18: 55 Spokes
My plan for today was to get an early start and make some miles (in hopes of making it to Lima by Saturday morning to pick up my next resupply box).
Things were going according to plan (maybe better than planned on account of the trail having been recently cleared to deadfall) until I rode a bit too aggressively through a patch of sharp rocks, puncturing my rear tire (second puncture this trip—thank god for tubeless tires!) and … breaking a spoke in my front wheel for which, inexplicably, I didn’t have a spare—only a Kevlar string universal spike kit. Long story short: I successfully used my string spoke repair kit, feel stupid for not bringing any actual spokes (I could have actually fixed the broken spoke instead of merely applying a bandaid), and am moving along again toward a future proper repair.
Overall the trails today were far more ridable than I expected. I stopped off at a lake this morning with bountiful lupine and paintbrush. I spent much of the day on the crest of the Beaverheads with big views down into Montana on one side and Idaho on the other.
Today’s spoke fiasco set me back a couple of hours, and an evening thunderstorm (threatening snow) chased me off the trail to an early camp at Lemhi Pass. Fun fact: Lewis and Clark camped here on August 12, 1805. This was their highest elevation camp between St. Louis and the Pacific coast.
Listening to: “Napoleon: A Life” by Adam Zamoyski. (After finishing Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography, I wanted something to give me an overview of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s arc.)
