Bearstooth Pass makes Chief Joseph look like Pocahontas

Pine Lakes Campground, near Niehart, Lewis and Clark National Forest

Distance traveled: 449.8 km

Cumulative distance: 5,764 km

Maximum speed: 80 kph

Moving average: 66 kph

Temperature range: 10.6 – 31.0 C

Don’t get me wrong: Chief Joseph was a spectacular ride. Scenic with a ton of squiggles, it doesn’t get much better than that. Plus, what I really loved was at Dead Indian Pass, being able to look back on the valley and seeing the road up to the pass.

Yesterday when we had stopped for lunch, we had met a couple from Minnesota towing their Harley. They had observed that Chief Joseph was a great ride but should be done before the Bearstooth; today I learned why. At the time, I was thinking to myself that Joseph is a pretty great ride so I will reserve judgement until I had experienced both.

As we were setting up this morning, Nan asked me how long it would be before we hit the squiggles. I said, “about two minutes”. As it turned out, I was out by about a minute and a half. We were immediately into the squiggles and these were squiggles like no other. It was relentless hair-pin turns for 25 km up to the pass, which at an elevation of almost 11,000 feet, I am sure is a record for altitude for us on the bike. The pavement was new and good, though there was the odd rock that had fallen of the side of the mountain or spun out from a gravel turn-out. However, for the most part, it was excellent roadwork.

At the summit, we met two guys from Tucson, Arizona, Rod and Jerry, out for a three week ride, both on Honda ST1100s, like our bike. They both lamented that they were without their wives, and looked on with envy that Nan was riding with me, promising that the pictures they were taking was going to be fodder for action when they got home. That might not be the tactic, fellas; maybe it would be better if the six of us just met up somewhere camping and Nan could tell your gals how fun it is to be on the bike.

There is just something about ST riders, which might explain why there is an ST rider’s club but they are always friendly, chatty people. The bike is out of production but they last forever. Rod was riding a 1991 and Jerry I think said his was a 2001 so whenever we see one on the road, it’s always “hey, how are ya!”.  

We also met two mountain goats, a mom and kid, I presume. I think the mom was somebody’s pet because she was wearing a collar. The kid was a little more skittish but both were relatively comfortable with lots of people around taking their picture. It was a great setting; depending on the perspective, I got lots of shots of them with Nan in the background, the bike in the back ground and of course, the alpine in the background. I just didn’t think I could subject you to that many mountain goat pictures.

There were also tons of other bikes at the top and even though it was early in the morning, there was lots of traffic both directions. The significance of this is that the highway has been closed from 8:00 p.m. till 8:00 a.m. for construction, so people must have been waiting at the gate in order to be at the summit relatively early.

Later in the afternoon, we were looking for a campground in Lewis and Clark National Forest. I had planned on a campground on the southern end of the park but when we were arriving, we made up our minds that if it wasn’t busy, indicating that not too many people were trying to camp in the park, we would push on to the next campground, only 16 km further on. When we got there, we discovered that the campground was closed due to some trees that were unhealthy and in danger of falling down. What we learned later was that the campground had been closed since last fall when a tree came down and nearly onto some campers in their tent. Though I hadn’t planned on two alternative campgrounds, my recollection from planning the trip was that there was more campgrounds further on and sure enough, about another 15 km we found one. This was about 4:45 p.m., and not a moment too soon. The campground has about 20 sites but because the former campground was closed, this one was a little busier. There was maybe four or five available sites when we pulled in and it only took about fifteen minutes for the place to be filled.

As it happens, we are near the town of Niehart, a mere six kilometres away. We didn’t know what, if anything would be there but we set up camp then jumped back on the bike to get a few supplies hopefully and maybe some cold beer.