I cheated - but an early season Going To The Sun trip

Well, it started out pretty normally. My old airborne buddy came down from Whistler for another ride in the mountains.

So we headed for the Montana homestead, with me on point and him riding drag:



You're saying to yourselves... "Is that a WINDSHIELD I see in our little dual sport forum"? Yes indeedy... he didn't bring the trusty old street legal Yamaha IT 250. No, he brought his wife... on this:



Two up on a supertanker... well, there goes all the best laid plans, gravel roads and single track two up ain't gonna happen.

They do look kind of interesting side by side - almost the extremes of either end of the dual sport spectrum.





So there we were... him with his wife, me with mine...

And I cheated. I broke my vows... we decided to swap.

Not my wedding vows, you morons. Something much more serious.

My vows never, ever to go dual sportin' two up, and never to forsake my WRR for a supertanker. And yet...



What can I say? I was bad. But still... how easy on this bike to drag bits and pieces through the corners, two up, and be on a bike that felt absolutely planted there. The wife... she did not like that part so much and applied significant amounts of pain from her backseat driver position. I thought my exuberance might have killed the deal in trying to talk her into the motorcycle way, but all in all she looked pretty happy at the end:



There is hope!

What a lovely bloody motorcycle. Going slow the thing feels like an absolute pig from kickstand to about 10 mph. I was afraid I'd drop it every time I took it off the centerstand (centerstand? What's that for?). But after that, it was all gold. I can see why guys who stick to roads might want to ride the world on top of one of these things.

Anyways, enough Euro-envy for evening. We went to Going To The Sun, and you want to see the pics. And so it shall be:

We stopped at Lake MacDonald on the way up. The late spring has some of these guys just getting started - at least two months behind schedule.



The beargrass was blooming, which pleased my wife whose company name is Beargrass Landscape Architects and Environmental Planners:



Speaking of which, I found this little dude lurking like a snake in the grass...



Betcha he's still freezing his ass at nights...

The creeks are still ripping pretty good:



Getting into the mountains





It was right about here that we bumped into GSaddict from ADV, riding three up: him, the wife, and the dog poking out of the tank bag. He was headed to Republic for some sort of Beemer meet, so we swapped GS stories while looking across the valley at the scenery:





When GSaddict started delivering tech lectures on final drives, I knew it was time to move on...





Looking back towards where we just came from:





But we're heading on up!



Those are Bird Woman Falls coming out of that basin. Something like 430 feet high.



The haze was brutal for taking pics, incidentally. I was taking multiple shots for practically every pic while playing with the EQ setting and deleting 90% of them.

Speaking of waterfalls, the Weeping Wall was chugging along pretty good:



One of the nice things about doing Going To The Sun in little dual sports is that at the height of the tourist season, you obviously can't just stop in the middle of the road and many pullouts are jammed full. With the little WR, you can pull over tight against the rock walls when it is busy, or shoehorn your way in somewhere in a small, full, parking area. Which means you get shots like this:



And this:



And this!



Looking back down to the road down in the valley:



The contrast between the road rockwork and the mountain rock is impressive.





Almost at the top:





And another look back down where the road cut along the mountain side:



And when finally on top, a short walk around in the snow to take in all the views. One of the good things about doing Going To The Sun when it first opens is, although you miss all the wildflowers blooming and long hikes from the top aren't what you want to do, it is the only time of the year you're not confined to the designated paths - you can walk around all over the place on the remaining snow pack. So you can see the views from different aspects that you won't see once path discipline is enforced.



Yes, that snow really is pink. Pinker than it looks in these photos. It is caused by an algae in the snow. When I ski patrolled at Whistler, we used to tell curious guests that the pink was from all the hydraulic fluid the snow cats leaked all winter...







And then we head down the east side, where the views aren't nearly as great from the road (but still very impressive nonetheless).







And a last look at the mountains as we break out into the prairie foothills near Browning:





A short drive around the south end of the park and the middle fork, just as thunder showers arrived, and...



We were home before dark. A long day.

The way the weather has been going this year with all the rain... it might make up for last year's passes snowed in all summer and I'll be doing this ride again really early this year to make up for it.

Here's hoping!

Holy cow, that is gorgeous. Someday. Probably not anytime soon, but someday...

stunning scenery. i've never really wanted to travel abroad but you guys posting up rides like this is making me change my mind.