Icy shoes, sickness, getting stuck - all part of the biking experience

Carl at the Togwotee Pass summit today just south of Grand Teton National Park.

John at the Togwotee summit in 1976. Lots of snow then. Not so much this week.

The exact field in the Grand Tetons that Carl and I camped in during our cross-country bike trip. Only the fence style has changed.

Enjoying a family hike this week above Jenny Lake in the Grand Tetons. The Tetons were a favorite on our cross-country bike tour.

The Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming offers vistas that look straight out of a classic movie of the wild west.

One of the most interesting aspects of retracing our trans-America bike route has been the ability to reflect on some of the segments with hindsight. Life experiences have been giving us a fresher perspective of some of the jams we found ourselves in.

One of our last days shadowing the bike route with our families covered a stretch that challenged us in multiple ways. Leaving Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, we followed Highway 26/287 through Dubois, Lander, Muddy Gap, Sinclair-Rawlins area (which I blogged about earlier) and into Colorado.

The day we left the Tetons Carl and I had a 26-mile climb to Togwotee Pass. The day got off to a bad start.. Here is my diary entry from June 23 that year:

"We woke up this morning with a solid layer of ice on the tent and snow all over the ground. Got up around 6 a.m. and noticed that Carl left our shoes outside all night. Nearly froze our toes putting on those icy shoes. Left camp around 9 and climbed almost 30 miles to the top of Togwotee Pass (elevation 9,652-feet.) It was snowing as we reached the higher elevation. Sure hurt our faces with the wind and all....Had a nice downhill ride though. As we got down to about 7,000 feet we stopped and hobbled off the side of the road to a nice little grassy field where we laid down and soaked up that sun. Our toes were nearly frostbitten but the sun partially thawed us out. Rode the rest of the way downhill to Dubois where we had lunch. Had a fantastic tail wind which was blowing from the west so we flew on down the highway." We made it to Lander that day and camped beside Lander Methodist Church. The following day, Carl was really sick. My trip journal mentioned him feeling feverish and throwing up and how that might delay us. I journaled that I had spent the day purchasing groceries and returning to the church to write letters. Carl tried later in the morning to start the day's bike ride but he quickly got sick again, A truck driver saw our plight and offered to carry us to a place to get help.

In probably the most unwise decision I made the whole trip, I had Carl ride with that truck driver to Jeffery City while I biked that 50-plus mile stretch alone, In hindsight, it was one of the most risky and foolish things I'd done to leave my 15-year-old brother with an unknown truck driver in a desolate part of Wyoming.

Thank God nothing happened. Carl and I met back up in Jeffery City where we ran across a solo cross-country bicyclist from Berkley who wound up riding with us for the next couple of days. I did some google searching in preparation for this trip and was able to reconnected with "Robert." He currently lives in the Seattle area and was blown away that we found each other.

Robert rode with us for five days during our bike trip, culminating in our epic climb over the Rocky Mountains between Grand Lake and Estes Park (12,183-feet).

A funny thing happened when the three of us were pedaling to the summit back then. After miles of climbing the twisty, mountainous roads to the top, Carl noticed the road above and decided it would be easier to hike with his bike up the embankment rather than steadily climb through all those switchbacks. Against Robert and my advice, he hoisted his bike with all its gear on his shoulder and started to climb up the embankment. Little did he know he would find himself in waist deep snow and get stuck on the mountainside.

Robert and I waited and waited at the Alpine Visitors Center near the summit. When Carl didn't show, we contacted a ranger who communicated with another ranger who had found my brother stuck on a slope and emotionally upset. Carl had used the portable CB radio walkie talkie dad bought us for emergencies to radio for help.

Robert tried unsuccessfully to arrange his schedule to meet up with our families for this trip.

We all laughed that the lesson we concluded then still holds today: Trying to circumvent a challenge can get you in a worse bind than toughing it out.