Day 5

 Stats: 175 Miles; 10:31 moving time; 30,191 vert ft climbing

I woke up delighted it wasn't raining and that it was already light & warm out.  I packed up quickly knowing I had a full day on many trails with unknown conditions and potential to get stormed according to the forecast.  Not one to skip trails labeled as advanced I opted to take my planned route of Pot + Elizabeth Mountain trails.  Leaving camp the trail I resumed my experience the from late the night before of wet brushy bench cut and the drizzle started soon after, this would be present all day.  The brush made my clothes and bags soaking wet.  I plugged in my gps to charge and it did nothing, my charging relay was soaked from the brush, luckily it had enough juice to get me through today, and I had a full jumper pack I could charge off of if needed.

I was surprised to see a handful of campers where the connector trail crossed the river at a large road before starting up Pot Mountain.  Pot Mountain trail had a handful of technical rock moves on steep terrain with high consequences, the wet ground definitely kept it interesting.  The terrain endlessly cycled between ridge, rocky climb, and bench cut.  Where the trail changed to Elizabeth Mountain the fun continued, huge hill climbs connected by switchbacks on super tacky dirt!  I was lucky to get some of the off camber hill climbs smooth the first try, as resetting for a second run would be very time consuming.  After the summit there was a few minutes of dreamy loamy turns at a modest trail angle, this was short lived.

The trail grew steeper and steeper as I approached what looked like endless switchbacks on my GPS.  These switchbacks were about as steep and tight as you can fit a loaded dirt bike through.  The most aggressive of them had a pad at the outside edge of the turn for you to make a 270* turn, which I had to use once.

At the bottom of Elizabeth I had a great internal debate, hop on the road that this advanced section ended onto, or double back on the road to add trail miles that I knew were clear from reports the past week.  I couldn't tell how much time doubling back would add and knew I was on limited time to make it to Avery for gas by 7 PM to stay on schedule.

The river road here was quite, the only cars I saw were fisherman. I stopped to filter water at the campground before climbing out of the valley on Fly Hill Road.  At the entrance to the road I talked to the Forest Ranger who was changing out the bulletin for the 2 fires in the area,  he was optimistic with the recent rain that the fire should be under control.  Shortly after, near Chamberlain Meadows, there was a significant amount of Forest Service activity that still has me confused.  In this extremely remote area there were many primitive camp spots with Forest Service vehicles and every few hundred feet on the side of the road there were laminated signs warning of pesticide applications in the area.

This road lead to the St Joe River and soon my first encounter with the Stateline NRT.  Stateline was mostly a shale covered ridge trail, but occasionally the shale would surround a rut to provide a proper challenge.  There were a few committed climbs with large steps on exposed hillsides.  At a highpoint I looked at my phone to find it was almost 6 PM!  I called the Avery gas station to confirm when they closed, 7 PM.  I had 10 miles of trail before 40 miles of asphalt, it was unlikely I would make it in time, but I should try anyways, maybe they will still be there late.  This unfortunately meant I needed to skip another special test!  Once I got on the road I realized my bike said it was 6:30, but I never adjusted my bikes clock, so that meant it was 5:30 in North Idaho! My phone had picked up Montana time on the mountain top....I was gonna make it to Avery before they closed!  

The river road felt endless, at 42 mph it felt like I was on the road for hours, it was realistically exactly an hour.  I pulled into the store around 6:30, I filled up my gas which I had used 5 of my 7.2 gallons, I guess I didn't need the fuel bag after all.  I went into pay to find out they had already closed their kitchen so I purchased a locally made cookie and the lady working talked me into a $2 local stout.  I sat outside and enjoyed my purchased while the day old newspaper they had soaked up all the water I'd been collecting in my boots.  I plugged in some electronics to charge while making conversation with the locals, which were mostly kids in their early 20s who were up for the Summer working for the Forest Service.  They all asked where I started my day, none of them had heard of Pierce.

Just before dark I headed out of Avery and rode straight by the trail I was looking for.  It turns out this was the first of one of my new favorite offerings in Idaho, a super steep trail straight off of pavement/highway! Coming back from the other direction it was easy to see and I loved this hill climb!  My goal was to make it to a camp spot above Wallace so I could easily get to the USPS when they opened at 9 AM.  The great trails & weather were reason to push late into the night.  

Wonderful Peak was another trail that started climbing like an elevator right from a major road.  The steep climbs kept on going but turned into a sidehill across what felt like a ski slope. It was around 10 PM so I was starting to look for camping and saw Steven's Peak on my map, I had made a poor assumption it might have a lookout or at least primitive camp spot at the top.  As I made the turn to head up it was extremely steep and rutted.  The rest of the climb to the peak was filled with large rocks and there wasn't a spot even flat enough to park my bike!  I descended back down on my route towards Wallace and quickly found a perfect primitive camp spot.