The forecast held rain. I was already bored of the few valley trails that were free from snow. Tyler, Alex, and I brainstormed over dinner and landed on Helena, Montana...whispers have been circulating that it's a good early season mountain bike town. The Internet confirmed the rumors.
On Friday afternoon we crammed Erica's Tacoma full of bikes and camping gear, while she gracefully stayed behind with the dogs (she's a saint with a master's thesis to finish).
We didn't plan a single aspect of the trip but over and over, we would express a desire and it would manifest itself. We wanted to camp at an undeveloped hot spring en route. We wanted to park the truck, get solid beta, and ride a ton. We wanted to consume adult beverages post-ride. We wanted to camp at a lake. All was achieved with minimal effort. Our timing was good too; with temps reaching eighty, we were there at the tail end of the comfortable riding season, and we hit the lake before the summer throngs.
Nary a picture of the trip exists. We were too caught up in our own enjoyment to stop and stage action shots of each other, and pics of us standing around our bikes drinking beer on ridges above a slightly hazy sun-bleached landscape wouldn't do the experience justice. There's no way to convey with a couple tepid images the deep pleasure of pedaling from town all weekend and doing big loops on hills that immediately loft you above the city into spaces that feel impossibly remote.
A picture wouldn't express the sinking sensation I felt on Friday night as we drove and drove and drove on chattery dirt roads through cowland in the dark, sure that the cursory Google hunt for a hot spring to camp at had led us astray, and then the complete restoration of faith when we stepped out of the truck, heard a rushing river, smelled sulfur. Through the lens of my lame camera or the boys' smartphones, the hot spring becomes a muddy little rock pit and the lake fades into dazzling hot brightness. A picture can't convey the haunting loon song heard from a tent before sunrise, or the tipsy speculation around the campfire that those subtle greenish curtains of light to the north may actually be the aurora.
Extending an arm for a sweaty sun-dress selfie would not encompass the party vibe of standing on the terrace at the brewery post-ride drinking cheap beers, watching over our bikes amidst many of their companions on the rack below. We ran into Mitch from Habitat, whose Instagram posts inspired the trip in the first place. ("Helena? There's riding there? It's dry now?") My boss and his friend were spending the weekend there too and we met up at the pub without any predetermination.
It was a seat-of-the-pants voyage and it was phenomenal. We came back into the valley in time to watch the wild colors of a lightning sunset.
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