The VSTROM Continental Divide Ride Aug 18th to Sept. 1, 2004
Written by Ken Ackerson
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I'm
finally getting time to write about one of the most awesome experiences in my
life, the CD ride. This ride was
introduced to me through an article in April 2003 edition of Rider
magazine. After reading the article by
Clement Salvadori all I can say is "thank you for writing it
Clement".
I didn't
even have a bike that could do the ride at the time but I knew that I'd do that
ride eventually. I had totaled my TDM 850
the previous November when the rear brake locked on me and my 98 Valkyrie
wasn't a consideration so I test road a KLR, a Honda 650XL, a Tiger and then
the Vstrom. I fell in love with the
Vstrom. It fit my 6' 3" 260 lb
frame well and was comfortable and lots of fun to ride so I bought a yellow 03
on July 4, 2003 and still love it as much as the first day.
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I found
the different Vstrom boards and posted my desire to do the CD ride next year
and invited riders to join me. I
immediately had quite a bit of response and we started making plans. John Weldon stayed on top of it (a
big thanks John) and made contact with the potential riders through the Vstrom
Forum (rapidforum) and eventually most of the riders got together for a Vstrom
gathering at Ironhorse Lodge in Stecoah, NC in early May 04. Here I met for the first time the future CD
riders, John Weldon, Mark Choquette, Bill Clelland, Roger Zadriski, and Mark
Cambron (Goldwing Mark). On the trip
others would join us, James in Nashville and Kendall in Montana. We rode a couple of days on dirt/gravel
roads around the Robbinsville area with a large group of Vstroms and had a good
time. I had been going through major personal problems for the last year and it
was getting worse, so I couldn't focus on the trip and wasn't sure I would make
the trip, but after meeting these men and riding with them that I knew it was
going to happen!
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I wrote
about our trip out to Montana earlier, so I will start here in Roosville,
Montana.
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Day 1: Cycling the Great Divide book, days
1-9;
Eight of us left out of our motel just
north of Eureka, Montana and headed north to the border crossing at Roosville
where we stopped, took pictures and bid farewell to GW Mark, who was going to
Banff, and would catch up.
At the border, left to right, James in front of Ken, John, Kendall, Roger, GW
Mark, and Mark
We
backtracked down the pavement about 20 miles where we finally got to start what
we've been waiting for, dirt and gravel roads!
These roads were fairly well maintained and we kept a brisk pace in most
places. This
section was very scenic at times, looking east into Glacier and running along
some beautiful rivers. 
What a beautiful place for our first stop!
Mark looking happy since were finally on
gravel!
Our first stop of the day at the perfect place!
We saw several mule deer on the road and off
and a couple of bears that chose to race us a short while. We also saw lots of forest fire destruction
including a few cabins. Just before we were getting into Whitefish,
our pace was running 45-50 on the gravel roads and I hit a de
ep patch of gravel on a left hand turn, which pushed me to the
outside of the turn where there was about 8 feet of weeds before a 100 ft
drop. I operated out of reflex and
grabbed both brakes hard and slid her sideways. I was preparing to leap off the bike when I nearly got it
stopped, 4 feet from the edge, I hit some roots and it flipped. No damage other than a couple of scrapes on
the crash bars since I was only going about 3 mph! 
Not too bad, just a few scrapes.
That
experience humbled me for the rest of the trip and I never went down on the
trail again, although I got stuck a few times and dropped it in a parking lot
too.
After
Whitefish, we headed out south through Columbia Falls towards the Swan River
and Flathead Lake. We wound up having
to backtrack and take pavement to Swan River due to a road closed. We proceeded to where we left the pavement
after Swan River and started up a mountain on forest roads. This road gave us some awesome views of the
Swan Mountains and Swan Lake but in the end the roads were gated and we had to
backtrack. 
Spectacular view back towards
Glacier National Park
Since it was getting late and we were tired, we decided to get to Lincoln for the night. We had planned to bypass the very hard Seeley Lake portion anyway, so the only thing I feel we missed was the ride to and camping at Big Nelson campground. We stayed at the Lincoln Hotel that night. It's a historic ancient log building and was very nice with a gourmet restaurant.
While the group decided to eat at the local diner,
James and I decided to eat out back on their veranda and enjoy some fine dining,
where I sampled the elk and some fine local ale, yummy!
Day 2: Book days 10-13;
We found out at breakfast that the road we were supposed to
leave on was closed because of previous damage at Stemple pass. We re-routed on pavement for about 30 miles
and took a dirt road to an old mining town, Marysville, where we were able to
get back on the route. Scenery was
impressive and made me wonder why I don't live out here, but then that happened
almost everyday. 
This is
where we started having route problems.
John was leading us by using his GPS.
He spent many hours working hard in trying to put the route on the gps,
but you know maps and software, they always have conflicts. We started getting into roads that deadened
or had locked gates. The roads started
to become trails with big mud holes and big rocks and ruts. At this point some
of the riders were going down multiple times or damaging their bikes.
James can't figure out what happened again!
We were
all relieved to finally get out of this stretch and into Helena for lunch. We had only covered 75 miles and it was
1:00. We talked about the problems and
the experience so far but everyone but Roger seemed to be ready to try again,
which we did after lunch. Roger had a
tire issue and decided to head out on pavement to try and locate a new set.
We left
Helena for the next section to Park Lake.
These roads were fine until we basically got lost. John was navigating by GPS and took us down
this trail from hell. We bashed up skid
plates and crushed exhaust pipes and fell down. We finally stop to regroup and walk the trail a ways further down
to see if we want to keep going. It
gets worse! Finally two guys on dirt
bikes come roaring up the trail and stop.
We ask them if they think we should continue. The one guy looks at all our bikes loaded to the gills and says
he can't believe we even got this far!
Definitely turn around, it gets much worse and then you have to go
through some private land, he told us.
Personally, I'm wondering if we'll ever get these bikes from out of
here. To my amazement, we get the bikes
turned around and run the two steep, rutted, rocky sections without incident
and finally get back onto maintained roads, where we head back to Helena and
stop and get gas. Here we decide to run
down to Butte on the pavement since it was already after 5:00. 
Ken's first and makes it out
OK!
That
night I get the only copy of the Cycling the Great Divide book that we have
from John and start reading the directions again. I notice right away that we weren't always on the roads we were
supposed to be! We were on some other
trails that sometimes ran parallel or at least in the same vicinity but
definitely not the exact bike trail. I
asked John about this and he told me that sometimes he couldn't locate the
exact trail on his software so he used alternative trails. I knew that we would never be able to make
this ride in the time allotted if we didn't follow the book from then on. I take the blame for not remembering to
bring my book or purchase the ride maps from the source. I think if I had, almost everyone would have
finished the ride.