Continental Divide ride 2018 - Part 8

Part 7

Guns! Knives! Bears!

Fans of the movie The Revenant would not regret making a pilgrimage to the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming, where there's a remarkable collection of artifacts from the era of Hugh Glass, the Revenant himself.

Wedged in the inverted "V" formed by the Wyoming Range to the west and the Continental Divide of the Wind River Range to the North, Pinedale was an important nexus for the fur trappers and traders who plied the old west in search of pelts and other riches to send back east and on to Europe.

Hugh Glass was one of many fascinating characters from the mountain man era. The museum tells the stories of several of them--with many original artifacts.

While the attack of Hugh Glass and the loss of his gun indeed sparked an epic story of survival and revenge, in the end, much of the story took place in the summer in South Dakota, and Hugh ultimately forgave the young man who took his gun, Jim Bridger. Jim was a legendary mountain man in his own right--here's his actual rifle.

There were several excellent examples of original rifles and accessories. One our traveling trio, Jeff, is an amateur gunsmith who was building a replica of one of the rifles shown below--a classic trade rifle of the era.

And more guns.

One's gun, knife, and ammunition were essential to survival on the frontier in 1832--and prices reflected that, with a rifle ($150) costing almost twice as much as a horse ($80). There was an interesting chart showing the relative value of common trade goods.

One of the favoured trade knives at the time were Green River models made in Massachusetts by J. Russell. Crude in finish but thoughtful and robust in design, they evolved to have a specific shape that made them useful for all manner of tasks on the frontier.

Quite taken with the design, I was excited to buy two of the Hunter model knives at the museum, one with beechwood scales and one with bone. The steel is 4215 ground into a full V up to the spine, and there's a full tang with solid brass rivets for the scales. It's easy to sharpen, holds a fantastic edge, and is great in the kitchen. The sheath is decent top-grain leather but poorly shaped and sewn, so I'll probably end up making a new sheath. A portion of the sale proceeds went to support the museum, so no regrets for paying a little extra. And now I have a good memory of my visit each time I use the knife.

Seeing a map of how far some of the mountain men traveled was humbling and certainly put our own relatively easy trip in perspective. This was Jedediah Smith's journey as a Western Pathfinder over nine years:

Wagon travel must've been agonizingly bumpy. Reminds me of one of the stories in the highly entertaining movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which took pains to be historically accurate and was filmed in authentic western locations.

Home on the range was equally rough, as several interesting displays attested. Imagine being part of a company of 100-200 trappers, having to haul heavy cookware and live off the land.

Seeing this tree trunk with the names of emigrants carved into it made the history seem like just yesterday.

One of the more poignant displays was of letters from the frontier. People put up with some staggering hardship back then.

Leaving Pinedale, we followed the GPSKevin route into the depths of the South Pass region, the Wind River range to our left and open desert to our right. The two KLR guys we'd met earlier said they'd taken the easy route and had no issues, and given the heat and general remoteness of the region, it seemed like a sensible plan to us too. The only traffic was a sheep dog lying in the middle of the road.

Continuing along the easy route, our wide and smooth road bent left but our GPS said turn right onto  a rugged double track. It didn't look well traveled, and we became suspicious that maybe this wasn't the best route. However, we saw some mountain bike tracks in the dust, so as much out of curiosity as "follow the path" we continued. This was a really remote stretch: no signs of human activity whatsoever for mile after mile. Then, in the middle of abject nowhere, a dilapidated cabin and shed, probably originally some unfortunate settler's ranch long since abandoned.

Whatever it used to be, someone had gone to considerable trouble to make it more than just a transitory home. Now, just junk and garbage. No water in sight, although there seemed to be a sort of pumping setup that no longer worked. We couldn't seem to drink enough to not feel thirsty.

Carrying on was more of the same. In the distance, a faint new moon rose over the hills, just visible in the haze through my polarized sunglasses, but not to the naked eye.

Still on track to who knows where.

This road eventually met Highway 28, a historic route to mining country in the north. According to our GPSKevin track, our route was supposed to dogleg a hundred meters or so across Highway 28, resuming on a similar dirt road to the east. However, all we could find was fencing--no way through. There was no sign of a road through except what may have been a vestigial track in the approximate location indicated on the GPS, but on the other side of an old but solid fence. As routes go, this one was clearly inaccessible and judging by the overgrowth had been that way for a long time - probably ten years or more. Even if there'd been a gate, I'd have questioned heading that way given how remote it was.

Stuck on the side of the highway with trucks and cars blasting past us well over the speed limits of our bikes, we debated what to do. Our arrival here had put us far south of the best option to continue east, and far north of the interstate that bypassed the desert but would've let us reconnect with our intended route further along. It was a couple hundred kilometers to the next possibility of gas if we headed north. Looking at our fuel and water reserves, we judged we'd be cutting it too tight and have no margin for error. With no cell reception either, we couldn't Google our options, although the GPS indicated a visitors centre further north that we thought may have gas or at least water and perhaps cell reception. North we headed, buffeted by strong, hot cross-winds and passing transports. Not fun on 250s--especially on the long grades.

The visitor's centre was a bust. Cold water, washrooms, and shade--but no other services. By now it was late in the day and we were hot and dejected from hours of riding in the relentless powdery sand, heat, and wind.

Our stop turned out to be at a spring near a key fork in the Oregon trail on the historic trek westwards. Here, at the South Pass of the Continental Divide, emigrants had to choose between going right to Oregon, or heading straight to Utah and California. Many tearful goodbyes were surely spoken here as the covered wagons parted ways to even more isolation and uncertain futures on the frontier.

Improbably, we met the source of the mountain bike tracks we'd followed that afternoon. Camped out on a concrete picnic table under the shelter, a 50's-something homeless guy with obvious mental challenges and an absolutely decrepit Walmart mountain bike engaged us in conversation, eager for company. His rear tire was completely threadbare and I couldn't believe it hadn't burst. He'd spread out his few possessions and, despite his efforts to talk, we were pretty tired and irritable, and distracted by our paper maps and trying to figure out where to goto be be polite company. The guy then proceeded to pull out several kilos of rocks he'd collected in California and carried through the desert, asking us what they were. Coincidentally, I recognized a bunch of them as similar what I find at home: granite, quartz, limestone, and other unremarkable rocks which must've seemed exotic to him given the local geology. While Jeff and Pete debated routes, I chatted with the guy about rocks. He'd been told one rock was magnetic, so I pulled out a magnet and showed him that it was indeed magnetite. This blew his mind. Glad to be of some service, we wished him well in wherever he was headed, and packed ourselves up to go.

With limited fuel, our only option was to retrace our steps back down Highway 28 to Interstate 191 and Rock Springs. Arriving filthy and parched in a rough-looking town, we lucked out in getting a dingy but thankfully air-conditioned motel room right at the end of Happy Hour. The motel bartender graciously gave us each two large beers and, thus fortified, we headed out for pizza. We were well off our intended route by now, but the good thing was we'd finally left the GPSKevin route and all its outdated information behind us for good. Some Google-fu later and we'd figured out a way to reconnect with our intended path near Baggs, Wyoming, where we could follow the Snake River a short distance to connect to the start of the Colorado Backcountry Discovery Route (BDR). Then we would be entering the high country of Colorado proper, with cooler temperatures and probably more water. We were excited for this next segment of the trip and to see what our first BDR would be like.

Part 9