Montana Welcome Sign as seen from Lookout Pass - Idaho/Montana border

Being atop Lookout Pass had been a dream just a few months earlier, but now, Dogzilla and I had actually made it. We were riding on the emotional high of having crossed two states together, entirely by bicycle, covering roughly 1,200 miles in the process! I was so proud of Zilla for being such an awesome travel buddy. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion. Zilla had seen and done a lot in his nearly 15 years, but this was definitely near the top of the list of his accomplishments! It would have been awesome if the ski resort had been open and we could have stopped in for some celebratory snacks or a beer, but it was still way before ski season and the only people around were a couple of maintenance workers so we celebrated by ourselves instead and just hung around for a bit, letting it all sink in for a bit.

We eventually though had to face the reality that we were about to head into one of the largest states in the entire country, Montana, and that this would be our biggest undertaking yet. But with Zilla by my side, we were ready for anything!

One of the best things about climbing a 4,711 foot mountain pass is that the next several miles are typically downhill allowing for an enjoyable coast and today would be no different. Zilla and I passed the ski resort and began down the dirt road that made up the Montana portion of the NorPac Trail. It was smooth sailing and we were again totally alone so I let Zilla out of the trailer so that he could get some Montana miles on his paws. As always, he was more than happy to get out and explore a bit.

We did have one roadblock in store, an old railroad tunnel that the trail ran through was deemed unsafe and had been blocked off. From what I’d read, there was supposed to be a trail to the left of the tunnel and a sign telling you where it was. It was supposed to steep and difficult to navigate so I worried about whether we’d be able to make it with the trailer. When we eventually arrived at the tunnel, I didn’t see any sign that there was a bypass of any kind but there was a very faint trail on the left side and it was steep. It looked like it was going to be horrible to try and take this with the bike, let alone the trailer.

I decided to try and walk up it a ways to see what was going on and a few hundred yards later, the trail entirely disappeared. I searched around for several minutes but couldn’t find a way through at all. When I turned around, I saw that Dogzilla, being the faithful buddy that he is, had decided to follow me up the steep trail. I didn’t want him to get hurt going down the steep, slippery, and loose trail, so I picked him and gave him a free ride back to his trailer. But now I was stumped, we had nowhere to go from here except back the way we came.

About a quarter mile back, there was an unmarked dirt road that headed in the general direction of where the NorPac should have been heading, so we decided to give that a try. It was extremely steep and rocky though, so bad that it would have been unsafe to try and ride it, especially with Zilla in the trailer, so I unhooked the trailer from the bike and moved the pieces one at a time. Even though it was downhill, it took a lot of effort to move things safely and to make sure that I was never more than about 100ft from Zilla as we were now in grizzly country and I didn’t want to risk a chance encounter with a bear, mountain lion, or even possibly a wolf.

Nearly 30 minutes later, we found ourselves at the bottom of the steep hill and to my elation, I saw a sign pointing in the direction that we’d come from saying that the road we had taken had been the bypass for the NorPac. For some reason though, they’d only put the sign at the bottom of the hill. I wonder if someone had stolen the sign from the top? No matter, we were back on track and ready to roll!

Zilla and I continued our coast down the NorPac and were making good time now that we were back on the right path. We weren’t in a hurry though so we stopped to enjoy the sights and smells along the way including a couple crystal clear creeks that were flowing near the trail. It was a great way to spend our afternoon.

We then got back at it and started coasting downhill once more but a short distance later, the bike suddenly slowed to a crawl and the back tire got wobbly, the telltale signs of a flat tire. I took the tire off but couldn’t find anything wrong with the tube so I assumed we’d just gotten a pinch flat so I put it all back together and we carried on. Then, just a minute or so later, the tire had gone flat again. That’s when I realized what the problem was, it wasn’t the tube, it was the tire itself. The boot had finally catastrophically failed and was no longer repairable…

Failure

From One Extreme

Lookout!