Regarding records, this year's times will not make the TD aggregate (historical) GC. Last year's fire detour course only deviated by about 10-15 miles and a couple thousand feet of elevation gain, and it still didn't qualify for the aggregate GC. There's no need for the armchairs to get their panties ruffled over it. In epic weather editions like this year, what's most meaningful is the grand depart GC. No question this year's course can't be compared, so no sense in trying. Just enjoy the competition between the riders and be happy with that. Yep, Divide racing is in its nascence. There will be plenty of years to compare the relatively fixed course. The improvements made in the past couple years to the TD route have largely been comparable, save the Canadian Flathead, but that improvement HAD to be made in the name of long term route quality. In the very near future the substantive changes will settle down and the long-term comparisons will be more clean.

Looks like el Jefe is taking an opportunity to open up the gap a bit as Ethan and Kurt hit the Silver Saddle in Basin. Dave Bruno reported lots of standing water in the vicinity of where Jefe is presently cruising through. Pretty soon he'll be spun out on 10mi of I-15 frontage road into Butte.

Much to TD's relief with the Clancy / Comet detour, we learned this morn that Cataract Creek Rd (main route into Basin) has been washed out. This road is a really steep, rough fireroad descent along a Class-V steep creek. Scary. It's possible it won't be open for Nobos.

the center of the universe is Lincoln montana, who`d a thought?

Ted Kaczynski (the unibomber) thought so.

Looks like Mike Hall just got through the high water road closure on Cut Off Rd. I hope it wasn't too hairy.

Dejay Birtch called in from Whitefish. He picked up some discarded snowshoes and has a message for Matthew!

Bummer about the litter-bug. Not cool. @Dejay, there was talk of how the meat of MT was gutted by the reroutes. Well, we couldn't very well let challengers get away with any hike-a-bikes! Plus, Hwy 93 features more roadside white crosses than most. Hiking snow is a better altenative.

We've scheduled a reroute to the reroute that bypasses Huckleberry Pass east of Ovando, MT. The 'Cutoff Road' from Ovando-Helmville Rd over to MT-141 (included to avoid sketchy MT-200) is closed due to flooding. Riders will therefore be routed on the main route up Dry Gulch Rd (marked in yellow) directly to MT-200. From there it's straight (east) into Lincoln to resume the main route.

Below is the Gmap graphing the changes. The yellow line is the high water line. I've arranged for signs to be hung at the Stray Bullet Cafe and the Mercantile. Hopefully this enough. I'll try and phone the leaders in Seeley Lake now. They'll be loitering at the Conoco store soon.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=200334849650645495946.0004a4094c052d4b30cf6&ll=47.01678,-112.94632&spn=0.580499,0.987396&t=h&z=10

Justin Sim,
You are most likely slogging your way through some tough  terrain. Beautiful moon on the West Coast tonight. Hope you can see it as you haul your gear and are enjoying it. “Who Dares Wins.”

It's midnight on course, and Justin is pulling into Butts Cabin right about now. I bet he'll stoke the woodstove good tonight. Butt's is an open FS cabin with years of names and quips carved into the walls and ceiling. It's just shy of his next epic slog, Cabin Pass, so, he's 1 slog down, 2 to go until he exits the Canadian Flathead. Then there's two more similar (possibly longer) slogs on the US side of the Flathead...then there's just Richmond Peak and Huck Pass after that...and S. Fork of Poorman after that...

We're really glad to see Justin made it safely to Butts. This is serious Griz country and I bet there's not much food around yet. Last year I pulled into Butts at 1am on opening day. It was a lonely and scary night ride along the valley bottom. I arrived to find the cabin occupied by partying Fernie teenagers. Something tells me Justin is sleeping alone (and soundly) tonight.

New report in on Stryker detour. HUGE hike-a-bike coming up. Maybe 10 miles. Devastating snow totals in this mountain range this year. I cannot imagine running the main route across this range twice. Yep, Justin called it re. Flathead. Let's see if he can claim it!

Man, this is exciting racing. I can't believe how fast the reroute is so far.

Yep, that's why we looked beyond into the Flathead. The old main route is lot's of pave and keeps to the valleys.

Passant's Spot is either not working or something is up. Hopefully he's along side of Jefe and Kurt....those 3 pushing each other could be quite the experience. Awesome.

We just rec'd an OK (1-time track point) from Ethan's SPOT-1. He hasn't used a SPOT-1 in a while. This is a last-minute borrowed unit. Let's hope he can figure it out and we aren't forced to live off occasional OK msgs.

The guestimated Fitzsimmons Creek Rd snow coverage based on Rob Colliver's avg. speed yesterday is marked on the Stryker detour map here: http://tinyurl.com/3vb6uzr It's going to be a real factor for the leaders in the mid-day sun. He/she who held on to their snowshoes for this final big snow hike will have a real advantage. 

Just under 230 miles in now for Jefe on no sleep.

I'm a bit bummed about the situation with Jake Kirkpatrick and Dejay Birtch. What happened to them? More importantly...where's more pics of Jakes Blacksheep?

Jefe has been quietly visualizing (and obsessing) about this race for a few years now. He is hungry. It will be interesting to see him make the transition required for grand tour racing. He is excellent at not sleeping for middle distance racing, but TD goes beyond that. One must take care to sleep more. There is an emotional component, too, that cannot be blocked out as it can for 500-mile races. What people do with that emotion and whether they use it as fuel or not is one of the big selectors.

