands of miles of touring that has never been an issue for us.

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Routes / Re: Montana Great Divide -- with a Chariot

« on: June 12, 2014, 08:01:01 pm »

It's been a couple of years since I rode that section. The descent down Richmond Peak into Seeley is rough but if you go slow it should be OK.  Fleecer ridge is probably too steep to ride with a kid in a trailer. 

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Routes / Re: Idaho Hot Springs Bike Route GPS

« on: June 12, 2014, 07:49:36 pm »

I did a rough map out for GPS.  If you're still interested I can send a .gpx file