Cover photo courtesy of Justin Short
My illustrious career as an Out There columnist kicked off with an article titled “Madness and Mayhem on the Midnight Century.” I’ve been accused of being the organizer of the now legendary Midnight Century (MC), Spokane’s all-night gravel ride that goes down on the first Saturday night in August, but this grassroots event predates my arrival here by a good eight years. The hero of Inland Northwest cycling who did organize it enjoys his anonymity, so we’ll just keep his identity a mystery, but he did pull together that first ride 20 years ago as of this issue.
I’ve heard murmurings in the greater cycling community that riders in other towns would like to have their own MC, and it occurred to me that the “platinum anniversary” would be a momentous occasion upon which to franchise this thing out. Having received permission from the aforementioned mystery organizer, I began brainstorming. Yakima will have already kicked things off by the time you read this (June 21). My local fixer in Sandpoint, Idaho, has gotten really quiet lately (where the hell are you, Grafton?!!), but that one is set to roll out from Matchwood Brewing up there at 11:59 PM on July 20—we just need a route. Missoula, ahhhh, Missoula. That one is slated for 11:59 PM on August 17.
We don’t have a start location or a route for Missoula just yet, not that I didn’t make one. I’ve been stopping at Drum Coffee out there every week since last fall to doink around on my phone to see where people are riding, all while sipping an exceptional latte and yacking with the locals. I whipped up a sample route for a Missoula MC, which a local rider assured me would be horrible, but not too horrible on gravel bikes. I titled the route “Missoula Rough Sketch,” and picked a date soon after the spring melt to give it a test ride to see just how rough and sketchy this route would be.
This is where we segue into the “backcountry” theme of this issue of OTO. Adventure rider extraordinaire Sarah Roestel and I rolled into Drum Coffee a little after 10 AM for caffeine and snacks last month. I had already abandoned the idea of using today’s route for the Missoula MC as I had just read an email from a local bike shop guy assuring me that no one in their right mind would show up to ride a route like this, especially at night.
Lattes swilled and sandwiches stashed, we embarked through some rather impressive bike infrastructure, and within minutes we were pedaling into a delightful mountain valley on the Rattle Snake Trail. The trees were tall and the thick mossy foliage on the forest floor was a vibrant green. We were lichen it. (See what I did there?) The trail was wide and smooth, and definitely receives a lot of love from the many hikers, trail runners, and bikers we met along the way. Although, the enduro mountain bikes we saw folks unloading at the trailheads were a sure sign that our idyllic Cadillac gravel and gentle grade would not last forever. The path meandered for far longer than either of us would have imagined, until all at once we hung a hard right onto steep single track.
Fresh snowmelt tumbled down the mountain into the east fork of Rattle Snake Creek, giving the air a crisp and clean bite. Some of the unrideable parts of this trail were unrideable because this was the first climb of a 116-mile route with 13,000 feet of climbing, and we would need to conserve legs. But most of it was just plain unrideable. We had been “riding” six hours by the time we cleared the summit of our first climb, and yet it was still our favorite section of the whole misadventure, despite the solid hour of tree hoisting waiting for us up there.
The day was young and we had plenty of time to cover the miles yet to come, or so we thought. The only humans we encountered let slip that it was after 5 p.m. as we began our first descent. That’s information I prefer not to know in such situations. Sarah joked with haunting accuracy that we might just finish the route in time to check out from our hotel tomorrow. And that’s the danger of whipping up a backcountry route from heat maps and other dotted lines on your GPS mapping platform. You never really know until you get out there what kind of traps you’ve set for yourself: private property, impassible bushwhacking sections, hydroelectric dams that you can’t cross for four days, just to name a few.
As it was, we really lucked out with this route. There were sweeping mountain vistas that were worth any amount of slogging to witness, more miles of Cadillac gravel than expected, great weather, and a heart-rending sunset. In the end, we skipped the last two mountain segments. We probably had legs for it, but those 24-hour weekend rambles can make it hard to show up for work on Monday and/or get this column submitted on time (sorry Lisa).
We still haven’t solved the problem of getting a route together for the Missoula MC, but you can check in on MidnightCentury.com. Maybe the 21st anniversary will be the one to celebrate, because then the Midnight Century will be old enough to drink. //
Justin Short may be recovered by now from PanRam—The Idaho Panhandle Ramble, a 340-ish mile bikepacking adventure out of CDA into the mountains beyond. Hopefully our dear managing editor will approve a feature article for a future issue of OTO.