Dejay and Jake were in Elkford, BC as of 2130 day-1. Great athletes they are, but they find themselves at the bottom of a rather steep ultra bikepacking curve facing a growing gap between them and the front of the race. It will be interesting to see how they approach this position. Will they make the transition quickly and decide to close the gap, or will they be content to dwell in the pack--a place more foreign to them in shorter events? Let's hope they get their Delorme units figured out so we can watch their mental game unfold. It's mostly about that, after all

Looks like the ITT rider times have reset to the start of the race: we can no longer see the starts of their rides on the distance / speed and time / speed plots.

Part of the nature of having them participate on the Grand Depart tracker. their data will be will be restored, not to worry.

Does anyone know if Ethan Passant is SPOTless?

Ethan's SPOT was dead at the start line according to a report from bystander Canmore resident Will Gadd ( http://www.willgadd.com ). In a stroke of incredible generosity towards Ethan (old ski acquaintence) and TD organizers, Will jetted back home to Canmore, rounded up an unregistered new unit from a friend, activated it on his own CC and has rushed it 25miles out to the course to try and trade out Ethan's busted unit.

Perhaps Ethan already paddled a little too much high water with his SPOT this spring? Anyway, as soon as the hand-off occurs on route, we'll plug Ethan's new feed into the live map. Thank-you Will Gadd! Not only is Ethan likely to animate the front of the race, his wife Dawn is expecting their first child in Aug/Sept, so i'm sure Ethan's blue dot will help her pass the time.

Looks like he stopped for the night?

waiting for the snow to set up.

Looks like slow going through the double passes.  About 6 hours for Rob to make it through, gonna be rough!

Let's take this talk over to the race discussion thread and lock this ad nauseum puppy up!

Is the Gold Dust trail still mandatory or optional? - not been able to find out for sure since the re-routes and cannot find in the rules any more.  Thanks.

Gold Dust is optional as it may still be under snow by the time Sobos arrive. Find the cues here, but no mileage with the turns as it was not possible to get it clocked (ACA-style) this spring: https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en_US&hl=en_US&key=0AkjYTTBAyG5KdEw3OTRtQzBTYm1WNE4tbnQ3NE9OREE&output=html

Locals say it's very followable as is. If you want to ride GD in the right frame of mind, be sure to pause at the base of Boreas to power up at Starbucks for double shot then Breck Brewery with a pint.

It's time to quell the beastly 60+ page 2011 Tour Divide thread in favor of a new TD thread focused on good old fashioned armchair race analysis.

TD's bellwether Rob Colliver (ITT-D) got things moving today, just ahead of Friday's Grand Depart. He's been making pretty good time < www.tourdivide.org/leaderboard > as he crosses the border into BC. Conditions must be OK so far, but the big unknown is the segment he's into now above Elk Lakes. Reports from 10 days ago described snow all the way to Tobermory Cabin at mile 70-ish, 2 miles south on Elk River Rd. It will be interesting to see if he chooses to bivy (as planned) at the cabin or push on.

Here's to another dynamic La Nina racing year along the Divide.

Scenic Elk Pass descent into Elk Lakes Provincial Park. This fireroad is reportedly under a meter + of snow.

Wow, that's great news about Elk Pass, Craig. Out-of-towners ought buy all of Stappy's Kokanee before the start.

I am surprised--and not--about the section from Canyon dam to Mt Shark. It's pretty treed-in there. The PLPP guys reported these same open patches in last Thursday's trail report, but I was inclined not to believe it. I think riders will still find that the BC side of Elk Pass a bit worse off. We shall see how it goes for our Wednesday ITTer. FWIW, Rob Borstmayer also reports surprisingly low soil moisture content considering the late melt-off, so I think you folks are going to have a really nice ride, chance of rain or not. I am sooo envious.

Way to really throw a wrench in riders' snowshoe strategies, Craig!

I don't know if you guys remember, but a while back I posted about an app I made that show elevation profiles and climbing stats for the Great Divide.  Well, I've improved it to now let riders carrying a SPOT show up on the map along with blog info and elevation profiles/stats for recent days.

I thought some racers might want to be included.  If you do, visit http://eatsleepridegreatdivide.com or you can read more about it here: http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,2171.0.html.

Good luck,
Dave

Hi Dave,
Neat stuff. I admire your enthusiasm for the Divide Route tracking. It's pretty addictive, eh?

Speaking on behalf of TD and Trackleaders, we respectfully prefer the TD live race tracking reside on the TD event website exclusively. I'm sure you can understand. It will offer the complete ('official') picture, plus plenty of other TD analysis like race-flow / projection charts, playbacks, individual histories / bios, additional map layers, etc.

Regarding your live profile, Scott M. has developed a similar nifty 'live elevation plot'. We've been testing it on old event data and its ready for release. It will be pretty cool to watch the athletes trudging along. Geeking on it sometimes reminds me of watching the old Price is Right 'Cliff Hangers' game. Remember? (below)

As well, Trackleaders has been operating a GDMBR citizen tracker since 2008. It would be great to keep citizen tracking centralized too.

Regards,
Matthew Lee

Cliffhangers Loss on the Price is Right