Tour Divide Blog

Hi this is Ardie Olson. I'm calling from the payphone from Jan's Restaurant in Lima, MT. It is Thursday, June 19th and its 12:26 pm. The weather is great, nice and sunny, not too windy. Matthew Lee caught up to me so we had lunch here together. I guess we will be headed off to try to make it to Idaho. Hope everybody is doing well. Again this is Ardie Olson. Bye.

Thanks again to the efforts of Joe at MTBCast we have improved the Leaderboard. Now you can see Satillite and Terrain.

Hi this is Karl Wilcox phoning in at about 10AM from Helena. It's Thursday morning. I'm going to be dropping out of the race. My knee pain is severe. Can't really peddle at this point. So I'm going to pack it in before I end up with a chronic knee injury. I think I pushed too big a gear. Should have dropped to granny gear, but live and learn. It has been an excellant race. I've enjoyed every minute of it. I will of course miss the rest of race. But just want to thank everyone out there for following. Really, at least, I did the best section. Hopefully try again. Thank you.

Update: Thursday 19th

Reuben Kline is again the race leader, having left Matt Lee in Butte with a broken fork. However, it looks like Matt has ridden though part of the night to claw some time back. Matt Lee is now about 14 hours behind his GDR pace last year, no doubt from the broken fork and 6 or so hours additional hours hiking. The snow has slowed everyone down (take a look at the attached photo that shows call in times and pace), but it looks warm enough that the remaining snow may have melted off the next set of passes in Wyoming.

Call in picture is attached.

Alex Field Read more »

Hello this is Stephen Gleasner calling in from Seeley Lake. I have made the Richmond Mountain clean. Everything went well there. However, I could see how if it hadn't been snowed in up there the top section would have been a real hoot as it was the hoot factor was zero. I liked the climb up and I liked the descent into Seeley Lake and I'm hold up in a Hotel right now. This is the best that I have felt after a day's ride yet. I'm looking forward to a good day tomororw. I think that does it. Safe here. Going to get up the road tomorrow. See ya.

Hi this is Tour Divide Racer Reuben Kline. Calling back in. I called earlier from Lima. Just calling back to give a couple of highlights of the day. Today started out shivering cold in a bivy sack. Followed by about 40 miles of riding on a couple of energy bars. Finally found something to eat the continued down the route. Treat by Schwann Ice Man. Big highlight of the day. He gave me a couple of orange creamsicles to eat when it was hot. That was pretty special. Then I followed up by dinner tonight at Pete's Bar in Lima, cook your own steaks. Everything is going well. Read more »

Hello this is Mike Dion. Its Wednesday, 6/18 9:30. Calling from Helena. Rolled in early this afternoon. I'm crashing here in Helena tonight. Taking it easy. Going to rehab my knee as much as possible and make it a shorter mileage day and not push the knee issue too hard. Its feeling pretty good at the moment so I figure it was a good idea. I love Helena and I used to live here, met my wife here, go its good to hang out here. Good night. I'm going to push on past Butte tomorrow. Not sure how far. We'll let you know then. Bye.

Hi this is Tour Divide Racer Reuben Kline. It is the 6th day of the Race and I'm currently in Lima. I'm going to hang out here and take some comfort in exchange for some lead time. Yesterday, I hung out with Matthew Lee a little bit trying to get his bike fixed but he needed to stay overnight in Butte so I forged on. Anyway, Everything is going well. Just lots of long hard days. Bye.

Hi this is Karl Wilcox. I'm in Helena. I'm laid up for today with pain to the patella knee cap. I'm icing it and taking ibuprofen and I'm hoping that it improves. So until then I guess I'll just be resting it. I felt fine yesterday going over Huckleberry then on the down side, on the descent, I think I strained my knee. At this point, I thought it would be better to loose some time then perhaps not to be able to finish at all. I turned back a few miles out of Helena. Hoping things improve. That's it for now.

Hi this is Adrian Stingaciu a/k/a Super Vegan. Calling in from Helena, MT on Wednesday June 18th at 5:48 pm. I just into town a few minutes ago and ate some figs and pecans and called home. Just wanted to call in and update my situation. Left from Lincoln, this morning after I picked up my food drop at about 8AM. Road over 4 passes so far, 4 because one of them, the first Continential Divide Crossing, I actually made a mistake in the directions and I ended up almost going over a different pass and I had to go down back 3-4 miles. So I ended up doing about almost 4 passes so far. Read more »