Day 36: Dry and hot. Just kidding.

Saturday July 24

Wild camp past Beaverhead work station to Lake Roberts

58.9 miles, 6020 ft climbed, 2395.4 cumulative miles

We awoke to cloudy skies but the overnight rain had mercifully stopped. We kept our fingers crossed for it to hold off for a while so our soggy shoes and clothes could dry a bit. 

We encountered a section of stealth peanut butter mud that cost 45 minutes to clear out of our drivetrains. But now we knew (sort of) what it looks like and how to avoid it (walking our bikes around it essentially). 

It started to rain pretty early in the day and to sum up a long dreary story, it rained all day. We encountered lots of mud, terrible roads (again), and were cold and tired of being soaked. An ill-advised navigational decision took us on the CDT briefly with a very steep and rocky section of hike-a-bike before we decided to bail and take the longer paved alternate as we were quickly losing daylight.

We came to Lake Roberts where the owners of the little store and cabins took pity on us (drenched, cold, weary, pathetic-looking most likely) and rented us a cabin for the night even though technically they are all closed due to lack of staff to clean them. We were so grateful. Our tents were still wet from the rain the night before so camping wouldn’t have been cozy or dry. And a hot shower was priceless. The owners of the store said “this is the worst weather we’ve had all year”. Yes.

Published July 25, 2021