The grizzly didn’t see me. Which was nice. As I watched silently from behind a tree, eyes like saucers, it dug into a hillside and eventually ambled out of sight. Now I had a decision: turn around, or keep going past that glorious hulk of muscle and fur and continue my ride? Heart galloping, I pedaled onward, a chemical surge propelling me up a switchbacking goat trail to the nowhere summit of Tuchuck Mountain, deep in northern Montana’s Whitefish Range.
The sun baked the sky and an alpine breeze cooled my skin. To the east was Glacier National Park, to the north British Columbia. Bear-packed mountains faded to every horizon. Examining the remnants of a fire tower scattered across the summit, I found an inscription in rock: “Billy the Tuchuck Kid, fire lookout 1936.”
Being young and eager to leave my own mark, like Billy a lifetime before, I carved another message into summit stone: “Aaron Teasdale, first mountain bike descent 1995.”
I didn’t actually know if it was the first descent, but who
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