Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Gonna give it a shot,” I said between short breaths—and left them behind.
The hairpin was a natural rest spot. The park service has widened the road into a
parking lot and several tourists were stretching their legs and admiring a wintry-look-
ing vista with snowy peaks hovering in the distance over hillsides covered partly in pine
forest, partly in spiny, leafless trees. Perhaps there'd been a fire.
I had a conversation there with two of the strangest cyclists I'd ever met, young wo-
men, one in her twenties, I think, the other even younger, who said they were from Cali-
fornia and had been on the road for several months. Both were obese. Their bikes were
piled high with gear, inexpertly, and sloppily packed. The younger one had a huge pink
teddy bear strapped on top of her stuff, and it sat behind her, not quite upright, listing
like a small child fallen asleep in a car seat with Mom at the wheel.
Their story—that they had traveled by bike all over the West, had been up and down
the coast, and that they intended to cross the country eventually—seemed implausible.
On the other hand, they spoke with unflagging cheeriness and here they were in front
of me, some four thousand feet above sea level. They were leaving for the summit as I
arrived at the hairpin, and I said I'd see them on top.
“Probably before that,” the older one said. “We go pretty slow.”
Indeed, I rested for about fifteen minutes and passed them within another fifteen.
They were moving, but barely. I never saw them again and can't imagine they made it to
the pass by the 11:00 a.m. deadline.
All told, from the lodge it was twenty-one miles to Logan Pass, about eleven from the
place where the road began climbing, eight from the hairpin, after which it's just up,
up, up—endlessly up along a road that traces a precipice, switching back and forth, in
and out of the sunlight, in and out of the shadow of the mountain. The views of the
river valley below, into which a couple of errant pedal strokes could have sent me tum-
bling, were gasp-inducing—or maybe that was just because my lungs were heaving in
and out with my effort. Across the valley were moss-green mountainsides and a set of
stony peaks lined up like the craggy, erratic dentition of a colossal ogre.
The slope was harsh and relentless, and I was watching the clock. It was just about
eight thirty when I left the hairpin, meaning I'd have to average between three and four
miles per hour in order to reach the pass before eleven. That doesn't sound like a bur-
den, I know, a very brisk walk, but among other things, climbing means plodding. It
also means resting, and with a deadline, resting means feeling uneasy while you're sup-
posed to be relaxing.
