Going to the Sun Highway

We rented bikes and a rack from Glacier Cyclery. They were awesome, the bikes were quite nice, they put the trunk rack on our rental car and gave us great advice.  They suggested we take a full change of clothes for the ride down.  We had planned on taking just jackets, but added dry shirts and light gloves and this probably saved us from great discomfort. The drive to Avalanche Creek was complicated by construction on the main Glacier road, so our planned start time of 4:00 was shifted to 5:00, not a good start.  We had promised ourselves that if we didn't get to the top by 8:30, we would head back down to avoid riding in the dark.  We had brought our own silicone wrap lights, but felt those were not ideal.
Carrying about 4 liters of water was not quite enough.  2 miles from the top,  I ran out of water, which on many rides would be no big deal.  There, however, it was not too good.  There was a working drinking fountain at the top, so we were able to refill, but the ride down did not require a lot of water.

The views were amazing and the shadows on the snowfields and forests were awesome.

 I stopped to talk to this woman, who reported she had about 30 unicycles in and on the car.  She was returning from the Unicycle National Championships near Seattle.  She told me about the challenges posed in the competition and those sounded pretty wild. She was from Wisconsin and the driver had to bail, so she offered to drive the vehicle back, with the stipulation that she could visit National Parks on the way back. The car was packed pretty tight, as you can imagine.

1/2 mile from the top, my partner told me he was unsure he would make it by the deadline and that I should go on, so with reservations, I left him.  Near the top, I bypassed several parked cars and hikers, thinking they were going up hiking trails.  The visiter center at the top was closed, but the most important parts, namely the drinking fountains and bathrooms, were open.  I hiked a tiny bit up the alpine meadow trails behind the center, but was really out of time.

After refilling my water and changing my clothes, I turned back to head back down and was thrilled to find my partner had indeed made it all the way. He asked if I had seen the mountain goats...

On the way back down, he pointed out all the people looking at a herd of big horned sheep and on the other side of the road was a mountain goat.  So very cool.

The down trip was pretty hard on our necks and hands, one long braking session. The views were still spectacular, but we traveled the last mile or so in the dark.  It was not really unsafe, since there were few cars on the road at that point. Such a beautiful ride. One of our warmshowers guests reported he did the same route, but much earlier in the season and the pass was closed, due to snow. He rode back down, then up the other side the next day, so he could see if from that perspective.  So hard to imagine doing that 2 days in a row.