This is a self-supported, off-the-grid race, so I make a brief stop at Chepat Creek for a water resupply before the climb. It feels good to get off the bike, and I’m tempted to relax, maybe even soak my feet. But I pop some electrolytes and hop back on my trusty steed. Slowly coasting forward, I know that this climb is absolutely relentless, so I make a commitment to ride at my own maintainable pace.

When I find my tempo I start to look around. The sidehill road goes for miles and miles, following the contours of the mountain’s drainages and shoulders. In, out, in, out…the rhythm interrupted only by the rubber water bars, which are impossible to avoid.

The horizon expands with every pedal stroke. I round a dusty corner and the summit lookout comes into view, high up on the ridge. The race leaders fly by me on their descent, hooting and hollering. I get out of the saddle and put in a spirited burst of effort. An explosion of beargrass lines the road, vivid against the charred forest recovering from last summer’s fires.

Grinding through the last switchback, an unexpected headwind focuses my attention on something else: breakfast! The summit aid station is a VW camper, manned by Phil Grove, a Whitefish-based athlete and semi-pro fun hog. He serves up a Joe Cosley-approved meal of pancakes, sausage, and coffee. I wolf down the calories. For a moment, I gaze off to the east, where I can see the smiling faces of Kintla and Rainbow Peaks in Glacier Park.

My relaxation is short-lived. It’s 8:30 a.m. now and the tick-tock of my internal race clock wants me to keep moving. One uphill done, two more to go. From up here, I can visually piece together the entirety of today’s route under the canopy of scattered clouds.

I imagine myself as Paul Bunyan for a moment: just hop down this river drainage, a few steps up the valley, tippy-toe through Trego and Fortine, then step up Pinkham Mountain, and skip over to Sunday Creek. But I’m no giant, which is how I prefer it. I’m going to enjoy every intimate moment of the work, covering miles and miles of dirt roads. You know the turnoffs you drive by and wonder, where does that go? Well, I’m about to see.

After safely descending 4,000 feet to the base of the Whitefish Range, I head west, into the older and rounder Salish Mountains. The gravel road leads me through charming little communities, ranches, and farms you can’t see from the highway.

Midway up Pinkham Creek, I spot two people harvesting huckleberries. So attentive are they to their task, they fail to hear the snapping of twigs, nor do they see the 300-pound black bear run down the hillside, across the road and just behind them, within 50 feet. 

I understand their focus, as I’ve locked into my own. I labor forward, pedals in a continuous rotation, splitting my concentration between maintaining efficiency through form and effort, and taking in the scenery as it goes by. I am both pilot and passenger. Pushing up the punishing Pinkham Mountain road, it becomes clear that, to survive, I’ll need to think and move like Joe Cosley, Glacier Park’s original outlaw ranger, the mustached scofflaw himself.

Most stories about Cosley are sourced from the orator himself. The Ontario-born trapper’s saga begins in 1910 when he was hired among the national park’s first crew of rangers. He got the job because of his deep regional knowledge; the Whitefish Pilot heralded him as a “champion trapper of the Rocky Mountain region.” Cosley was stationed in the Belly River region, the remote northeastern district. Once, in a single day, he ran and hiked 70 miles to Waterton and back, just to “shake a leg” over the Canadian border, as Brian McClung reports in his Cosley biography. The ranger carved his name and the initials of his lovers on trees across the park, and many of the lakes around the Belly River bear their names: Elizabeth, Helen, Sue.

Within a year, he was fired for trapping on the job. Decades later, he was thrown in jail for poaching in his beloved stomping grounds. Released on bond in Belton, present-day West Glacier, he split out of town on one of the area’s most impressive chase scenes. Imagine Cosley, on foot, with the authorities in hot pursuit by train, automobile, and horseback. He bolted into the backcountry, a “panther on snowshoes,” as some local Blackfeet reportedly called him. After picking up his cache of valuable pelts, he disappeared into the Canadian woods. Cosley gauged distance and effort with a perspective unlike any. His larger-than-life exploits are remarkable, even if he was the spirited author of most of them.

“[Cosley] understood the law, was a respectable, interesting, and well-spoken character,” Brad says. “But he absolutely followed his own rules, quite frequently against the status quo.”

I’m convinced that Brad—whose mustache even bears an uncanny resemblance to Cosley’s—might have a bit of shared DNA. As the visionary and organizer of the JCPR, as well as a competitor, Brad certainly puts in the hours and miles in Cosley-style.

To distract myself from my current suffering on Pinkham, I think back two years, reminiscing about the struggles of the initial JCPR: crawling up the Big Creek drainage in the late afternoon sun, exposed in 110-degree heat, my bum not happy at all. I also remember, just as fondly, the refreshing whiskey and Coke that Henry and Essie Roberts handed me from their makeshift aid station, positioned right where the route finally entered the shady forest. Big days call for big vision, tons of grit, and the capacity to transcend the physical to make it work. But the little things count, too. When I reach Pinkham’s high point at 4:20 p.m., I look north toward Lake Koocanusa and crack open a celebratory Coke.

“It becomes clear that, to survive, I’ll need to think and move like Joe Cosley, Glacier Park’s original outlaw ranger, the mustached scofflaw himself.”

It’s late afternoon and I have a problem. After the spirited descent of Pinkham, followed by a challenging climb leading up to Sunday Creek, I’m inching my way up the pass before Martin Creek, the final climb of the day. I’m exhausted, my back and hands are sore, but more pressingly, my bike computer has died. I’m navigating strictly off my cue sheet, and I think I may have missed a critical turn. It feels like I’m going around the wrong side of the mountain. This late in the day, a mistake that gets me lost in the dark could be dangerous. Weighing my options, I decide to turn around and go back to the intersection in question. My mind spins, disoriented, as I lose the precious vertical I labored so hard for.

I soon run into another racer, the first human I’ve seen in hours, and learn that I’d turned around about 100 yards from the top. Defeated, yet relieved, I join him and we ride together, mostly in silence, retracing my climb. Minutes later we’re joined by another small pack of racers, including Brad and his wife, Emily, another key JCPR organizer. (It was her idea to name the event in Cosley’s honor.)

We crest the pass, don windbreakers, then accelerate down the serpentine road. I have my hands low on the drop bars and eyes peeled as dusk approaches. A brown figure appears about a hundred yards ahead. After slamming on the brakes, we creep forward until we’re able to decipher the telltale paddles of a bull moose. We wait patiently, in awe, as he slowly disappears into the woods. 

Darkness catches us. The gravel feels perfectly smooth, like a freshly groomed ski run, allowing us to assemble into a high-speed pace line, despite the limited visibility. The final miles tick off one by one until we reach Good Creek, then Martin Camp Road, and finally Highway 93. Like a horse smelling the barn, our group kicks it into high gear for these last few miles. Fellow racers, friends, and families welcome us when we roll back into the Whitefish Bike Retreat just shy of 11 p.m.

Brad hands me a much-deserved India Pale Lager and we toast to doing something quite big. Standing there in the glow of the after-party, my body is confused. It knows only movement. Now that I’ve stopped, I still feel a buzz, or maybe it’s the cyclist’s version of sea legs. It’s the residual vibration of more than 170 miles of gravel, the aftershocks from “shaking a leg” so far from home and returning to tell tall tales about it.

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