A couple of weeks ago we were abke to join out friends Geoff and Andrew in riding a section of the Golden Gravel route; this was created by Adventure Cycling to celebrate not only the 250 year USA anniversary but also the 50th anniversary of Adventure Cycling itself. Adventure Cycling started in the mid-70’s and their initial route was called the Bikecentennial that stretched across the US from Virginia to northwest Oregon all on paved roads, and in the summer of 1976 over 4000 people rode it, which sorta heralded the beginning of the bike touring “craze” (not really!) in the US.
However, though traveling by bike seens to have gained a lot in popularity (and our buddy Eric Fahlman realized a lifelong dream by doing that route this past spring) Adventure Cycling has been a bit eclipsed by race-inspired routes like the Great Divide and websites like bikepacking.com, partly because many people are – rightly – more keen to ride gravel these days to avoid cars. So Adventure Cycling tried to do a cross-country gravel route, but realized that it was a pretty tough go across many of the eastern states (I guess?) and opted to start it more or less at the Mississippi and take it all the way to the Oregon Coast. And thus the 3800-mile Golden Gravel was born.
A few weeks ago we met the indominable Meaghan Hackinen, who was fresh off a winning and setting a new record on the Great Divide race doing 2700 miles in only 14.5 days!! Adventure Cycling hired Meaghan to ride the Golden Gravel route as a “cool down” from the Tour Divide race and basically be an ambassador for them and the route, and she set up a series of presentations at REI’s and other places along the way to do a little show about the route as she did it. She stayed with us and was quite psyched about the route (and not just because she was getting paid to be), so when Geoff said he wanted to do a chunk of the route through Idaho we were keen.
Geoff wanted to go from the Oregon-Idaho border to through some of the Snake River plains up through the Boise Mountains to Sun Valley, east through the Pioneer Mountains to the plains that I-15 goes through, up the Blackfoot river, to Bear Lake and the Bear River Range to Evanston and to Park City in a week. All well and good, other than the fact that’s about 700 miles, so averaging 100 mi/day. Though Ash and I were in good riding shape when we returned from Europe , that was 3 months prior and for the last month I in particular had been doing a lot more paddling than pedaling, so I had lost some leg and ass durability and was a bit daunted by that schedule, as were Ashley and Andrew. But we all agreed to give it a go, knowing that we may fall off the Geoff Lane train (Geoff’s done the Great Divide in 21 days and is a bikepacking machine).
Andrew joined Geoff for the first bit to Sun Valley and they had a fine time, partly because they broke one hundred-mile day into two fifties, but also did a lotta vert getting through the Boise Mountains.
We started rolling with them in Sun Valley and the first day went well; 90 miles and 6000’ of vert, but I was pretty tuckered. The great views and lovely changing leaves helped propel us along:
We finished the day in the odd town of Arco, home of the Idaho National Laboratory, which is the birthplace of nuclear energy and employs nearly 6000 people and encompasses nearly 900 square miles.
We knew we were far from the liberal bastion of Sun Valley, and this put a fine point on that:
The next day we got out into more plains, which has its own beauty, albeit in a more austere way:
We crossed the freeway and Andrew decided that his six days was enough and got on a bus home, while Ash and I and Geoff carried on, despite the fact that we were both pretty tuckered from effort and length of the day prior. Though I’d poured a lot of good sleep into my legs the night before, as the day wore on indeed both my undertrained legs and my tender ass started to ache a lot as we spun along towards another century mark (with not much vert, fortunately). It was hot for mid-September, and knowing my sometimes-propensity for combusting in the heat (as I did the last time I tried to hang with Geoff two years ago) when I saw a nice campsite along the Blackfoot river just as we entered BLM land – and I got a jolt from a leg cramp – I declared myself done for the day. Starting to cramp in anticipation of pressing on for another dozen miles of plodding slow, kinda soft gravel on a pretty hilly road upriver seemed to be a good opportunity for another meltdown. Because he was on a bit of a schedule Geoff rallied forth, and Ash kindly stayed with me, though she was still feeling pretty strong and likely coulda hung with Geoff.
Again, pouring some sleep into my legs helped a lot, and the next morning I was doing okay. However, it was slow going into a pretty steady headwind and we weren’t making the progress we anticipated. But surprisingly, Ash got a fairly abrupt and acute pain in her Achilles tendon. It wasn’t surprising to get an overuse injury given our circumstances, and we were both loath to have her get potentially- debilitating tendonitis that could plague her for months, so we stopped for a bit well out in the sun, since there was no shade for miles. She massaged her Achilles, took some anti-inflamms, and decided that not only would we bail out to I-15 and catch the bus back to SLC but that if we could snag a ride from one of the very few vehicles (trucks) on the road we’d take it (as I have said many times: there are few bike tours that we do that don’t involve some sort of hitching).
