Day 4 - Pollock Creek to Ram-Wigwam Campsite - Fire On The Mountain - A Small Section of the Great Divide Ride 2021

August 30, 2021

Day 4 - Pollock Creek to Ram-Wigwam Campsite

Fully Remote and Off the Grid

Since yesterday afternoon we’ve been fully remote and off the grid. To us, this is what ‘bike-packing’ has seemed to be about (I still am really annoyed by that term … and don’t get me started on ‘gravel bike’ …. Both are just new marketing phrases for what’s always been ‘touring off pavement’ and ‘a touring bike’). Okay, done with that rant.

We had a really great night. Soooo quiet and even though the temps dropped to low single digits, we’re were warm and cozy in our down bag.

The morning was clear and crisp and since we were in bed by 9 pm, it was an early start for us. Coffee (Starbucks instant .. not bad for camping) tea and oatmeal with rhubarb and yogurt (dried and rehydrated) were consumed by 8 and we were pedalling away from the Pollock Creek camp at 8:45! That’s an early start for us. As the following pics will confirm though, it was full cool weather gear to start. The Garmin was reading 5.8 °C when we rode away!

We were heading south on the Flathead Forest service road now and it was in surprisingly good condition. There are a few dwellings (horse packers cabins, long term trailers etc) along the way and we had a couple of trucks pass us in the morning. Other than that we were very much on our own.

Given the clear blue sky, once the sun started to gain a bit of altitude, the temperature rose rapidly. We were stripped down to regular riding attire after one hour. Twenty five km’s of this very nice riding south brought us to the turn off to the Cabin Forrest service road and the Butts campsite and cabin. From what we’ve read, this is a popular stop for great divide riders, and it was okay, but we much preferred the Pollock campsite.

Once we hit the Cabin road and started the ascent of Cabin pass, the road conditions took a turn for the worse. It was still all rideable, not like the descent from Flathead pass yesterday, but the road was much rougher with consistent potholes alternating with large stones. Given we had perfect weather, it was ok ascending the passs, and as we were getting back into more alpine terrain, the scenery was quite nice. Note that in the following pics the road conditions look ok, that’s because I wasn’t stopping on the potholed rattling sections to take pic’s!

We had lunch close to the summit of cabin pass, and just like yesterday, we had a visit from an ATV’er. This time it was a guy on a dirt bike asking us for directions! Don’t you have a map buddy!

The road conditions on the descent were pretty similar to the ascent - potholes and boulders. Rideable but slow. As a result, our descent time was pretty close to our climbing time. This wasn’t the equation we were looking for!

We made it to the Wigwam/Ram campsite in decent time and once again were the only people there. A good site, not quite as nice as Pollock, but it had everything we needed. Good tent sites, good picnic tables and trees to string up our food cache lines …. And a nice cold river to wash in 😳!

Another early night and great sleep … and a discussion about possible route mods … stay tuned!

Heart

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SOTD - Rattle That Lock, David Gilmour live at Pompeii. My lock rattling on the rack was my constant companion today, and this became my ear worm!