Northern Bitterroot, Big old day of biking and running

St. Mary peak view at sunrise.

I tend to get a little lazy in the fall.  Today was not one of those days.  With a cooperative knee for biking, I concocted a plan to bike and run St. Mary, Little Saint Joseph, and Sweeney from the forest boundary.  With 16,000 feet of climbing, I was honestly a little too intimidated to try, but Jeffrey's confident enthusiasm provided much needed motivation to give it a go.  Sure enough, less than 48 hours later, we started biking up the St. Mary road by headlamp.

Jeffrey was burning it a little too hot for me right out of the gate, so I settled in to my reasonable full day biking pace as his headlamp faded into the dark.  We made it to the trailhead after a little over ninety minutes of biking.  I hope I didn't make him wait too long.  The walk up to St. Mary was fun, and sunrise was predictably inspiring.  There was a lot less snow up high than we had feared, which bode well for actually completing the daunting link up.  The run and bike back to the car went quickly, and we were able to easily dodge the road hunters looking for elk on opening day.  I had some semi-cramping twinges on the descent, which made me nervous, but just ignored them and hoped things would get better later in the day.  St. Mary peak done!

Jeffrey, closing in on St. Mary peak.

We were walking up the steep off trail pitch to Little St. Joe from the summer trailhead before 10:30.  We made good time on the long walk directly up the Southeast ridge to the Little St. Joe trailhead, then up the summer trail.  Jeffrey was still setting a pretty aggressive pace, but we were moving well, so I just continued to try to keep up.  We finally climbed into deep snow above the upper small saddle, and the last long push to the summit was slow.  But we perservered.  We took it slow enough to not hammer our legs too much on the 5,000 vertical foot run down to the valley.  Little St. Joe and over 10k of climbing done!  Back at the car, we took a much needed break to refuel and psyche up for the last peak of the day.

Jeffrey closing in on Little St. Joe, with St. Mary in the background.

The forest boundary for Sweeney is a few miles up the road, and we took full advantage of driving a few hundred vertical feet above the valley floor.  I didn't realize just how steep this road is, and most of the biking to the trailhead was a grind, especially for the member of our party on a gravel bike without a suitable granny gear for steep grades.  We eventually gave up on biking one switchback from the top and transitioned to running shoes.  It felt a little cavalier to head out from the trailhead already quite fatigued as the sun began to dip toward the horizon, but I tried not to think about it too much.  Sweeney actually went pretty smoothly.  I was too tired to do much running on the trail, and I also found routefinding much trickier than it used to be before the fire.  But we were still moving well, and summited a few minutes before sunset.  After snapping a few photos, we immediately got to work on getting through the tricky off trail routefinding before dark.  Once again, things went smoothly, and we were soon running recklessly fast, chasing dark on the trail.  We made it to the bikes right at dark and coasted it back to the car by headlamp.  For stats, right around 16,000 vertical feet done in a hair under fourteen hours.

Jeffrey closing in on Sweeney, with Little St. Joe in the background.

On Sweeney, relieved to have the days climbing in the bag.

Thoughts  What a way to spend a perfect fall day.  I had a lot more fun than anticipated.  The day was broken up enough that it was not too monotonous, and by pacing reasonably, I made it through tired but not demoralized.  I have always enjoyed mixing biking and running, and today was certainly no exception.  A huge thanks to Jeffrey for lighting a fire under me to finally get this one done.  And for executing a flawless day.

If I do something like this again, I think I will just do two peaks, parking once and doing everything under human power.  Two peaks would still be a long and challenging 10,000 plus vertical foot day of valley bottom to peak top awesomeness.