Bears, Parents, Bikepackers and the Llama Ranch

Posted from Llama Ranch, MT outside Helena

I’m highly suspect that the Canadians have been herding all the bears to their side of the border. In our month biking in the States, we had no contact or sign of them. Upon arriving to Canada, they had domesticated grizzlies handing out small shots of maple syrup and cheese curds and we had our first sightings and encounters with the big lumps. First, Zoey spotted a black bear lumbering across the road, which ran away before I rolled up. I was very jealous and thought maybe I had missed my shot at seeing one. A few days later, I went to make coffee in the morning and found that Zoeys kevlar bear bag had been thoroughly fondled in the night and had dozens of bear claw punctures in it. Despite this, the kevlar fabric had not been torn and all the food was safely inside. A box of tofu had been hit, so there was a slurry of tofu juice, old ramen powder and dirt in the bottom, but the bear hadn’t been fed and our food was mostly salvageable. We tie these bags to trees with all our food smelling objects every night, and just looking at them it seems almost certain a hungry bear could break into them. It was pretty neat to see that they actually do their job, even with a bear going to town on them.

On our way riding to Banff we had plans to meet up with Zoeys parents, Lynn and Tom, and ride the final miles into our northern most destination. They had driven from Nevada with their bikes and camping gear, and more importantly, 4 liters of Coca Cola and a lemon meringue pie, all the way to a campsite on Kananaskis Lake where we would meet them. As we fantasized about how 2 liters of coke would feel in our bellies, we crested the top of the last climb before what we thought would be an easy couple mile roll down to camp. Zoey yelled “stop” and “bear” and grazing in the bushes was a very large grizzly bear, maybe a quarter mile ahead of us on the wide power line road. We pulled out our bear spray (basically a very powerful and large can of mace), and stood observing the bear while we figured out what to do. It was too close to the road to ride by and didn’t seem remotely perturbed by our incessant yelling. It was eating and walking in our general direction and a bear walking very casually covers a lot of distance quickly. Eventually, it was too close for comfort, so we backed up our bikes the way we came. This caused us to lose sight of the bear, so we backed up further to try and get higher ground. We didn’t see any sign of the bear for a while, and I was just voicing the opinion that maybe we could proceed cautiously as the bear may have walked off, when it crossed directly over where we had been standing moments before. We really started backing up fast at that point, which I’m sure looked ridiculous as backing an 85 pound bike up hill is a terrible way to travel. However, we didn’t want to lose sight or bear spray ability by turning around. It started walking directly towards us quite fast and once it was about 300 feet from us we hopped on our bikes and booked it back to an alternate trail to try and bypass the delicious berry patches under the power lines. In our adrenaline rush we flew down the now singletrack trail yelling our little heads off to warn the hundreds of grizzlies that were undoubtedly in front of us. We finally burst into Tom and Lynn’s camp, babbling frantically about our encounter, and I’m sure harshing a supreme vibe they had cultivated at the week long silent retreat they had just come from.

We spent the next few days riding with the parents, who alternated driving a truck and riding their bikes. At the end of each day we were met with a glorious camp setup and real never-dehydrated food. It was a nice couple of days. Thanks Tom and Lynn for taking care of us and the good times! And the Canadian Rockies are very beautiful, take a look:

With the parental support we made it to Banff! Here we are posing in front of the outrageous Fairmont Hotel, where I imagine people enjoy the Rockies from a claw foot tub, sipping a glass of wine, rarely stopping to consider eating two gas station hot dogs, ice cream and a whole pack of cookies as an afternoon snack. Sad, really.

From there, we were kindly given a ride back down to the border so we could avoid riding back the same way we came. Since then, we’ve been riding in Montana again, this time south on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. Compared to Western Wildlands, we have been meeting a ton of very cool folks on bikes. We even got to ride and camp for a day with Jack (from Salt Lake!) and Kenny (from Australia) who we had met at previous times on our trip and happened to roll up one day while we were headed out of camp. Then we got to camp with them again a few days later at the Llama Ranch, which I’ll talk about in a moment. Here are a few of the folks we met:

Two places we stopped and deserve a big shout out are Ovando and the Llama Ranch. Ovando is a tiny town in Montana that has really bought into the route and provided a ton of donation based lodging, as well as bike supplies, food, laundry, free coffee and showers. You can stay in an old jail, a sheep herders wagon, a church basement or a town park with an electric fence for bears. The Llama Ranch is truly a small paradise for Great Divide riders. Any time of day or night you can show up to the Llama Ranch and find a number of cabins and other shelters, stocked with food, water, coffee, wine, chocolate milk, sandwiches, beer, beds with sheets, stoves, showers and countless other desperately desired items for a long distance cyclist, all free of charge. And a herd of alpacas (there are no llamas). The folks who run the ranch, Barbara and John, work all summer keeping the place open and maintained to help cyclists out of the kindness of their hearts, and only ask that people who stay pass on some kindness to someone out in the world. In fact, the Jack pictured above did just that by buying us breakfast one morning. It’s hard to portray what a wonderful place this is. We stayed two nights there with a bunch of other cyclists, many of which we had previously met along our travels and were all enjoying a respite from the rain and mud for a day or two.