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Yellowstone Road Ride Trip Report
We took the 15-18 year old young men from our ward on a Yellowstone bike trip this past week. We basically biked nearly 165 miles in 3 days doing The Grand Loop. We drove to West Yellowstone Monday and camped a couple of miles north of town. Tuesday morning we unloaded the bikes just inside the park entrance and rode through Mammoth and into Gardner, MT. We ended up camping by Mammoth that night. One boy crashed going down the steep, tight, twisty road from Mammoth to Gardner. He ended up in the first-aid clinic in Mammoth for a couple of hours but was OK in the end. Wed. morning we began riding from Mammoth heading east and finished up at our camp by Yellowstone Lake. This second day was quite difficult as it included much climbing including a brutal 12 mile, 2,400' elevation gain grind up from Tower Falls to the top before the long descent towards the Hayden Valley. On this leg of of the ride we saw 1 grizzly bear and 8 or 9 black bears- very cool! Thursday we rode from our camp by Yellowstone Lake back to the Madison Junction thus completing our loop. We had heard that day 3 would be the easiest but it proved harder than we expected as it included a long, difficult climb out of West Thumb up to the continental divide. Overall we had a great time and finished our trip by rafting the Snake River just south of Jackson, Wyoming. I would recommend this trip to anyone looking for a good High Adventure trip for their boys but because of the level of difficulty I would keep it to the older kids not the 12-13 year olds. My son and I rode a tandem bicycle which served us very well. We rode all but about 5 miles of the brutal climb up from Tower Falls. Of the 8 boys that rode, 3 of them rode every mile without using the sag wagon and 1 of the 4 leaders as well. I felt my son and I did good considering we were on a heavy (compared to the road bikes everyone else had) tandem mountainbike which I had mounted with slicks. Good time which the boys will remember for the rest of their lives I'm sure!