Crowsnest pass, Alberta, Canada

Last July when I was in Canada I got in a short ride at the crowsnest pass, which is the border of Alberta and BC. It looked like there was a lot more trail to check out and I was a little disappointed to have not spent more time in the area. Then this July when I was there, my uncle mentioned he was going to be camping there for the first week or so of August. It worked out for me to go up and bring my mountain bike and a tent.

New tire day

My cyclocross bike, an older Orbea terra, was built to race and not much else. It comes with one bottle cage mount, a tall bottom bracket, a steep head tube, the original brakes were pretty mediocre, and the gearing range was short. I used it as a road bike for a summer, and found the ride to be pretty harsh even with 28mm tires due to a lack of frame compliance (my road bike, with the same wheels/tires/pressures, rides much better). The plus side, of course, is it's light and fast and handles well on a race course. But over the years I've made some changes that have improved both comfort and performance.

Philipsburg 46 MTB race

It's been awhile since I put something up here, and June has been a pretty busy month of mountain bike racing. I"m going to skip ahead to the last race I had on the schedule since I already wrote it.

Butler Creek, Grant Creek, and Snowbowl

For some good gravel/dirt riding with a lot of climbing, butler creek is a good place to check out. While most people think of snowbowl as being up Grant creek, it is actually in the Butler creek drainage, which is the next one over. From Grant Creek, when you turn onto snowbowl road, you climb over a saddle into butler. Snowbowl road climbs the east side of butler creek and ends at the ski area. There is also a road on the other side from Butler creek, and you can make a loop out of the two on a bike. On top of that, you can ride to the top of tv mountain, snowbowl, and point 6 on actual road, and there's some singletrack down the front of the ski hill.

Getting to snowbowl via snowbowl road is pretty straightforward, so I don't think I need to go into much detail. But if you've never been in butler creek it's nice to have a map or gpx track to follow, as there are a couple of junctions up there. The main thing to keep in mind is that you actually want to take Point 6 road when you get there, as that is the actual name of the road that continues to the top of Butler creek (and all the way to Point 6).

The most basic route is to climb to the base of snowbowl via one of the roads, and descend the other

Bearmouth Road Race

I was going to start this post by talking a little about the state of road racing in Montana, but it was getting a little long and I figured I'd just skip right to the race report and make that another post.

This year, Alex Gallego and Missoula Bicycle Works decided to put on the Bearmouth Road race. It's a course that has been used before, and is generally a pretty nice ride. If you're going to do it on your own, start at Bearmouth, ride to Drummond, and then up the pass. You can just go to the top, or all the way into Helmville (the Copper queen is a decent lunch stop). The race works a little differently as Drummond makes a better start/finish location, so first is an out and back to Bearmouth along the frontage road, which is quiet and rolling and about 15mi each way, then goes up and over to Helmville and back. It's around 20mi from Drummond to Helmville and in total the race was 74mi for the long race, and in the 50s for the shorter, just to the top and back race.

One of the problems with road racing in Montana under USAC is that so many fast guys are stuck in the lower categories due to the lack of races. They might be on the group ride every week and cat 1 CX and MTB racers, but when it comes road they are still 4/5s. So for this event, you could sign up in the "open" category and race in the 1/2/3 field. There was separate scoring for 1/2 and 3, and then an overall "open." So if you were a cat 4 that finished behind all the 1/2/3s, tough... but if you were on the overall podium, you got recognized (and prize money)

Anyhow, turnout was decent with about 25 in the field, although with so many categories mixed together I wasn't sure who I was racing. At the start, some guy I didn't know rode away from the group, and then Kevin Turchin went up to join him. We were crusing along at a good pace with little effort out to bearmouth and I figured that with the headwind on the way back they wouldn't get too far ahead. Unfortunately the pace on the way back was really variable and a lot of guys woudn't go to the front. In a big field, I get that, but when no one has teammates and there are only a dozen guys it's just slow and annoying. Like just ride tempo for a minute if you're going to be there. I took some turns and wasn't too worried though as the climb out of Drummond is a big one, at about 1000 vertical feet total. I figured that was where things would split up for good and was mostly worried about not getting left behind there.

photo by Jesse Carnes

Montana Gravel Challenge

For years, the spring race to do in the area was the Rocky Mountain Roubaix. But a few years ago the Cycling House started up the Montana Hell Ride, and then moved it from fall to the spring after a cancellation caused by wildfires. Last year they were on consecutive weekends and shared some of the same roads, so it kind of made sense to combine them into one event.

The Robaix used to start in Frenchtown, and the Hell Ride started out on Mullan near Kona Ranch rd the last two years, but Bjorn, a founder of Big Sky Brewing, is a big sponsor of cylcing in the area and offered to host it at his house in the Huson/ninemile area, where the old courses passed anyway. That meant a place to camp if you wanted and free beer all weekend (although I waited until after the event was over to have any).

Unravel the Scratchgravels XC

I seem to be getting a little behind on posts here. I have some more gravel routes to post since that seems to be all the rage these days despite the fact that it is really nothing new for us in MT. I also haven't said anything about the Montana Gravel Challenge yet. Maybe I'm tired of gravel, and would rather ride road, or mountain bikes on actual trails? Or maybe I just need a "gravel" bike.

Anyway, Scratchgravel XC is a mountain bike race out in Helena. It takes place down in the valley so it can happen earlier than most other races in the state. The downside is that you aren't really climbing up anything long or steep (or is that an upside?), and a big portion of the course is pretty smooth double track. That does make it a good start to mtb season though.