We rode on a few miles and came upon the only civilization we’d seen since leaving Blackfoot 50 miles back: a ranching compound with a few barns, a few trucks and horse and cow trailers, and a few people as well. Jace was a nice guy and offered to take us to Lava Hot Springs but he had some projects to finish and it would be a coupla hours, which was okay, but then we saw another couple leaving with a big trailer. They were going to Soda Springs, about 20 miles east (the wrong way) of Lava Hot Springs. Then the other guy we’d seen sorta stalking around the facility not catching our eye or saying hullo started throwing stuff into his truck looking like he was readying to head out as well, so we asked him about a potential ride. “Ahm goin to Soda Springs” was his answer. But this time I was ready: “How about I give you $20 to take us to Lava Hot Springs?” (I always carry cash on bike tours for just this kind of scenario). “Well, shit! I gotta lotta things to do, but I guess I can take ya there.” Great! At that point his wife kinda appeared out of nowhere and later we speculated that she may have helped our cause?
Then it started to get a little weird. He was walking over to a big concrete slab and suddenly stopped, looked up at me through his shades and his ZZ Top beard, and burst out “But only if you do me a favor!” I immediately started scampering over towards him to help grab the concrete slab saying sure no problem anything I can do, when he yells “You tell everyone you know that this place is terrible! It’s awful! and DON’T COME!” Huh? uh….I kinda stammered, and said sure, no problem. He then went on a very emotional rant about how “recreationists just come out here and have no respect for the land or those who work on it! This is where we make our living! They come out here and just make a mess of it, and it costs me a fortune, and we don’t want ‘em here!” Uh, wow, okay. I will tell people it’s awful, just put our bikes in the truck, drive us to Lava Hot Springs, and you’ll never hear from us again.
Soon enough we stuff ourselves into the cab of the truck behind Cameron and Janelle, and Ash starts asking him about the ranching life. Yep, it’s hard. What about the economics of it, especially these days of high beef prices? Cameron said that this area/unit has 30 members and they collectively own 5000 head, and that they typically sell steer calves to feedlots after 6 months, then the feedlot fattens ‘em up for another 6 months then sends them to be slaughtered. Not surprisingly, he said it’s a tough business: he said they make $40/head, which I found stunning. If he owns, say, 200 head (the 5000 cows are not evenly split among the 30 owners) and a good chunk of those are birthing cows then maybe he’s selling 50 or 100 steer calves per year, at $40, or $2000-$4000 per year? How can that be? How do they live? Not surprisingly, Janelle is a teacher in the local school, but that’s not a lucrative career either?
I gently tried to get more out of him about these dastardly recreationists that are also apparently driving him out of business; what do they do? He admitted that it wasn’t cyclists (he’d already seen Geoff go by, and we had seen another guy that morning who was going east-west on the Golden Gravel) but these moto guys and ATV/side-by-sides who “just don’t respect the land!” I pondered pressing him about why they cost him money, reminding him that it was a public road passing in and out of public land, and that the federal government leadig their land was only charging him about $21/head per year to graze on public lands even though that fee was $15 in 1966 (apparently inflation doesn’t apply to ranchers’ grazing fees; that’s equivalent to $155 today) but thought better of it while we were still a long ways from our destination.
We of course asked where they live and they said “Grace”, which is a town I happen to know somewhat well. The Bear River runs past Grace, and the Black Canyon of the Bear is the only class 4-5 river within a 6 hour radius of Salt Lake City, and as a result of negotiations between American Whitewater (spearheaded by SLCs Charlie Vincent, whom I’ve paddled the Bear with) there have been recreational releases of the Bear four weekends a year between 10:00am and 4pm. That’s a total of 48 hours of moderate flows in the canyon per year, and it’s really a function of electricity; Pacificorp has an electrical unit downstream of the canyon and diverts the flow into pipes that bypass the canyon and into the electrical structure, then the water goes back into the river and goes on downstream for irrigation for hay and alfalfa for cows and export to China (very little water makes it to the desperately-low, notso-Great Salt Lake). This year, however, they are doing a lot of major work to that power station so the water has been just flowing through the Black Canyon, and I just paddled it in early August on a couple of random weekdays with my old friend Pete Bailey.
