Dropping steadily over 3000 feet, I wound my way along the Lochsa River bidding farewell to the Rockies. Though it is tough to get up and start riding at sunrise at 5:30 AM, it is worthwhile to escape the heat and enjoy the quiet roads in the early hours after sunrise.
After leaving the lodge, my route tracked the Lochsa River through the Clearwater Forest for the next 90 miles. A slight downhill grade kept the pace brisk with the constant sounds of the waters of the Lochsa and the various mountain creeks that join the river the only soundtrack to the ride.
The deep green of the evergreen forests extends in all directions unchanged. Indeed, the only way you know that you are making progress out of the forest is the mile markers that tick down one mile every 4 minutes. The river grows gradually wider and the slopes become gradually shallower as I descended out of the mountains.
Just south of my route lies the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness area and further south the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness area - the largest wilderness area in the US outside Alaska. The Frank is named for the last Democrat to represent Idaho in Senate, an instrumental figure in the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. But for the highway, the area I was riding through would be wilderness as well. Straight south of US-12, you would not find another paved road for more than one hundred miles.
As the number of cars dwindled, the number of cross-country cyclists surged. At Lochsa Lodge, I met four westbound cyclists and two eastbound cyclists all on the TransAmerica Trail. The westbound cyclists (one solo rider and a group of three) got an earlier start this morning, but I met them on the road, and we cycled some 15-20 miles together. At this hour, we owned the road, riding alongside and chatting about the experiences accumulated over the past couple thousand miles. We also saw several other riders headed in the other direction eastbound up to Lolo Pass. At the first stop in Lowell (some 65 miles in), a Twin Cities native headed eastbound spotted my Penn Cycle water bottle. I introduced him to one of the westbound cyclists who came the direction where he was headed, sharing clues and insights about the road ahead.
STAGE SUMMARY:
Distance - 95.3 miles
Cumulative Distance - 2761.4 miles
Vertical Elevation - 3471 feet
After leaving the lodge, my route tracked the Lochsa River through the Clearwater Forest for the next 90 miles. A slight downhill grade kept the pace brisk with the constant sounds of the waters of the Lochsa and the various mountain creeks that join the river the only soundtrack to the ride.
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| Lochsa River and the Clearwater Forest |
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| Narrow US-12 through the Clearwater Forest |
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| Drier landscape in the Kamiah Valley along the Clearwater River |
STAGE SUMMARY:
Starting Point - Lochsa Lodge, ID
Ending Point - Kamiah, IDDistance - 95.3 miles
Cumulative Distance - 2761.4 miles
Vertical Elevation - 3471 feet
Counties - Idaho, ID
Wind - light crosswind
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