I innocently asked Cameron and Janelle if they knew much about the Bear. He said “well, we own land on it!” Really! Where? “Between the dam and the Black Canyon.” I was stunned; I have often held up that half-mile section of river as the archetype of Terrible River Management. Nearly every time I paddle the Bear there are cows all over the north bank, which has been absolutely devastated: it’s a muddy, gooey mess, and there are always cows standing in the river shitting and pissing into the water. Whenever I paddle that section I am always spitting and snooting to keep water out of my system, I never do warmup/opractive rolls at the put in, and have even more incentive to not get knocked upside down in that river. It’s a riparian cesspool at the top, and it’s Cameron’s. I asked him about this summer’s unusual flows and he had the audacity to say “I’ve been managing that river bank for years and finally got all sorts of brush growing there, and now it’s just gone.” First, if the Bear were any kind of a normal river without a 100 year old dilapidated dam it would flood in the spring and take out the invasive brush and leave “good” vegetation and beaches, and second, Cameron’s bog of cow shit in a public river is the worst I’ve seen on the hundreds of rivers I’ve paddled, including in developing countries.
But again, I didn’t bother mentioning my feelings about that in order to maintain momentum in the truck. I did ask about some details of the other reservoirs upstream on the Bear, the flows, etc.; all pretty innocent questions about the river. Suddenly Janelle pipes up: “Are you a kayaker?!” Oy, I about swallowed my tongue! I kinda stammered and reluctantly replied in the affirmative, to which Cameron noticeably pulled his foot off the gas, glanced at me in his rear view mirror, and growled (literally growled) “I should make you git out and walk.” Again, I kept my cool (and was pretty pleased with myself for doing so) and said oh, I’ve only done it once long ago, and it’s really difficult. Janelle asked the right question: “Is it good?” and I said oh yes, it’s great, it’s the best river for literally hundreds of miles around, and the only reason it’s not wildly popular is because its got a reputation for being hard and dangerous, which is well-deserved. Which I guess was the right answer, because Cameron kept driving, albeit a bit too aggressively on the one-lane gravel road with very limited sight distance; was he annoyed, proving some point, or????
Ash gracefully changed the subject to their family life: four kids, some of whom had served on Mormon missions. So they are Mormon, which isn’t surprising since Idaho has nearly as many Mormons as Utah. And do any of the kids want to take over the family business? “well, maybe the youngest.” How old? “Fourteen.” Huh. I’m no family man, but it sounds like the older three have had a pretty clear view of the future and are seeking their fortunes elsewhere, and literally banking on the current whims of a fourteen year old doesn’t seem like a very solid bet. That said, when I got home I did a bit of sniffing into the Idaho ranching market and found that ranchers these days are fetching about $700/head sent to the feedlot; a far cry from Cameron’s $40? No doubt fuel prices are high now, but actually ranchers are doing pretty well during the high beef prices because it’s the feedlot middle men who are getting the margin squeeze.
Beyond the inconsistencies of Cameron’s tales of “his” river, “his” grazing on public land crossed by public roads, and his ranching business, I was struck by a couple of things: 1) despite his membership in The Church (as we call it in Utah) and its basis of Christianity, he sure as hell didn’t want to help us out and distinctly made us feel uncomfortable in doing so. Didn’t feel very Christian to me. 2) His bitterness towards the federal government that leases land to him for a song for his livelihood, bitterness towards the “recreationists” who are simply driving on public roads, and his bitterness towards kayakers who just want to float down the river a few times a year and are pretty excited about it, and 3) his obvious lack of interest or ability to think about or acknowledge any other perspective than his own. Even if it had been in my best interest to engage him a bit more and perhaps – gasp! – challenge some of his assumptions in the quest for a meaningful dialog, he woulda had absolutely none of it. All of which made me more inclined to think “This guy and his ilk – rural, conservative, narrow-minded, bitter, and parochial people – actually are shitheads.” Ash reminded me that by saying so I was basically sounding just the same, from the other side: I’m an urban, progressive, educated, naive, pompous liberal…..but….. I was the one asking the questions in order to try to understand his perspective. Now that I know it, I’m out. But I did try, and I have tried, and perhaps I may try again, but…I don’t think it’s worthwhile.
The end of the story is that he did drive us out of his way to Lava Hot Springs, and in our brusque goodbyes I gave him $40 instead of $20 to perhaps mollify him a bit and make him understand that I’m not quite as much of a dick as perhaps my kayakin’/bike-ridin’/city-ification made me appear to be. We spun a few miles down to I-15 and caught a bus to SLC, after some rest and massage Ash’s Achilles tendon is fine, and Geoff continued on the Golden Gravel to Park City on time and did indeed average over a hundred miles a day!
